THE DAY AGNI died was like no other; blood flowed down the dirty alleys of Sonagachi, terrifying wails resonated within the streets, and she saw the life slip out of those she killed. She had stormed into the brothel with a group of criminals following her lead and put a bullet in the heads of all those who deserved to die. The prostitutes cried and screamed and begged for mercy but Agni was determined to deliver justice. One after another, bodies began to pile in the rooms and pools of filthy blood covered the floors of the brothel.
As the criminals went through each room, killing men and women at Agni’s orders, she stood by the porch for a moment and stared at the murder of crows sitting on the tangled electric wires across her. Hilarious. I wonder what bad omen is coming my way now. She thought to herself. Every little thing about this place reminded her of a time she had long forgotten, of memories she had deeply suppressed, and of the meek little girl she once used to be.
It had been fifteen years since she first left this district but now that she was back in her childhood home, she thought of everything she once loved; the women of the largest brothel in the country dressed in vibrantly colorful sarees, the numerous bed sheets and pillowcases that had been washed down to the fiber and hung up to dry on a clothesline, and the sound of her mother’s voice who was almost always dressed in provocative red clothing. She claimed it helped lure customers. But young Agni disagreed for she believed that her mother’s saggy breasts and cellulite were enough to turn even blind men away.
However, these were filthy, hungry, loaded men who simply wanted to tear a woman down to pieces regardless of how she looked. So her mother put out and the money flowed in. But Agni never seemed to care; she was young, feisty, and somehow always surrounded by animals. When she turned eleven, she managed to befriend an army of street dogs whose loyalty with Parle-G biscuits and bowls of tap water. She had trained and tamed them so that they would ram through shoulders that dared to raise a hand on the women of Sonagachi, bite through penises that stayed too long in the women of Sonagachi, and tear through testicles that attempted to infect the women of Sonagachi.
Her mother, clad in red rexine mini-skirts and chiffon shirts, would often laugh it off and thank her daughter for the ‘extra protection’ she provided. Despite her crippling fears of dogs, cats, and birds, she remained unbothered by the sight of Agni surrounded by animals.
Partly because she wanted her daughter to be in the presence of happiness when the men came in and doors shut out and partly because she was well aware of the fact that Agni simply didn’t get along with the other children. They claimed she was too blunt and short-tempered, almost to the extent of violence. Regardless, Agni soon came to be known as the ‘warrior child’ of the brothels – a protector of women who controlled and led an army of street dogs.
Still, there was an animal that Agni had been taught to remain wary of – crows. Her mother considered crows to be sharp watchful creatures that symbolized bad omens and curses and taught her daughter to steer clear of them. It was okay to encounter them in singles but the problem lay in murders of crows. Each time the two walked past these vicious creatures sitting on cable wires, her mother would immediately state that something wicked was coming their way. Sometimes, almost instantly after spotting them, they would step into cow poo or drop something in a street drain and then proceed to blame the birds. Agni always found it funny how her mother held crows accountable for the bad luck in her life but unfortunately, she only realized the heaviness of her mother’s lessons until much later.
When business was slow and money was tight, Agni and her mother would partake in a special looting strategy they devised. She would often pass snide comments at her mother for spending all her money on red clothes and lipsticks but would hesitantly agree to the plan. Agni was tasked with causing a ruckus in the brothel hallways and buying her mother enough time to sneak into rooms and steal notes of 20s, 50s, and sometimes on lucky days, even 100s. After the ordeal, several women from Sonagachi would give her an earful before pulling her by the ear and dumping her in front of her mother.
At night, they would lay side by side under the creaking ceiling fan of their dim room that occasionally smelled of semen and sweat and talked about their days. On nights that made her mother especially sad, she would talk about her life and Agni would quietly listen. Her mother had remained faceless and nameless for the entirety of her life – she had no memory of how she ended up in the red light district, nor did she have any memory of anything that happened before. Nobody knew anything about her besides her vagina. She was simply a hole – mostly for fucking, sometimes for childbirth.
She didn’t know who Agni’s father was. Probably some bastard that stayed in too long. Of course, it didn’t matter anymore for Agni was her spitting image and she was thankful every day that she didn’t have to see a stranger’s face in her child. She never bothered giving
her a last name either. Not that she knew her own. But even if she did, Agni would most likely inherit her father’s last name and she had no interest in associating her child with a man she didn’t remember. And so, Agni was named after the God of Fire without a last name. Her mother figured it was more impactful that way too. She wanted her child to be a God; to be someone who saved others from their misery, to give salvation to the estranged, to give life to the dead. Sadly, Agni was far from a God. Perhaps a fiend would be more befitting.
