The water ran until it ran clear, and then she got dressed in front of the fan in her mother's mirror. Bra, cotton, no, she had no bra that fit, so she would not wear one under the shirt, and the shirt was a tight ribbed thing she had bought from the lane market two years ago and had never worn out of the house, and when she pulled it down over her chest the two of them sat heavy and obvious and the small hard points showed through the ribbing like something she had decided about, and she decided it, and left it.

Jeans, high-waisted, the waistband cutting into the soft place under her ribs. Kajal, just a line. Lipstick, the colour of a cut pomegranate, blotted twice so it would not bleed. Her hair down, waist-length, silky, and she brushed it out until it lay flat and black against the shirt and the ends touched the top of the jeans, and she looked at the mirror and saw that she looked like a woman going to work, and that was the whole point.

In the kitchen she set the milk on the flame and measured the tea leaves into the pot. Two spoons, one for each of them. The sugar she added by eye because he took it sweet, and the ginger she crushed with the flat of the knife, and the cardamom, and the smell went through the house the way it did every morning, and it was the one smell she could make come out right every time.

He came out of the bedroom in his vest and his lungi, hair flat on one side from the pillow, and he stood in the doorway and looked at her back while she poured, and she knew he was looking at the shirt and the jeans and the hair, and she did not turn around.

"Tea," she said, and set the glass on the table, and he sat.

He drank. She fried the eggs in the same pan and put the bread in the toaster and set it down in front of him, and he ate with his head down, and the only sounds in the kitchen were the spoon against the glass and the fan and the birds in the lane.

"You are going out," he said.

"I told you. The call centre."

"There is no call centre."

She picked up her own glass and drank and set it down. "There is a call centre," she said. "It is in the next lane from the photo studio. You walked past it and you did not see it because you were not looking. It is on the second floor, above the tailor, and the sign is small, and it pays by the week."

He chewed. He swallowed. He did not look up. "How much."

"Enough."

"Enough for what."

"Enough for the gas and the milk and the electricity and for me to buy my own things," she said, and she heard her voice go flat and hard and she let it, "so that I do not have to ask you for anything. So that I do not have to open the almirah and take what is not mine."

He put the spoon down. He looked at her then, at the shirt, at the two of them sitting under the ribbing, at the hair down over the shoulder, and his jaw moved, and she could not tell whether it was anger or the other thing, and she did not wait to find out.

"I will be back before the evening," she said. "There is dal in the pressure cooker and rice in the tin and you know how to light the stove."

He said nothing. She took her purse off the nail by the door and put the three thousand rupees inside it, folded flat, and then she took out two thousand and put those back in the tin in the kitchen where she kept the house money, and she did not look at him while she did it, and he watched her do it, and neither of them said a word about it.

The Activa started on the third kick. She rode out of the lane with her hair loose and the wind in it and the jeans tight on her thighs, and the water-tap women looked up and the schoolmaster's wife looked up and she did the slow deliberate walk of a woman who has decided to be seen, and she did not stop until she was on the market road.

The mall was at the far end of the market road, past the bus stand, past the row of mobile shops, and it was a thing she had seen from outside many times and never gone in, because the glass doors and the guard in the uniform and the cold air that came out when they slid open made it a place for other people. She parked the Activa in the two-wheeler stand and paid the boy ten rupees and walked up the ramp with her purse under her arm.

The doors opened on their own. The air hit her like water. Cold, dry, perfumed, and she stopped for half a step and then kept walking because the guard was watching and she was not going to be a woman who stopped.

The marble floor was so polished that she could see herself in it, walking, black hair down, jeans, and she looked at the reflection for as long as it took to cross the atrium and she thought, without any particular heat, that she looked like the women in the magazines, and that the women in the magazines probably also felt like they were going to be sick.

The first counter was the makeup. A long glass case with the lights inside it, and behind it a girl in a black uniform with her hair in a bun and a name tag, and the girl looked up and smiled the way you smile at a customer and not the way you smile at a person, and Maya stood in front of the case and looked down at the rows of little bottles and did not know what to ask for.

"Madam?"

