The Sanctity of a Daughter

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Sunny Ajitabh

 

“Just call already,” Starr mutters. “You’ve been staring at your dad’s number all day.” 

Rati sighs and clicks her phone off, then leans back into her chair. She massages her fingers through her scalp, trying to comb out the knots and the scent of cigarettes. “It’s Diwali tomorrow,” she says, though it comes out more like a long sigh. “I’m just thinking.” 

Starr’s expression shifts into a frown. Lighting a cigarette, she says, “Would he want you to call him?”

Rati just shrugs by way of explanation and pulls herself onto her feet. Her body hangs heavy with exhaustion and the weight of regret in her pocket. She pretends not to notice the concerned look Starr gives her and picks up her bag. Rati knows she’s waiting for a response, but how is she supposed to answer a question like that? Even she doesn’t know the answer, so she just throws her jacket on and says, “I’ll see you Tuesday.”

Starr’s eyes don’t loosen their concern, but she sighs. “Okay, love you. Get home safe!” 

Rati waves goodbye, then makes her way to the back door.

Getting out of the club is a bit of a maze, but this might be one of her favorite parts of her shifts – she loves feeling the music breathing underneath her feet, the glow of the reds and blues of the main room sinking into her skin as she floats through the halls on her way out. She likes walking slow, letting herself breathe in sync with the club. It’s one of the few moments in the day that she gets to be with herself for a moment.

But then she throws open the back door, and the cold of the night falls inside, and she’s once again draped under the real world.

She pulls out her phone as she makes her way through the parking lot. Her screen blinks open to the sight of her father’s contact again, and her body leadens at the sight. A blank profile photo, with only a P for “Papa.” The phone icon is a harsh blue, stark against the rest of the screen, and she figures that’s fitting – just as blaring as her father. Her thumb hovers over the icon as she walks through the parking lot, just so she has something to take her mind off the cold, lonely walk home, but she considers it. Does she really want to hear his cold indifference to her call? Does she really want to feel the cancerous regret bulge in her stomach?

She’d much rather freeze by herself than feel the heat of shame crawl over her neck. So she shoves her phone back in her pocket and hugs her jacket as she stalks on into the night. 

As Rati steps onto the busy street, she wonders for maybe the billionth time how she even got here. It’s not like she pulled all-nighters in high school studying for math tests and finishing her AP English essays with the hopes of spending her nights giving clients lap dances and blow jobs at the back of the club.

But, despite all that, she doesn’t feel disappointed in how her life turned out.

She was a straight A student. She did all the after school activities, got the awards. Not that she had much of a choice – she couldn’t count the number of times her parents had told her about how important her education was, how lucky she was to be studying in the US at all. She couldn’t just waste an opportunity like this; she wanted to make her parents proud, wanted to give them a reason to believe in her.

But even back then, she knew there had to be more than just cycling through assignments. There had to be something beyond being the stereotype.

As a high schooler, she was embarrassingly inexperienced. Boys weren’t crawling at her feet to be with her. Her friends would talk about all the people they’d make out with and how drunk they’d gotten at the party last weekend, and Rati could do nothing but sit in her humiliation. The most she could do was wear crop tops, and even then she only risked the ones that showed a bare inch of her stomach – she didn’t want to face her parents’ intense, silent stares at her midriff until she changed. Those were the worst.

But she couldn’t deny the exhilaration she felt just by wearing a top that lifted her breasts at the risk of her breathing, or shorts that felt just a little tight on her butt. She loved staring at herself in the mirror and thinking, If I could just wear clothes like this all the time, I could almost be sexy. 

It wasn’t about wanting to show off her boobs to boys just so they could be attracted to her. There was a certain excitement she felt when she saw them for herself – a confidence would glow inside her, a sudden sense of belongingness that encompassed her, as if she finally felt present in herself. Even with the nervousness of showing just a sliver of skin, she couldn’t help but to wonder what more she could show, how much more she’d dare to push. 

