Editor's Desk 
Translated short fiction: Kallo, cast out from her home, becomes a toothpowder seller’s muse
The day Kallo the whore was driven out of her neighbourhood for sleeping with her uncle, Mushtari Bano had coincidentally decided to consume kerosene and kill herself after her hakim husband’s betrayal.
Poor Mushtari Bano, a devout woman who was regular with her prayers and fasts and who would keep a watch on Kallo from a distance, couldn’t even in her wildest dreams imagine that the urchin would hit her nerve one day!
I first spotted Kallo at the tooth powder seller’s tamasha. Every Friday evening, a bulky man would appear with a drummer and sell assorted tooth powders. Both young and old would throng his cart.
“Wood, coal… if you want some relief, you have to chew on my powder,” he would announce, and his praise would make the best of qadirs and naat-khwan pale in comparison. The vendor was more melodious and mellifluous than all of them, and Kallo was his model. With her dark, pockmarked face, her unabashed eyes, her straw-like hair, her long jumper soiled in grime and dust, her cracked heels and crooked, long and dirty nails, Kallo was a masterpiece of filth in flesh and blood. But she had a set of pearl-white teeth, and the vendor…
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