Aunt Enaki is in charge of monitoring two CCTVs at the Children’s Overseer Room at God’s factory. In a particularly busy week, Aunt Enaki is keenly watching the children’s amputations on Monitor Screen 1, while on Monitor 2, the princess of Tripura is in the process of giving birth. We’re the interns behind her, seated in two neat rows. Someday we’ll get to where Aunt Enaki is, if we become as efficient as she is, watching and learning from her.

Because we are casualties of Honor Killings by our families, we are assigned to Aunt Enaki—herself a victim. Aunt Enaki barks orders into the microphone—

Avoid going above her knee . . . 

Try getting closer to the femur—she’ll be infected . . .

I think her arm can be saved, sew it back . . .

Sutures, he needs them now . . .

Her instructions travel through complicated time-waves and reach the brain cells of the doctors and medical staff performing procedures on the children. The medical staff at al-Kabira are hard-pressed, stressed. War and unrest have taken a toll. Aunt Enaki keeps her directions brief. 

Monitor 2 is filled with happy voices. They are celebrating the home birth of a girl to the Princess of Tripura. Aunt Enaki watches unemotionally; hasn’t any directions to offer.

Aunt Enaki insists we stay busy with our hands while we are watching. Interns need to be capable of multi-tasking. We’re tasked with making papier-mâché busts of the high-caste boys who ogled us when we were on earth, causing our families to get rid of us at home, and before we were even grown-up women—hacked or strangled in our beds. As low-caste women, we girls were liabilities if some boy had supposedly grown an interest in one of us. We, weak gendered, would have to be killed, because that girl would eventually bring dishonor to her family’s name. 

Why them? Aunt Enaki tells us that, by making the busts of our harassers, we are confronting our angst, and by doing that, we will be able to think clearly. Ultimately, we’ll be capable of devising ways to pre-empt honor killings and guide those that may face similar situations to safety.

Ripping strips of paper and smearing glue over our fingers is therapeutic, although we don’t yet know what will become of these busts. The replicas turn out to be close to the faces of the real men who harassed us, our suppressed angst guiding the quality of the end product. Eight-year-old Kamila’s bust looks demonic—lopsided features and dark holes for eyes, closer to a terribly scary mask. 

Strangely, we and our busts remain together—glued to the cardboard platforms in front of us, platforms fixed on our work tables, our spots in the room fixed. Girls keep arriving every day, but the newest ones sit at the back, and the older ones must teach them how to make busts of the men with wires, masking tape, and wadded balls of paper. Sometimes one of us will share the idea of adding falsified organs, a penis perhaps, or an earring, so as to make them look more real. Not all of us are sure we want to make them look lifelike, and if so, why not make busts of the fathers and brothers who actually executed us for fear of social shame and bringing a bad reputation to our family and clan? During training at the CCTV room, strict discipline is expected, and silence observed, so we haven’t figured out how to ask Aunt Enaki if busts of our earth-family members might be tried as well.

I watch the newer girls watch the CCTV monitors more closely than we do. 

I remember our early days, how we learned the process. It is with utmost precision how the children are helped from this monitor room— if there’s a window of help available. If not, then Aunt Enaki will put them on the Waiting List, because the available room here in the Dead Abode is limited too. Those who are beyond help and are in really bad condition get early access through a violent jerk on the toggle switch in front of her. Aunt Enaki sometimes reverts to her supervisor, whose office is on the upper floor, in case a decision is borderline and she needs clarity. Then the toggle switch is shifted one way or the other. 

Hey you, come here! Aunt Enaki lets one of us try the toggle switch sometimes, and surprisingly, today it is me that she signals to. I go near her, my hands trembling, my feet unready. 

You see this boy? He’s got a bullet in his neck—do you think he’s got a chance?  

How old is he? I ask. 

Six—he’ll be seven years in two weeks. 

I stare hard; wonder how, for these children, they wouldn’t even be able to make busts of those that killed them, for their murderers are faceless and nameless—more painful. 

No, not that much—they tend to forget what happened, Aunt Enaki reads my thoughts and answers. So, what do you think?  

Aunt Enaki and I, we both know that time is ticking away. We need to get to a decision to end his suffering sooner rather than later. I look at the other monitor. We are witnessing another birth—to a woman in a Mumbai slum, a delivery at home again. The woman is bleeding too much and the baby seems too weak to survive the ordeal. Its father is helping the midwife but is not seeking God’s intervention, at least not yet.  

So?  

Aunt Enaki slightly pushes my forearm. I pull the toggle switch with all my might, hoping for a miracle for the boy with the bullet wedged between his neck and brain. Aunt Enaki nods her head in approval. The toggle switch readjusts to the neutral position.