She liked the feeling she got with every new inch of skin she showed. She adored the rush she felt when she saw those strips of her brown skin, like she finally felt in control of her body, even if it was just a little. 

Of course, she never really had the chance to explore that boundary in high school. School had its dress codes, and her parents had their own. But when Rati thinks about it, those nights she’d pair a bralette with jeans and imagine a life where she could just show up to school like that were the ones where Rati truly felt powerful. Like she was more than just a crumbling vessel for her parents’ expectations. 

It’s not like she and her parents had the worst relationship, at least not back then. Some of her favorite memories with them were the ones where she’d go with her father to the temple. Living in the States made it difficult for her to feel connected to her gods, which is why she loved going with him so much. Even if she didn’t fully understand the prayers or rituals, she loved watching everything – the utter extravagance of all the colors on the statues of the gods; the loud, rhythmic chanting of the prayers; the scent of laddoos and rasgullas and all her favorite mithais wafting through the air. On special holidays, she and her father would sit on the carpets and listen to the pandit ramble on in Sanskrit, and her father would lean in and translate everything to English or Hindi.

How did we end up like this? Rati wonders as she skitters through the dark streets. How did they go from days spent together at the temple to being afraid to make calls to each other? 

Rati turns a familiar right and approaches her apartment building. When she walks into the elevator, she checks her phone – 1:14 AM. Would there even be a point in calling her father now, anyway?

A few moments later, she successfully steps into her apartment. She hangs her coat up on the rack near the door, drops her bag on the ground, and drags herself through her living room, shuffling towards her bedroom. The only light in the vicinity is that of the streetlights seeping in through her blinds. 

This darkness is something she’s had to get used to. Glancing at her couch, covered in only a whisper of the pale light, she thinks about how bright everything would be right now at home. The soft yellow glow of the lights in the living room would be humming as her father watched his Indian cop shows at this hour, which used to crackle through the ceiling while she was trying to sleep. Or maybe she’d hear her mother’s phone blasting over the crackles of voices from the TV as she watched WhatsApp videos on her phone, because she never truly did understand the concept of volume control. 

A smile twitches at the corners of her mouth at the memory. She glides into her bedroom, only to be faced with another wall of darkness. 

Rati steps over to her vanity and throws her hair out of its bun. She sits down to start her nightly routine – brush her hair, comb the smoke out of it, wipe off the night’s remnants from her face – when a low glow from the corner of her room catches her eyes in the mirror: the mini pooja. The light is very dim, just barely a gem, but it’s the only light she has on in her room at the moment. Even in the darkness, it’s bright enough that she can spot the colors of the rumaal laid out on the table, and the pink and red and green miniature statues of Hanuman and Rama and Sita sitting atop it – all of them staring at her with low lids and porcelain smiles. 

But her eyes focus on a picture of a decorated lingam behind the figurines – one of Shiva’s holy symbols. She steps towards the pooja and tilts her head as she picks up the image, trying to focus her gaze on it even through the darkness of her room.

It’s funny, she thinks, looking at this photo. It wasn’t until high school that she found out the lingam was actually a penis and vagina, and even then, she only found out in her class on world religions. 

Rati was surprised at first. It was so shocking to her, finding out that a symbol like this could be so central to her culture. She wondered why her father never told her, but it didn’t take her long to understand. It probably wasn’t something he considered worthwhile to mention, and she never really asked. 

But ever since, the sight of a lingam has always lit a fuse in her core. If the gods, who were so venerated and honored, could represent something so crude, what was stopping her from doing the same? 

One time, when she was nine, her father was putting her to bed. He touched the figurines on her desk and then put his fingers to his head, then his hands, holding a silent conversation with the gods. 

“Papa,” she asked, “why do I need to pray all the time? How do the gods know what I’m doing?”