The pimps, or babus, of Sonagachi, allowed the women to keep their children so long as they agreed to have them participate in the business. The boys grew up to become babus and sell the women of their families off to strange men while the girls grew up to dress in short skirts and revealing shirts to inveigle men into the brothels. Agni’s mother had only agreed to this condition under the pretence that she would be able to escape with her child by the time she turned eighteen. However, every passing year, her chances grew slimmer and her anxiety grew stronger until she had lost that chance completely and had transformed into nothing short of a blob of anxiety.
Still, she defied the pimps of Sonagachi to protect her child, her God, her Agni. On the day of the defiance, Agni stepped out of the room as always and remained blissfully unaware of what was to follow. She went about her day as she always did – ate ghugni for breakfast with the old women in the brothel, spent some hours with her street dogs outside the brothel, then bought some puchkas for her mother from the street vendor before heading back to the brothel. As she walked towards the room, she spotted a murder of crows sitting by the porch as an elderly woman fed them pieces of bread. She felt their uncomfortable gaze and a surge of panic washed over her. Ignore it. She thought as she convinced herself that her mother’s weariness of crows was only a superstition devised to pin her misfortunes on.
However, as she walked through the brothel hallways, she felt her sense of comfort wither away. The meeting had lasted longer than usual for her mother hadn’t stepped out of the room in hours. Besides, there was an uncomfortable stench in the air and the women of Sonagachi peered from the thresholds of their rooms as Agni approached hers. When she opened the door, a disastrous view came into sight.
A pimp held her mother’s bloody head by her hair in his hands while her blood swiftly spewed across the floor. Agni stood by the pool of blood and simply stared; unable to move, unable to scream, unable to breathe, her mind dissociated into feelings of love and anger, of
joy and pain, of kindness and violence. She knew nothing then and remained incapacitated as the men shut the door behind her, as the men held and groped her, as the men raped her on the same floor as her mother’s blood, in the same room as her mother’s corpse, in the same presence as her mother’s head that stared back at her with wide morbid eyes. She felt nothing, she saw nothing, she remembered nothing besides the sound of crows cawing through the days and nights.
Agni remained locked within the room as fleets of men came barging in to fuck her raw. No, to rape her raw. It was a day later that her mother’s corpse was taken away to be buried in secrecy. No one knew where. They just knew that Agni remained holed up in the room that still smelled of her mother’s blood. Over the next few weeks, the number of fleets reduced but Agni remained burrowed within the room beside her pile of blood money. She had been feeling quite sick those days; fatigued, cramped, nauseous, and unusually quiet with erratic mood swings. Her consciousness was yet to return.
It did, of course, return.
But what salvaged her mind wasn’t a dog or a cat or a bird but rather a small bump on her stomach. The circle of life was complete. Agni had become her faceless, nameless mother who no one knew anything about besides her vagina. She was simply a hole – mostly for fucking, sometimes for childbirth. No. No. No. Everything about her life came rushing back in; her mother’s obsession with red clothes, her mother’s vivacious life-force, her mother’s looting strategies, and late-night conversations. No. No. No. She wasn’t just her mother, was she? She was more than that. She was… something. A hole? No. No. No.
She remembered nothing.
She was nothing.
That day, Agni screamed and wailed for hours at an end. She cried so much that men stopped fucking the women of Sonagachi. She cried so much that her nose bled and droplets of blood fell all over the bedroom floor. She cried so much that no one dared to approach her for the following week. It wasn’t just the loss of her mother that threw her off the rails, it was the loss of everything her mother had died protecting. She was hardly the girl her mother wanted her to be so what the fuck did she die for? She was nothing but filth; unable to protect
herself from the touch of unknown men, unable to mutter a word of refutation, unable to do anything but lay on her back.
And now… she was carrying a goddamn curse. Her mother must have felt this way about her too. She was no God of Fire, she was just hellfire personified. She was violence and rage, revenge and hatred, blood and cruelty. She was nothing her mother died for nor was she anything her mother lived for. She was simply a soulless demon from hell and with this accursed pregnancy, her life had been marked for ruin. No. No. No. She couldn’t kill her own child! She had to become a mother. She had to raise it. She had to protect it. She couldn’t be that wicked, that cruel, that merciless.
