All she had...

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She used to look stunning at sixteen, the age when she married. A broad forehead that in a man would have been called a receding hairline gave her a regal countenance, one that was designed for nethi chutti[1] and red full-moon pottu[2]. She also had large eyes set wide apart, which in her youth must have been twin black and white expressions of inner poetry. In fact, if it is fact, an artist in her husband's family was charmed enough to paint her portrait soon after her wedding. Funny are the testimonies of fact – so much of it is created by deft flourishes of imagination. The selective colouring of a restored past, the exaggerated assumptions of an evolving present.
I could not gather much about the husband. After all, imagination cannot resurrect angles and curves on a barely visible fragment; for that was what he had faded into. She bore three children in quick succession, each birth lining her face with its intimate details. At twenty, she must have been an experienced mother, adept at handling sleep deprivation and childish tantrums.
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[1] Nethi chutti is an ornament that is worn on the hair parting and decorates the forehead.
[2] Pottu is the Tamil word for the vermilion dot that adorns the forehead of Indian women
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