“The gods are everywhere,” he told her, smoothing her hair back as she lay in her bed. “They are always taking care of you. They’re in this fabric.” Her father tugged on her Disney princess blanket and smiled. “They’re even in your pajamas.” Then her father poked her chest, and she giggled. “They are in your heart. They will always take care of you, as long as you trust that they are here.” 

Rati giggled. “Are they even in the toilet when I go to potty?”

This annoyed her father, and she had steeled herself to prepare for one of his lectures. But then he laughed. “Yes, beta. But don’t say that.” He touched her nose. “Goodnight, Diya.” And then he stood and turned the lights off. 

Diya. The memory of her name coming from his mouth – the familiarity with which he would say it – makes her heart plummet, even now. She’s gotten so used to calling herself Rati – a violent rebirth, a sudden reincarnation. Sure, her current friends still call her Diya, but it’s Rati who straightens her, allows her a tangible existence – a life where she can make her own choices, where she doesn’t have to exist in the shadows of someone else. 

She thinks about that night with her father a lot. She’s reminded of it every time she gets on a pole, or sits on someone’s lap, or counts the money she made from the night – how, even when doing something so unworthy and undignifying, she still holds a piece of the gods in her. She’s not a diya, a mere flicker of light to call on them; she’s Rati, the flesh of sensuality. 

And every time she watches her client’s eyes bulge in lust, sees their jaw drop open in pleasure or feels the money brushing against her breasts, she feels godly. Her veins ring in a manner that she can only imagine is what divine power feels like – golden, intoxicating, revitalizing. She is the power. 

Maybe Rati should feel ashamed. That’s what her parents said when they first found out two years ago while she was at home for Diwali. They’d accidentally heard her jokingly talking to her friend about putting her experience as a stripper down on her resume, and what started as an attempt to lie turned into a full-blown argument that ended with her father telling her how much of a disappointment she was. “I spent all that money on you for college just so you can do something so humiliating?” he howled, his mustache quivering as he jabbed a finger at her. “I do all this work for you, just for you to throw it all away and do something so stupid? Sab kuchh barbaad ho gaya. Do you know what people will think when they find out?”

Rati couldn’t even answer the question, because he just kept spitting on: “You never listen to me. I tell you good things, but no. You think you are so smart, huh? We’ll see what happens when someone rapes you and kidnaps you. We’ll see what happens when you’re lost and have no one to call. You will not be able to call for me for help, and you will know it was your fault for not listening to me or Mama.” 

Now, two years later, the memory of that night still haunts her. There’s a certain desperation that claws at her chest every time she thinks about her father – the man who smiled when he told her stories of Krishna and whose eyes lit up every time she asked about one of the old myths was the same one who called her a slut, a whore, a disgrace to the family and slammed his bedroom door in her face. 

And maybe she is everything he said she was. But she tells herself that’s not a bad thing.

What surprises her most, though, is how much it hurt to hear her father call her those words. Slut, whore – they were a mantra she clung to throughout college as she began to explore her body, began to recognize this power she had. She’d gone from shy and awkward in high school, uncomfortable with the way her skin clung to her and repressed by her parents’ rules, to sharing flirtatious glances with pure strangers and having sex in the backseat of cars. She’d gone from asking for attention to demanding it. 

Slut, whore. They were an ideal, a form of existence. But from her father’s mouth, they were nothing more than the dirt on which he stepped on.  

After that night, things had definitely shifted between her family. Her father talked to her less; her mother pretended like she never found out. In fact, the first time she came home after that – to pick up some of her last remaining stuff, no less – she and her father spoke no words to each other. He did everything in his power to avoid her. If they found themselves in the same room, he would look right through her, as if she were a ghost who was making some sort of strange noise and he couldn’t decide if he should be worried about it or not. During dinner, he pretended not to notice the fact that there was no more vacancy in the fourth chair; he simply turned to her brother and started asking him about how school was going. 