Could she?
Yes. She could be. She had always been this way. Wicked. Cruel. Merciless. Kill them, kill them, kill them. It had been decided, she would kill every last one of them. *
The following week, she bought some pills from a shady dispensary beside the brothel, packed her bags with nothing but blood money, and set the room she once lived in with her mother on fire. Claiming arson was the only way to get rid of the bloody stench, Agni left Sonagachi in obscurity. With a wicked arsonist on the loose and secrets of the brothel left in jeopardy, Agni was soon listed as a criminal wanted by the underworld. Fleeing from city to city, spanning across the length of the country, she sought and bought criminals at her mercy to fulfill her cruel ambitions.
She became invisible and invincible, traveling between the tangled electric wires and brothels of the Indian underworld. Clad in red sarees, red lipsticks, and red bindis, she controlled babus and brothels from behind the scenes; from Kamathipura to Meerganj to Chaturbhujsthan to Itwari. Soon, she made a name for herself as the Chalak Malkin, meaning the Cunning Mistress, whom no one could approach. The warrior child had been killed long ago and all that remained now was the wrath of the Cunning Mistress. Over the years, any and all attempts at her assassination had been in vain for she surrounded herself with an impenetrable wall of loyal and violent criminals that served her and only her. Rumors about
her wicked enchanting methods of luring crime lords under her control spread like wildfire through the brothels and people began to wonder what the secret behind her power was.
Some accused her of performing witchcraft on those who came in contact with her. Others, who claimed to have been her victim, stated that even being in the same presence as her set their groins on fire. It wasn’t an infection, no. Just her markedly strong and vicious aura that made any man, with or without a brain, want more. She was shrouded in secrecy and everything unknown about her made her irresistible. She was a foxy mystery who ruled knowledge and leveraged power through any means possible.
However, her methods weren’t as complicated as people imagined them to be. In fact, they were rather easy. She assumed control over the weakest men by seducing them into submission, by using sex as her weapon of destruction, by making her body a temple of worship for men that were just as wicked as her. Most often, they would spill their secrets over a cigarette after sex and she would stealthily steer the conversation to lure out classified information about their gangs. Once she had used them to their full capacity, she would put a bullet in their head and had them buried in secrecy. It was simple, really. She put out and the secrets flowed in.
For crime lords that required more effort, she would destroy their groups from the inside out; first, she sought a gullible, loyal dog with large stacks of money that could act as her spy and collect sensitive information on her behalf. Then, she used and manipulated her dogs to ruin their businesses and dismantle the lords’ monopoly on their bandit groups. When all was said and done, she would have both, the dog and the lord murdered for their infidelity and weakness. Little by little, she increased the strength of the army of criminals behind her who shot and cut and killed and murdered at her whim. However, the Chalak Malkin was looked down upon by the men and women of the brothels; not because she used sex as her means of survival in the underworld but because she remained stoic, cold, and unapproachable.
Regardless of the accusations and rumors that spread about her, she remained the Cunning Mistress that brought men down to their knees for years to come. No one knew her real name or where she came from, they just knew that she never smiled or showed a speck of emotion to those around her besides a young girl that had worked for her since the beginning. No one knew why she was always clad in red from head to toe, they just knew that she was a
heartless bitch who knew nothing of morals and ethics when it came to her advancing her ambitions. No one knew her name or how she came to be known as the Chalak Malkin, they just knew that she was cruel and evil.
This opinion of the Cunning Mistress strengthened when she employed the young girl that worked for her as a child prostitute at a crowded brothel. She was hardly of age but wealthy men from all over the country paid a premium price for an hour with her. The young girl seemed to be unaware of her exploitation and looked up to Agni as her savior, as her protector, as her God. What was it that the Chalak Malkin was after? Was it money? Was it power? Was it fame? Or was she just heartless enough to expose a child to the world of prostitution? The questions remained unanswered but their belief in her viciousness had been set in stone after the incident. Still, Agni laughed at their judgments and farce opinions for she knew that the same men who spat at her methods secretly paid bulky stacks of notes to spend an hour with the young girl.
