She wanted to attend the wedding so she could experience the ecstasy of life, vicariously.

Her aunt’s husband’s niece was getting married, and she was invited to the wedding ceremony, along with her parents and sister. Her sister was to wear a sari, but she herself was too young for that. Her mother chose a frock for her to wear. In the evening, as her mother and sister donned their saris and necklaces and put on make-up and perfume, she stood before the full-length mirror in the corridor in her pink sparkly dress.

She hated that dress. It absolutely did not match her face, which was angular and spectacled and serious. Her eyeglasses were purple and shaped like the eyes of a cat. Her hair, lanky and short, made her chin look absurdly long. And her legs - so exposed under the dress that had become too short - looked thin and gawky. In short, she was a disaster. How could she go looking like this? And why did her sister look like a freshly bloomed flower, her hair in a bun at the nape of her neck, her throat long and delicate like a swan’s, her eyes luminous.

Her mother and sister made some suggestions to improve her appearance, but she did not like them. For a moment she had the desire to tell her mother that she would stay at home. But she wanted to go, to see the wedding rituals, the bride swathed in red and weighted with jewellery, the groom in ivory hued dhuti and kurta, a conical shola cap on his head. They would look serious, their eyes fixed on the priest, listening to his mantras, waiting for his instructions. As part of the rituals, both would have gone without food the entire day. Yet through the weakness induced by the starvation and the elaborate wedding garb, their youth and sexuality would permeate and waft through the guests surrounding the platform where the wedding was being solemnized in the presence of a fire.

Yes, she wanted to go, so that she could sit at a long bench amongst other guests, in a dining hall filled with many other benches and tables and numerous other guests, while busy servers piled food on the bright green banana leaves that were used as plates. She specially loved the fried aubergine slice, long and graceful, and the translucent raw mango chutney that threatened to roll out of the leaf, before it was licked up with one’s fingers. What if she was ugly and awkward, what if no-one noticed she was there.

She could still experience the ecstasy of life, vicariously and otherwise.