DARKNESS DEMYSTIFIED

There was once a gori chokri who despised everything dark to such an extent that she refused to step out at night and slept with the lights on.

- Lakshmi Narayan

She hated ravens and crows because of their colour and even decided to mehendi her hair a bright orange to hide its rosewood hue.

She wore green coloured contacts to hide her coffee brown eyes, loathed the Little Black Dress even though it was in vogue and preferred to gad about in gaudy ghagra-tops. She spurned her dusky cousins and mocked them as sooty. She insisted on replacing the beloved family steel grey car for a flashy fire engine red eyesore.

Things would have gone on like this forever but for a traumatic event, where she went completely blind. "You could get your sight back. Miracles do happen," said the doctor, with little hope in his voice.