Chapter 1: The Family Portrait

My name is Arjun Sharma, and I am twenty-four years old. I stand before the mirror in my bedroom on the second floor of our ancestral home in Jaipur, Rajasthan, watching the afternoon sun filter through the lattice windows, casting diamond patterns across my bare chest. The heat of May has turned our sandstone haveli into an oven, but I do not mind the sweat that beads along my spine. I have grown accustomed to it, just as I have grown accustomed to many things in this house of secrets.

Let me introduce you to my family, for you must know them as I do intimately, completely, with all their virtues and vices laid bare before the altar of our shared damnation.

My father, Vikram Sharma, is fifty-two years old. He is a man of considerable stature in Jaipur’s business community, owning three textile factories that export Rajasthani block prints to Europe and America. He has the broad shoulders of a man who worked in his youth, though now his belly softens the lines of his once-athletic frame. His hair, once jet black like mine, has turned silver at the temples, giving him a distinguished appearance that women seem to find irresistible. I have seen the way the wives of his business associates look at him during dinner parties their eyes lingering on his strong hands, his commanding presence. He wears kurta-pajamas of the finest silk, and his voice carries the authority of a man accustomed to being obeyed.

My mother, Priya Sharma, is forty-eight. She was married to my father at nineteen, a traditional arranged union that has somehow blossomed into genuine affection over the decades. She remains beautiful more beautiful, perhaps, than she was in her youth. Time has refined her features rather than diminished them. Her skin is the colour of warm honey, her eyes are large and dark like monsoon clouds, and she carries herself with the grace of a woman who knows her own worth. She keeps her long black hair in a braid that reaches her waist, adorned with the jasmine flowers she purchases each morning from the flower seller who passes our gate. She wears sarees of chiffon and georgette that cling to her still-slim figure, the pallu draped over her shoulder with casual elegance.