Sudha Balagopal

Sudha Balagopal’s recent short fiction appears in Pidgeonholes, JMWW, Vestal Review and Nottingham Review among other journals. She is the author of a novel, A New Dawn. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions and appears in the Wigleaf Top 50, 2019. More at www.sudhabalagopal.com.

THE PROSPECTIVE, OR WHAT I TELL THE MAN IN THE CAFE by Sudha Balagopal

My parents sent me to the movies with a man they found in the matrimonial columns of the Mumbai newspaper. They told me he was a romantic, a Bollywood aficionado. Perfect for someone like me who read Austen. They made concessions for this prospective from America, sending me out with a man for the first time, alone, at age twenty-one. My eyebrows stung—they’d been threaded and shaped into perfect crescents. The crimson on my nails and lips felt vulgar. I wanted to pull out the pins in my French braid, let my hair loose. *** You ask to meet with…

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