My great-grandmother could dislocate her left eyeball from its socket. She was part of a travelling circus show for a week, but she fell in love with my great-grandfather, who worked at a pharmacy in South Bombay. She claimed she had the power of the “vision”, though this was not part of her circus act. The “vision” is the protagonist of numerous family stories. In one story, women bring my great-grandmother offerings of food and drink and in return she informs them who is sleeping with whose husband. It is a running joke that women in my family have the “vision” but are blind to the philandering of their own spouse. My great-grandmother died in 1979 and I was born the same year. I never met her. On my 13th birthday, my mother gave me an eyeball preserved in a glass jar. The iris is grey, like clouds announcing a thunderstorm. I have kept it all these years. I also inherited her “vision”. It tells me I will meet my true love when I join the Kohinoor Circus. I wonder whether Heron will come to see me perform. My act will be called Daring Draupadi. My real name is Sita.In order to explore my ancestral roots, I am reading a book about circus life. The author is a Japanese man who fell in love with a trapeze artist named Mala, and followed the circus around India for five years. That is two years longer than I have been married, and I am already planning my escape. I practise contorting my body every morning after my husband leaves. When the circus reaches Bombay for the summer, I will join. I found the book at a used bookstore; someone has drawn moustaches on all the animals and the binding is damaged, but the photographs have maintained their sheen. The Japanese man writes about a skeletal old woman who does not eat. At each performance, she walks around the ring and the audience watches as the circus master offers her a glass of water. It sounds mundane, but it is one of the most dramatic moments in the show, because any day now, the woman is expected to collapse. At night, the author watches the woman, expecting to find her sneaking food from a pocket hidden in the voluminous folds of her sari. Instead, he discovers that she sleeps heavily and snores like a steam engine.Under my bed, I keep a large glass aquarium filled with formaldehyde, in which Billy the cat is preserved. My husband and I adopted her two years ago, and she died last month. On my honeymoon in New York, I saw a work of art by Damien Hirst: a shark preserved in a giant aquarium-like contraption. I spoke to a woman at the information desk, and she told me about the various struggles involved in the process of keeping the dead shark in the gallery. I had wanted to keep the cat because a soul exists in the body and disperses as dust once the body is burned. Billy still has her soul. I cannot take Billy with me when I join the circus, but I take her from the glass box and leave her corpse in the oven. It will be a surprise for my husband. He never looks under the bed, but he will find her in the oven. Every morning, I take five multivitamins and one tablet that stops ovulation so I do not become pregnant. My husband’s name rhymes with heron, and he does not know I am on birth control. He is forgetful. He eats almonds with his breakfast and fish curry for lunch to improve his memory. “It’s strange,” I tell him, “that fish are such forgetful beings but we eat them to remember better.”I call him Heron because it is disrespectful to speak his name. When I am alone, I say his name to myself: Kiran. I am expected to cook all his meals and have sex with him weekly. The unexpected consequence of such an arrangement: a desire to know and be known. The closest Heron comes to expressing tenderness is when he says, “You don’t eat enough.” On Sundays, he watches my favourite TV show with me, without complaining. There is a dissonance between his lack of affection and the intimacy of our shared life. On Wednesdays, I fast. The doctor says it is unhealthy, but I tell him I cannot take any medicine on Wednesday. I take a double dose on Thursday. “This is nonsense behaviour,” the doctor says. When my mother falls ill, I fast for an entire week and consider joining the circus. I understand the skeletal woman’s strength. My doctor tells me anorexia is addictive because the body releases hormones that stimulate hunger and simultaneously energise the mind. My mother likes to remind me that I was always a nuisance, and sometimes, I blame myself for her fragility. All her aches and pains began with me, with complications during her pregnancy. These days she spends her time knitting and sends me woollen garments in the mail, even though the weather is hot and I never have any use for them. She took me to the circus when I was five. The first act was a magic show, and we had to leave early because I would not stop crying after the magician vanished two doves into his hat. I was slow to learn object permanence. Heron runs a furniture store, which he inherited from his father when we got married. Ten years ago, Heron’s father advertised modern furniture and fixtures. Now it is a vintage store selling the same things. I have difficulty believing things can exist when they are not in my possession. Does it also work the other way around? When I’m alone, I wonder whether I exist. On days when Heron is at the store, I invite my downstairs neighbour, Saila, to drink tea and watch a movie. Sitting next to me, sometimes her hair brushes against my face and I feel comforted. She is beautiful, her breasts perfectly proportioned. I fall in love with beautiful women because beauty is symmetrical and contempt is the only asymmetrical facial expression. I imagine my husband would love me if I were more like them, but I’m looking for ways to make him forget me. My breasts are not quite symmetrical. I stop wearing a bra and allow my nail-paint to chip. I use unscented body wash because I want to smell like a stray cat in summer. I practise saying goodbye to Heron in front of the mirror but it is not easy after three years together, so I decide I will write a note instead. In the first draft, I list 15 things that are wrong with our marriage. I stop at 15 because I am reminded so strongly of my misery that I cry for approximately two hours. My husband calls to say he will be late because the business dinner is a seven-course meal. On the radio, a woman sings about crossing the sea to learn a language in which she can make sense to her beloved.I rewrite the goodbye note, but this time I try sounding cheerful. These years have been the best years, I write. I steal lines from the Japanese man who followed the circus. “Never before has such a spectacle been created, and this death marks the end of a silver age of circus-masters.” I keep this incomplete note hidden in my jewellery box. There is so much more I need to say before departing. Usually my mother has dominion over my guilt, but I’ve made promises to my husband, which I must now break. My true love is Rajan the Lion-tamer; I know because I have the “vision”. When the circus arrives, I read the reviews in the Bombay Times and discover that my true love is a hijra, though he prefers the male pronoun. I dream about Rajan and realise he is the perfect creature – if we are all searching for the half that will complete us, then he is already perfect – both man and woman. But then I wonder how the perfect creature can be man and woman, when there is infinite love for Saila in my small heart. She senses my moods from the rhythm of my footsteps, which she hears from her apartment below. When I collapse from sadness, she hears the sound of my body hitting the floor and comes upstairs to find me. I wish she would ask me to stay. I can predict many things, but cannot always predict what will make me happy.An excerpt from ‘Circus’ in Principles of Prediction, Anushka Jasraj, Westland.