Book Excerpt: Instruments of Torture by Aparna Sanyal

An exclusive excerpt from Aparna Sanyal’s Instruments of Torture (Published by Harper Collins, 2024)

The trajectory of Poornima’s life had started out in a fairly calculable way. Or so her parents had thought. She had been a very pretty child, one that didn’t shy away from the inevitable petting, cossetting and pulling-of-cheeks that came with the privilege of young physical beauty. She had the palest skin in her family, an attribute looked at as being her ‘biggest gift and blessing’. She had lush, dark hair and a pleasant, symmetrical albeit slightly lazy face, one that knew it didn’t have to try too hard.

From the time she remembered, her mother had dressed her in frills and ostentatious flounces, painted her cheeks with just the tiniest hint of rouge even at the age of five, and never sent her out without an aayah in tow. She had been everyone’s favourite: her much older brother doted on her and picked many fights on her behalf; her mother regularly adorned her face with a tiny black teeka to ward off the evil eye and performed many pujas to safeguard her health and wellbeing. Her father bought her exquisite toys and clothes, coming back home from his work travels always laden, arms full and a broad smile on his face, eager to meet his precious Gudiya.

Poornima’s mother would wait for her father’s return from these trips with as much anticipation as Poornima did. Both mother and daughter would wear their best clothes, Poornima’s mother would paint her own face lavishly, going from foundation to powder to concealer with an expert flourish. She would line her eyes perfectly, dark cat-curls at each corner that magnified the already large orbs to twice their size. On would come ruby- red lipstick, thick slabs of rouge and highlighter and finally a large red dot on her forehead: the wedded bindi that crowned it all. Her mother told her often that it was her duty to be dressed thus for her father, and when it was Poornima’s time to don the marital mantle, she too must do so with smiling willingness and the always-painted mien that ‘makes men proud that you are theirs’. Poornima would swallow up each word, each step of the grooming process, each smile her mother gave her with eager glee.

These times were her best ones; these memories would remain etched in her mind forever. In one hour, her mother would transform from sullen-faced, disappointed, middle-aged domesticity to a powdered and powerful vixen: a woman who came alive, who caught and held her father’s eye for those few hours before she washed the paint off, and the television set and newspaper re-established their control on him. Before they went back to cohabiting as barely civil strangers, going about the lacklustre business of running their grahasti, surviving on half-uttered sentences and curt nods.

Excerpted with permission from the author Aparna Sanyal and Harper Collins India, the publishers of Instruments of Torture (2024)

About the Book

Descend into the deepest, darkest torture chambers of the soul, where rapacious dreams dwell and nightmares are forged. In these pages, the mind’s darkness lies revealed.

These stories are each named after a medieval torture device, and the true meaning – and impact – of every title bubbles up to the surface as the connection between the various instruments and their psychological counterparts are laid bare: whether it is an anguished man being drugged with hormones to ‘cure’ his dwarfism or a forbidden love affair that takes root in a place of worship.

Torn asunder, marginalized, existing at the edges of our peripheral vision, the people in these tales hold up to the reader the greatest instrument of torture yet: a mirror that looks directly into the subconscious.

About the Author

Aparna Upadhyaya Sanyal holds an MA from Kings College, London. Recipient of the 14th Beullah Rose Poetry Prize by Smartish Pace, she was shortlisted for the 2018 Third Coast Fiction Prize.