*
Years of murders, dacoity, and crime later, she returned to the world of Sonagachi as the leader of a group of bandits and issued an announcement. Women she had once stolen money from had grown old now, dogs she had once played with had died now, and the room she had once set on fire had new inhabitants now. But it didn’t matter anymore for her goal was finally within her reach. Over the next few months, she murdered all known pimps of the brothels and exacted revenge for her mother’s gruesome murder – except that was no longer her intention. On the outside, claimed that she would rule the red light district of Sonagachi as the ultimate babu, that she would change the brothels from the inside out, that she would reform the lives of the sex workers that obeyed her. Of course, it was an unsaid but well-understood fact that anyone who dared to defy her would meet the same fate as the pimps.
However, on the inside, her true intentions stood in stark contrast to her worldly claims. Years ago, she saw herself as a fiend that was destined for ruin but now, she believed that the pile of bodies she stood on had given her a sense of purpose. They were simply collateral damage that she had used as her stepping stones. Now that she was back in Sonagachi, she could finally act as the God her mother had envisioned her as. She would use the helplessness and misery of the prostitutes to rise to power, to control the underworld, and
to become omnipotent. She had vowed to protect herself so she manipulated and corrupted and exploited anyone that she could use. However, when it came to the young girl that was mostly stuck to her side like a leech, Agni found herself wrapped in feelings of conflict.
Most times, she adored the innocence of her face and pure energy but sometimes, she would feel her anger boil and take an evil form. Most times, she wanted to protect her from the brutality of the world but sometimes, she wanted to push her into the plunging darkness of the underworld. Most times, she wanted to keep her away from the brothels but sometimes, she wanted her to become a part of it. She loved her just as much as she hated her. She cared for her just as much as she despised her. She wanted her around just as much as she wanted her to leave. It was a balance she couldn’t seem to strike, a feeling of endearment and apathy she couldn’t understand, a beautiful soul she couldn’t get herself to destroy. On the good days, the young girl was the light of her life but on the bad, she was a toy for the men of the brothels.
In Sonagachi, peace prevailed in the brothels but only at the cost of sanity. The pimps were dead but Agni was no better. Sonagachi was once known as the liveliest, most vibrant – albeit illegal – brothel in the country. Now, it was known as the hub for the activities of the most ruthless woman known to town, the Chalak Malkin. Agni had now replaced her army of loyal street dogs with street criminals who had been ordered to shoot any man who dared to violate consent on sight. No one was given a chance to explain themselves, to justify themselves, or to save themselves. It was certain death. Within weeks, business in Sonagachi plummeted and caused strife between the women and the Cunning Mistress. Still, no one dared to say a word of defiance, rebellion, or discomfort. Money was tight but their chances of surviving a coup against Agni were even tighter.
Days passed and the situation worsened until it finally reached its climax. To make ends meet, some women of Sonagachi agreed to have unprotected sex for thicker bundles of notes. Of course, this was done in absolute secrecy for union rules required safe, protected sex at all times. When the news surfaced to the ultimate babu, she merely smiled. Perhaps for the first time in years. But her wide smile and manic eyes only made her seem colder and more villainous than she had ever looked. Still, to the young girl, Agni’s smile was her most favorite thing about her.
“I’ll be back, okay?” She smiled at the little girl.
“Don’t go.” The girl pleaded. “What if you don’t come back?”
“I’ll always come back to you.” Agni smiled and ruffled the girl’s hair. As she turned around to leave for Sonagachi, the girl pulled her back with a tug on her saree. “Okay, how about this? If I don’t come back in the next three hours, Raju will bring you there. Fine?” She proposed, pointing at one of her men.
“Yes!” The girl smiled back at Agni as she let go of her.
*
Dressed in a vibrant red saree and red lipstick with a large red bindi on her forehead, she made her way to the brothels with a gun in her hand and a band of criminals behind her. Hours later, she stepped out into the street with the blood of prostitutes and filthy men alike on her hands. Claiming it was the only way to cleanse the brothel of its impurities, she made her way back to her lair. That was until she was stopped by an elderly woman.
“Look at what the hell you have done!” She screamed at Agni as she charged towards her and pulled her by the ear. Her loyal dogs attempted to stop the elderly woman, but Agni stopped them with a wave of a hand and sent them away. She didn’t need their assistance to handle an old woman; partly because the sense of familiarity she felt in Sonagachi comforted her and partly because she knew she was untouchable. The women of the brothels couldn’t lay a hand on her and their weakness empowered Agni. The woman’s touch felt as though she had pulled her ear in the same manner before; perhaps some fifteen years ago for Agni hardly remembered.
