I knew a girl who was beautiful until she wasn’t, a girl who fixed my makeup in seedy karaoke club washrooms and climbed into disco light rickshaws with me, drunk and giggling into the night. This girl was the type of kind that let you borrow her clothes and helped you move into a new home ; the type that found the best roadside jhumkas for you even if it meant pushing past busy Colaba shoppers and street sellers. This girl knew how to love people hard, and she wasn’t afraid to show it.
This girl held me while I cried to near death after the man she introduced into my life violated my consent. And then she continued to stay friends with him as I frayed at every edge. When I gave her an ultimatum, she said it was childish to pick sides.
She hurled accusations at me, claiming I was controlling and overreacting. The day we ended things, I walked under the full moon in my pyjamas, my female rage playlist blasting through the earphones. She didn’t understand why I wanted to leave, and neither did I.
And then one day I did—it had everything to do with sisterhood. If sisterhood had a colour, it would be a soft beige called cosmic latte, also the average colour of the universe. The sisterhood carries many dark experiences and deep traumas.
Yet, alongside all that charcoal blackness of hurt, it also holds the light our hearts emit for one another. Often, we see versions of this sisterhood play out in our favourite books and movies, glamourised and capitalised to a fault. When .