The ancient sandstone haveli stood silent under the vast Rajasthan night sky, its jharokhas casting long moonlit shadows across the inner courtyard. Inside her opulent bedroom on the first floor, Riya lay alone on the carved four-poster bed, the heavy embroidered canopy above her like a cage. At twenty-seven, she was still young, still burning, but the past year of widowhood had turned her into a prisoner of silk and silence.

Her in-laws kept her under strict watch—veiled, secluded, fed lies about “protecting her honor” while they quietly transferred her late husband’s assets into their own names. No one touched her. No one looked at her the way a woman needs to be looked at. Her body had become a furnace of denied desire.