In the green room behind the Grand Hyatt ballroom, where ceiling fans stirred the scent of jasmine garlands and fresh attar, Priya adjusted the final diamond on her sister's choker. The stones caught the fluorescent light like captured stars, cold against warm skin. Ananya tilted her head, admiring the effect in the small makeup mirror propped against a folding table.
"Still think we look ridiculous?" Ananya asked, voice low, teasing.
Priya met her eyes in the reflection. "We look like queens who forgot the crowns are optional."
They had laughed about it for months—half-joking, half-daring each other. The annual fundraiser gala for breast cancer survivors was always extravagant: silk lehengas, cascading curls pinned with maang tikkas, the predictable shimmer of tradition. But this year the theme was "Reclamation." Priya, who had lost her hair strand by strand during treatment three years earlier, had whispered the idea first: "What if we both go bald? Not because we have to. Because we choose to."
Ananya had stared at her older sister, the one who had always been the careful one, the one who braided her own hair every morning even on hospital days. "You mean shave it all?"
"Everything. And wear the heaviest jewels we own. Let them see what beauty looks like when nothing hides it."
Ananya had said yes before the sentence ended.
Now, minutes before the curtain call, the stylist hovered with clippers and a straight razor, the tools laid out like surgical instruments on white cloth. No audience for this part—no phones, no flash. Just the two of them, the hum of distant music leaking through the walls, and the quiet rasp of metal on skin.
Priya went first. She sat on the stool, back straight as temple stone. The clippers started low, a growl that vibrated through her skull. Dark strands fell in soft heaps, like monsoon leaves swept from a courtyard. She watched them pool at her feet, surprised by how little grief accompanied the sight. Ananya stood behind her, fingers resting lightly on her shoulders, steady as prayer.
When the clippers fell silent, the stylist lathered her scalp with cool foam scented faintly of sandalwood. The razor moved in long, deliberate strokes—cheek to crown, temple to nape. Each pass revealed the elegant curve of bone, the subtle map of veins beneath brown skin. Priya closed her eyes once, felt the air kiss newly bare places, and opened them again to find Ananya crying silently, smiling through it.
"Your turn," Priya said when it was done, voice rough with something like triumph.
Ananya took the seat without hesitation. Her hair had always been the envy—thick, waist-long, the kind aunties pinched cheeks over at weddings. Now it surrendered in minutes. The stylist worked quickly, respectfully. When the razor finished, Ananya ran both palms over her head, once, twice, testing the impossible smoothness. She laughed—a bright, startled sound—and pulled Priya into a fierce hug.
They stood before the full-length mirror the organizers had dragged in. Two bald women in strapless gowns the color of dawn and dusk, necks and ears dripping with diamonds that now seemed heavier, more honest. No hair to soften the jawlines, no tendrils to frame the eyes. Just them—stripped to essence, adorned only in what they had chosen to keep.
Priya touched her own scalp, marveling at the warmth radiating from it, the way light slid across it without interruption. "We look... exposed."
"Good," Ananya said. "Let them see everything we've carried."
The stage manager knocked. "Two minutes."
They linked arms. The hallway to the ballroom was lined with mirrors; in each one, two gleaming heads moved together, reflections multiplying into an army of fearless women. As the doors opened, music swelled—something classical overlaid with modern percussion—and the spotlight found them.
Heads turned. Gasps rippled through the room like wind through silk. Then applause—slow at first, uncertain, then building until it thundered. Not pity. Not curiosity. Recognition.
Priya stepped to the microphone first. Her voice carried clear, unadorned.