“She forgot it on purpose,” Mira replied, sitting beside her. “So she has a reason to come back next week.”

“Is it,” Mira asked quietly, “always happy to leave?”

“She forgot her hairbrush,” Asha said.

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The ritual of haldi began. Aunts, cousins, and neighbor women gathered in a tight, giggling circle. They smeared the golden paste on Kavya’s arms, face, and feet. The joke was that it made the bride glow. The truth, Mira knew, was that the antiseptic turmeric cleansed the skin, but the ritual—the touch of so many hands, the singing of bawdy folk songs, the forced laughter—cleansed the soul of its fear.

Today was not an ordinary Tuesday. Today, her elder sister, Kavya, was getting married.

As the sun set, the air turned the color of a saffron robe. The groom’s procession arrived—a hundred men dancing to a dhol drummer, the groom himself riding a white mare, a sword in his sash, looking both heroic and terrified.