“Tsk,” Agni muttered under her breath as she pulled her expensive gold jhumka out of the woman’s hand. Her face remained expressionless and stoic as the elderly woman unleashed a string of curses at her. She didn’t bother listening to what she had to say for she knew she had done nothing wrong. It was all for the greater good after all. These whores are so oblivious to the truth. She thought as she rationalized her actions to herself while the elderly woman continued screaming. Those men wanted so badly to violate their bodies that they risked their lives for a few moments of pleasure. It was unforgivable.
Yes, all those nasty men deserved to die.
Yes, all those women – no, whores deserved to die.
“You can wear as many red clothes as your heart desires but know this, you will never be your mother!” The woman shouted and Agni stood paralyzed in the middle of the street. The word ‘mother’ spiraled in her head and made her dizzy. The ease with which the elderly woman spoke about her mother shocked Agni. She could ever hardly bring herself to think about her mother and this woman had the audacity to talk about her as if she knew anything. Where was this concern when she was murdered? Where was this concern when her daughter was raped in a room filled with her blood? Where was this concern when their lives were destroyed within hours?
“Is this what your mother died for? Is this what she wanted for you? Na, Agni? Answer me!” Every word the elderly woman spat out was laced with a poison that punctured through Agni’s heart. But she simply glared at her and smiled. She could feel the anger bubbling inside of her by the second for she knew that the woman was right. This isn’t what her mother died for. She was meant to be a protector, not a saboteur. She was meant to be the God of Fire who gave warmth to the world, not a demon from hell that scorched everything it touched. She was meant to be everything she wasn’t. Her indifference and apathy towards the world had destroyed her. Still, she had no interest in listening to a stranger yap about her fucked up life.
“Listen, woman,” Agni started, inching closer to her face as she raised her index finger at her. “Don’t you dare talk about me or my mother when all you did was stand at the threshold of your room and watch her die!” She spat in her face angrily as she felt her heart beat wildly against her chest. She just wanted to shut the woman up, she just wanted her to die. No, she wanted to kill her. Yes… kill her, kill her, kill her! She strengthened her grip around the gun in her right hand and waited a beat. Her mind was in shambles.
Yes. No. NO.
Yes. YES! No.
No. NO! Yes.
She was seething now and she desperately wanted to release the anger, the pain, and the vexation inside of her. Yes. Yes. Yes. She was going to do it. She stared at the agony in the woman’s eyes and smiled, she heard the suffering in the woman’s voice and smiled, she saw the tears flowing down her face and smiled. She took a deep breath, gathering all the
frustration in her mind and body, and directed it towards the gun in her hand. A moment later, the elderly woman fell to the ground with several bullets in her gut. Agni stood above her body, shocked and appalled. Did the woman really deserve to die? A small voice in her mind questioned. Of course! No one in the underworld was truly innocent for they had all been marked with their sins and violence. If she hadn’t killed the elderly woman, someone else eventually would. But what if they didn’t? Her fading conscience questioned again and this time, her mind failed to concoct an answer.
She was angrier now and could feel the steam escaping her ears. She wanted to curse the woman to hell for making her remember memories of her mother, for making her mind plummet into chaos, and for making her feel remorse, however little it may have been. The frustration in her body continued to gain momentum and she took her aim at the body on the road again. She shot her in the face once and laughed hysterically. She felt good. This was the price of reminding her of her nameless, faceless mother and now, she would make it so that no one could ever recognize the elderly woman’s face again. She shot and shot and shot until the gun emptied but she still wasn’t satisfied. So she pulled another magazine from the blood-stained potli bag hanging by the side of her saree and shot again until there was no room for bullets on her face anymore.
Slowly, she let go of the gun in her hand and watched it fall on the body by her feet. Splat. Droplets of blood flew towards her face. She was smiling but her heart felt heavy, as though it was anchoring the weight of the entire world. She felt as if she had been slapped in the face with the cold, hard truth about her life once again. It had been hours since the sunset, Agni’s murder spree had reached its end, but the wails continued. As she stepped away from the body to leave, a familiar cry resonated in her ears; it was loud enough to make her turn around and agonizing enough to make her remember.