She hadn’t been sure what she’d been expecting. Maybe some sort of glare, some sort of snarky comment about how thin she’s gotten and how he told her it would be a bad idea. She could handle that. But his purposeful aversion to her somehow hurt worse than any of that. 

She hasn’t been home since.

But now, as she looks at the picture of the lingam, takes it with her to bed, she thinks about her father again. How they haven’t shared a Diwali together since they stopped being around each other, how it used to be one of her favorite holidays – getting to light diyas with him, having him feed her rasgullas, listening to him tell her about the story of Diwali under the candlelight of those diyas they’d made together. 

She knows maybe it would be a bad idea to call him. He made it clear that he was disappointed in her, that she was a disappointment. 

But still, she finds herself bringing her phone back in front of her, finds herself opening his contact, finds her thumb hovering over the call button. For what, exactly? To try to rekindle a relationship she knows can never be saved? To finally come to terms with the fact that her father wants nothing to do with her anymore? 

Rati sighs and clicks her phone shut. She puts the picture of the lingam down on one side of her, drops her phone on her chest, and closes her eyes. This is what she’s come to. Dark nights in her bedroom, replaying old moments in her head, eternally stuck in a spiral of regret and shame.

Then she picks up her phone again. There’s a flashing reminder of the fact that it’s Diwali, and she swipes it away to stare at her lock screen. It’s a picture of her and her family, all the way back before she started college, when they’d spent a day at the beach over the summer. She’s pulling a silly face, with her tongue stuck out and her eyes caught in some sort of awkward wink. Her mother is attempting a smile, though it turns out more like a grimace because of the wind whipping her hair. Her brother has an irritated look on his face, like he could be doing anything better than be at the beach with his family. And her father had his signature almost-smile look, where his lips were quirked into some sort of crescent shape that wasn’t quite enthusiastic and didn’t quite reach his eyes. 

Rati turns her phone around, staring at every angle. It appalls her how different she looked. Her hair is pulled back in a low ponytail – her favorite hair style at the time, for some reason – and there’s the shadow of a faint unibrow over her forehead, before she learned how to shape her eyebrows. 

She didn’t necessarily look happier then. But there was an ease there, a certain warmth between her family, at least in this frozen glimpse of a moment. 

Rati squints at her father’s face. He didn’t usually smile in pictures, and this wasn’t one of the special occasions where he did – but still, there’s a higher quirk of his lips, like he’s trying his hardest. That’s all Rati could ever really ask of him. 

Her breath hitches, and with a start she realizes she’s crying. Her face burns with heartache and her tongue bursts with a salty taste when it accidentally catches a tear. She misses her family, her father. She misses being able to even share one word with them. She’s finally found some sort of stability in herself, but nothing can replace the shame and regret she feels knowing every second forward is another step away from the past. 

And then, before she realizes what she’s doing, her thumb jabs the call button. 

It rings, and rings, and rings. The sound rolls through her bedroom, and each echo makes her much too aware of how alone she is right now. With each empty ring, her sobs strike her chest even more painfully, and she’s sure he won’t answer. 

Her thumb hovers over the button to end the call, when a click catches the air.

Only silence follows after that, but not a normal one; it’s filled with a crackle, like the line is trying hard to stay alive. Rati’s sure she can hear the faint sound of breathing.

No one speaks. It’s a silent competition, and Rati’s afraid that if she makes any sort of noise first, she’ll lose. 

But the silence lingers for too long, and her skin’s itching from anticipation. If someone has to be the loser, she’ll risk it. She sucks in some air.

She whispers, “Papa?” 

Silence. And then:

“Diya?”

She’s surprised by how much warmth bleeds through his voice at her name. She figured her father would just end the call, or answer in his usual gruff way. But there’s a softness in how he says her name, like he’s afraid if he says it too loud, he’ll break it. Like he’s holding a newborn body. 

A smile cracks between the tear tracks on Diya’s face, like sunshine breaking through her after a long night of rainstorms.

“Happy Diwali, Papa.”

 

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