"A kit," Maya said. "A complete one. Foundation, powder, kajal, eyeliner, lipstick, blush, the brush, all of it."

"Waterproof?" the girl said.

"Yes. Waterproof and smudge-proof. Everything."

The girl began to pull the little boxes out and set them on the glass in a row, and Maya watched her hands, and the girl said, "This one is the long-wear. It will not come off in the rain or if you sweat. This one is the matte, for the oily skin. This one—" and she held up a small black tube, "—this is the kajal that will not run, even if you cry."

"That one," Maya said. "Two of that one."

The girl looked at her for a second, at the nose ring and the dangling earrings and the long painted nails, and then she wrote it down, and Maya felt the look land and did not care, because the look did not cost her anything, and the tube did not run, and that was the whole point of the tube.

She paid at the counter and the girl said, "Would you like a bag, madam?" and Maya said yes, and the girl put it all in a paper bag with the shop's name on it, and Maya took the bag and walked out into the atrium with her heart going and her hands steady.

The earrings were in the next shop. Long, round, looped, gold, and she stood in front of the mirror with them on and turned her head and the loops swung and caught the light and she thought of her mother's jhumkas in the almirah and how they were the wrong shape for a shirt and jeans, and she bought the loops in three colours and did not put them on, because she was not going to wear gold loops with a ribbed shirt in the middle of the day.

The bangles were in the same shop. Glass, every colour, and she picked them up by the dozen and held them to her wrist, and the woman behind the counter said, "Which size, madam?" and Maya held up her wrist and said, "This one," and the woman measured it with a paper strip and said, "Two-six," and Maya said, "Give me all of them in two-six. Every colour."

"Every colour?"

"Every colour."

The woman laughed, a real laugh, and began to pull the bangles down off the display in stacks, and the glass rang against the glass, and Maya stood there with her arm out and the woman slid them on one at a time, green, blue, red, pink, yellow, black, and Maya looked down at her own wrist and saw the bangles stacked halfway up her forearm and thought that this was what she had wanted since she was nine years old and did not have a word for it.

The nail polish was next. Every colour, the whole wall of it, and she stood in front of it for a long time and chose the way she chose spices, by the smell of the name in her mouth, and she bought twelve bottles and a remover and a small box of the press-on nails because her own were long but she wanted the long ones too.

The bra shop was on the second floor, and she stood outside it for a moment with the paper bags in her hands before she went in, and she went in.

The girl there was older, with a measuring tape around her neck, and she looked at Maya and did not blink, and Maya said, "I need a seven push-up," and the girl said, "Thirty-four?" and Maya said, "Thirty-six," and the girl said, "Let me measure," and Maya let her, and the girl's hands went around her ribs and over the two of them with the tape and the girl said, "Thirty-six," and Maya said, "Yes."

The girl brought out the trays. Black, white, nude, red, blue, the lace, the smooth, the strapless, and Maya stood in the fitting room with the curtain closed and tried them one by one, and the push-up did what a push-up does, and she looked at herself in the little mirror with the two of them lifted and the straps biting the soft place on her shoulder and she thought, this is what a woman looks like, and then she thought, this is what I look like, and the two thoughts sat down together and did not fight.

She bought seven. One for each day, she told the girl, and the girl laughed and said, "Then you will need to wash them on Sunday," and Maya said, "I will," and the girl put them in a big paper bag and Maya paid.

The dome necklace was in the jewellery case near the escalator. Gold-coloured, round, a big dome on a chain, and she put it on over the ribbed shirt and looked at herself in the mirror and the dome sat in the hollow of her throat and made the shirt look like it was meant to be worn with jeans and she bought it and wore it out of the shop with the tag hanging at the back of her neck and did not care.

The fabric was the last thing she did on the ground floor, and it took the longest. Ten shalwar kameez, unstitched, and she went along the bolts with her hand out, feeling them, the cotton, the lawn, the silk, the chikan, the block-print, and she chose by colour and by the way the cloth fell through her fingers and not by the price, and the man behind the counter cut each one and folded it and put it in the bag and asked her, "Stitching, madam?" and she said, "I have a tailor," and she did, two lanes from her house, an old man who had stitched for her mother, and she would go to him tomorrow.

