what the body remembers by shauna singh baldwin

It falls, a moonlit river, down the valley of her spine. Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, they are like the three strands of her hair, a strong rope against the British, but separate nevertheless. Roop is a new Sikh, then, an uncomprehending carrier of the orthodoxy resurging in them all. Satya lifts Roop's plait around her shoulder and examines the tip-too few split ends it has felt the scissors Unlike Satya's, it has no need yet for henna. Roop's hair is long, to her thighs, softened by amla and scented with coconut. Unlike Satya's grey ones, they are demurely lowered, innocent.Ī man could tell those eyes anything and they would believe him, a man could kiss those red lips for hours and they would look fuller and more luscious for the bruising. Skin, smooth as a new apricot beckoning from the limb of a tall tree, her wide, heavily lashed brown eyes. She studies Roop's features, her Pothwari She takes Roop's chin and raises her face to the afternoon sun, willing it to blind her, but it will do her no such service. If in welcome, so she can study the girl. When she comes before her, Satya does not speak, but rises from the divan and takes Roop's chunni from her shoulders, as She has a servant summon Roop to her sitting room in the afternoon, when Sardarji has gone to a canal engineers' meeting. She tells herself she pities Roop, but hears laughter answering her-how difficult it is to deceive yourself when you have known yourself a full forty-two years.

Satya's heart is black and dense as a stone within her.

What the body remembers by shauna singh baldwin