It was like watching herself from years ago. Tsk, I hate this world. She thought to herself as she looked at a young woman sitting on the blood-stained road with a puddle of flesh that once used to be her mother’s head. Tears flowed down her face but Agni stood in front of her with a passionless expression for she knew there was nothing the young woman could do except scream and cry and wail, only for it to be in vain. She was weak and helpless, just as Agni had been years ago. The world was vile but the underworld was worse; there was no
right or wrong in the brothels, only sex. There was no truth or justice in the brothels, only pain. There was no compassion or empathy in the brothels, only emptiness.
Sonagachi and its inhabitants had been victims of a cycle of hatred and violence that there was no breaking out of, and Agni was one such victim. Except, while most spent their lives in ignorance, Agni had accepted her fate as a ‘wicked’ being. She had sworn to protect herself and rise to power any which way possible and if a pile of bodies is what she needed to be free, then so be it. What other people thought of or spoke about her simply didn’t matter. She was fine with being a devilish God so long as she could fulfil her ambitions. She knew that she wasn’t the God her mother wanted to be but she also knew that she was right in everything she did. She was meant to use her fire as a warm, purifying light of guidance but instead, she set the world aflame and watched it burn. This was her being God. And that was alright. So Agni turned around once again to leave the bloodbath she had created in the district.
However, as she walked away, the young woman behind her picked up the gun Agni had previously thrown away in anger and aimed at her with shaky hands. She didn’t know who she was or what she wanted, all she knew was that she was the devil in disguise. The woman had never held a gun in her life before but it didn’t matter for the ultimate babu deserved to die. Bam. Bam. The woman pulled the trigger and sent the bullets piercing through Agni’s thighs. In an instant, she fell to the ground and felt her eyes widen in surprise.
If there was anything that Agni had learned about the woman of Sonagachi, it was that they were weak, helpless prostitutes who had no means of survival besides sex. It was a vulnerability she could easily exploit but what she wasn’t expecting was that the young woman would be courageous enough to shoot her. She could feel her anger rise again but this time, she was utterly helpless. She was rapidly losing blood but there was no one around to help her; she had sent her loyal dogs away and she could sense that the remaining women of the district were enjoying the show. They were mere bystanders watching from the porch of the brothel as she dragged herself across the road for a shot at survival. The predator had become the prey.
Everything was skewed now. Perhaps her shitty life was meant to end this way; by the hands of someone else – at the cruelty of a stranger and the mercy of a few bullets. She wondered now where she had gone wrong but funnily enough, her entire life had been an
antiquated collection of forbidden turns and bad decisions. But she didn’t feel a speck of remorse or regret for the life she had lived. The world was just that cruel. There was no end to this cycle of hatred. There was no hope for the lives of Sonagachi. Life was just a brutal tug of war between suffering and survival. Perhaps she could have put an end to this suffering but she knew it would be to no avail; the cycle would continue just as it always had.
The young woman walked up to Agni with a gun in her hand as she continued to drag herself across the filthy concrete road. She was aware that it was the end of the line for her but she had one last motive to fulfill. It had been long past three hours since she made the promise to the young girl back home and she knew she would be on her way to the bloody district now. If the cycle were to continue as it always had, she wanted the young girl to see her die, to feel the pain in every inch of her body, and to live the way Agni did – as a God that willingly became the devil. Alas, she made her dying wish in vain for the woman with the gun pushed her head towards the ground and stepped on her wound to stop her movement. Agni could feel her head being crushed into the ground and looked up at the woman from her peripheral view.
“Killing me…” Agni muttered slowly under her breath. “…Will do nothing.” She whispered into the air as the woman standing tall above her took her aim.
Bam. The woman shot Agni in the head and a murder of crows flew towards the sky in panic.
Bam. Again.
Bam. And again.
Agni died the way her mother lived; faceless, nameless, and in the midst of cawing crows. She was meant to live and die as a God and perhaps at one point, she even thought of herself that way. Perhaps at one point, she even became a God. Perhaps at one point, she even had the chance to become everything her mother died for. However, if you put God and the devil in the same cycle of hatred, they will eventually become the same.
Sadly enough, Agni lived and died as just another perpetrator of hatred, violence, and revenge. She was born with a pure, fiery soul that was corrupted and branded for vice. Yet,
the circle of life continued and there was no one left to blame. Not even crows. As her life reached its end, a small familiar voice screamed her name.
“Ma!” The young girl called out to Agni.