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Fiction: Delphi tries to find her footing in theatre while also navigating realities of her youth

Scroll | December 27, 2025 1:39 AM CST

I finally had a dream I could remember.

V and I were in Goa. I had been to Goa before, but only with Asha. The trips were short, to meet my aunt Mensa. They didn’t count as the rites-of-passage trips young people took with friends. I had a good idea from friends’ photographs about what those could be like. Plus, shacks – what a concept.

V and I were on the beach. He was wearing black undies. I had a lilac bikini on and the waves were hitting us at high speed, almost painfully. Asha would have preferred I wore a one-piece swimsuit with shorts. Laila and Dhananjay were somewhere at the back in a shack, drinking beer and having some drama. And out of the sea came Asha. I froze. How did she find us? Slick, shimmering, she was, a python coiled around her neck. Or was it an octopus? I couldn’t tell. It was a slimy creature and it changed colours like one of those mood rings that got popular in school in the 90s. When she was close to us, she looked livid. Her flaming-Asha face – a rare, frightening sight – heightened in terror by the coiled creature...