By the time she came out of the fabric shop her feet were hurting and her purse was light and the paper bags were heavy in both hands and she was hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food, and she stopped at the juice counter in the middle of the atrium and drank a sweet lime standing up, and the juice was cold and the mall was cold and the marble under her feet was cold and she thought that she could stand there forever.

Then she went down to the lower ground where the western shops were.

The jeans were easy, because she knew her size now. Two pairs, one dark and one light, and a pair of black leggings, and then the tops, the little ones, the ones that stopped at the waist, and she held one up against herself in the mirror and the shirt was small and the two of them were not, and she bought it anyway, and a second one, and a third.

The dress was in the window of the last shop and she saw it from outside and went in for it. Short, black, sleeveless, the kind of thing she had only seen on the women in the magazines and the women on the film posters and the women on the arms of men at the hotel where she had never been, and she took it off the rack and held it against her body and looked at the girl at the counter, who was young and chewing gum and did not look up, and Maya said, "Trial?" and the girl pointed at the curtain with her chin.

She put it on. It came down to the middle of her thigh and the neck was low and the back was low and the two of them sat in it like they had been made for it and she stood in the little curtained room and looked at herself in the mirror and did not move for a long time.

Then she bought it.

The nightdress was next door, and it was short and red and made of a cloth that was almost nothing, and she bought it without trying it on. And then, in the last shop, in the back, behind the counter, she asked the girl in a voice that did not shake for the g-strings, and the girl brought out a small tray and Maya picked three, black, red, and the pale pink, and the girl wrapped them in tissue and put them in a small bag and Maya put the small bag inside the big bag and paid and walked out.

It was past three when she came out of the glass doors into the heat. The light hit her and the smell of the road hit her and the Activa was hot on the seat and she loaded the bags into the footwell and tied them with the string the parking boy gave her and started the engine and sat for a moment with her hands on the grips and her hands were shaking and she was smiling and she did not know when she had started smiling.

She did not go home. She rode past her lane and turned at the corner and parked the Activa in front of the tailor's shop and went in with the fabric and the old man looked at her the way he had looked at her for two years, which was not unkind, and she put the ten pieces on his table and said, "Ten, and the fitting is the same as my mother's," and the old man said, and his voice was old and dry, "Your mother's fitting I remember," and Maya said, "Then you will remember mine," and he took the pieces and wrote the measurements in his book and did not ask her anything.

When she got home the light was going orange over the lane and the light was on in the kitchen and her father was sitting at the table with the tea she had left in the pot and the plate from his lunch in front of him and he looked up when the door opened and looked at the bags in her arms and the dome necklace at her throat and the loops in her ears and the bangles stacked on her forearm and she saw his hand close around the glass and the glass was empty and he did not notice that it was empty.

"You said the call centre," he said.

"I said I would be back before the evening," she said, and she set the bags down on the floor by the door, all of them, the paper and the plastic and the small bag inside the big bag, and the bangles rang when she moved her arm, and she looked at him looking at the bags and the loops and the necklace and the bangles, and she understood, the way she had understood in front of the mirror at the blue door, that the lie had just stopped being a lie, because he could see what she had bought and he could count the cost of it and he could not ask her where the money had come from without asking her the other thing, and the other thing was the thing they had both agreed not to say out loud.

He did not ask. He looked at the bags for a long time and then he looked at her, at the ribbed shirt and the two of them and the dome at her throat, and his jaw moved the way it had moved in the morning, and he said, "There is dal."

"I know," she said. "I made it."

She picked up the bags and carried them past him into the bedroom, and the floorboard by the door creaked under her, and she set the bags down on the bed, and she stood there with her back to the open door and her hand on the small bag inside the big bag, the one with the tissue and the three of them in it, and she did not hear him get up, but she heard the chair scrape, and she heard the tap run in the kitchen, and then she heard the tap stop.

She turned around. He was standing in the doorway with his hand still wet from the tap and his eyes on the small bag in her hand, and neither of them said anything, and the fan turned, and outside in the lane somebody's television was playing the evening news, and the light in the room had gone the colour of the sindur in her hair.