02-04-2025, 09:14 PM
Twins ran in the family. When nineteen year old Eirini Vero returned home six months after running away, alone and very pregnant, the entire carnival celebrated her return to them in spite of her indelicate condition. For the Vero family itself, though, it was doubly significant. For generations their carnival attraction monopolised on the mystique of prophecy and divine twins, proclaimed proudly under the banner The Vero Sisters. It was not always twins at the helm (not that the world knew it) but the superstitions ran deep in the family mythos – all daughters were special and sight-touched, but twins were particularly auspicious, a marker of both luck and prosperity for the future, and more importantly a sign that the prophecies and fortunes of the Vero daughters remained true for a generation.
Eirini’s own twin, Esma, had already welcomed her first daughter into the world two years prior, with childhood sweetheart Fennix Pekelniak, whom she had married at only seventeen. A daughter was cause for joy, but twins were cause for security. No one asked Eirini about the father since he was a gorja and she returned without him. Unmarried mothers were still not common amongst the Roma people, though the Vas Carnival had softened somewhat into modernity over the years, and the Veros themselves already shucked convention with their matrilineal lines. However, despite how badly they were wanted, the promised twins were not meant to be. Only one of the babies would survive the birth.
Three years later, Esma and Fennix finally welcomed twins of their own, girls Masilda and Maira, and the matter of legacy was secured – at least for the next generation. Despite it, Lalitha’s inauspicious beginnings left a mark that did not fade. Great Mami taught her the Vero ways, but always with a tut and grumble. Her mother said it was just because Mami was old, old enough to well remember the days when Lalitha would have been considered a didikai because her father was an outsider, but Lalitha knew better – it was because a twin sister inexplicably dead in the womb was as good as a curse for their family. But if the Vero women had one rule, it was that they never read the fortunes for each other. And whatever else Lalitha was, she was still a Vero.
The carnival was home to more than five Romani families, and the intergenerational community was tight knit. In those days they travelled the Custody, setting up tents and entertaining the masses wherever they were welcomed. In the provenance of fortune-telling the Veros were natural rivals of the Vas family, but the conflicts never filtered down to the children, who intermingled freely and without bias. Lalitha can’t remember a time when she was not a little bit in love with Dominik Vas, Renáta’s son. He was firm friends with Ceija, Esma’s eldest and Lalitha’s favourite cousin. She was always in their shadow.
As a child Lalitha was highly creative but fickle as a hummingbird. She drew with Ceija, fashioned makeshift ouija boards to summon spirits with Sámiel, and looked after the snakes with Viktoria. She was always making music, inspired by everything around her, but rarely wrote anything down. In their free evenings her compositions were spontaneous things, sometimes with just a clapped beat and impulsive lyrics. The singing and dancing was collaborative, most memorable when Roza Vas joined in with her violin. It was only ever for family, spun around the fires once the visitors had all gone home, but it always drew a crowd, even the elders – even maudlin Esper.
She was fourteen the first time she got drunk on Pekelniak moonshine, and it was like her mind opened to a whole new world. Bright with the intoxication, she encouraged Ceija to perform her first tattoo behind one of the tents, homemade with none of the proper equipment: a small smiley face on Lalitha’s inner forearm. That same night, emboldened by the alcohol, she kissed Dominik for the first time. They became inseparable after, though the relationship remained chaste in line with custom and the watchful eyes of both their families. Infatuation blossomed to something more; she fell in love quickly and deeply, consumed by feelings she poured out into music; melodies and lyrics she finally began to write down when the inspiration struck like lightning.
Six years later Dominik made their intention official. But when Renáta read the match’s fortune, she condemned the marriage to be a barren one and refused to give her blessing. Neither of them had expected it to be an easy persuasion; everything at the carnival was a performance to some degree, and the union between a Vas and a Vero was a noteworthy juncture in the carnival’s ever unfolding story. But neither had they anticipated such a forceful condemnation. After a family conversation from which Lalitha was excluded, Dominik acquiesced quietly to his mother’s wishes. Lalitha felt her heart break, as surprised as she was hurt. She went to her own family, begged her elders to read the fortune themselves and prove that Renáta was both vindictive and wrong. But even her own mother, who once abandoned the carnival and its customs for reasons she never shared, claimed that Renáta’s word was as good as law, whether it was true or not.
The rift between the two families deepened.
Soon after Dominik grew Sick and the carnival ground to what would become its final halt in Moscow. His younger sister Roza swiftly fell to the same illness, right on the heels of the most magical show of lights and awe and music the carnival had ever seen. Tents became colourful wooden houses as the anchor set in. Less than six months later it was Lalitha’s turn to suffer. She doesn’t remember if Dominik came to her bedside while she was writhing with the fevers, but Roza did. Like the others, she learned to control her new gift with music and dancing. Lalitha survived, but it felt like a death. Her life was changed.
Description:
Lalitha loves her home and her family, and would do anything for them, but she struggles to find her place there. With nowhere else to go she still lives in the little house with her mother and her aunt’s family. But now that the carnival has grown roots more and more often she roams the city, falling foul of a society that sees her as an outsider. The nightlife dazzles her. She travels between bars peddling her gifts, making no distinction between dingy backstreets and high end venues guarded by security that rarely lets her through. Not because she’s naive but because she’s fearless, and refuses to be categorised to where society believes she fits. Sometimes she busks in Old Arbat, though she doesn’t have a licence and is usually moved on.
Lalitha is persuasive, spontaneous and emotional. She can read palms and cards (which is to say she can read people) and is both superstitious and skeptical of the answers provided. She wants to believe though.
She has a knack for inspiring others and awakening desire and ambition. When she is passionate she is unrestrained, and in her enthusiasm she can easily get carried away. Alcohol often makes her incandescent, which others mostly find compelling, but it enhances all the extremes in her personality – good and bad. Risks seem like adventures. She doesn’t think before she acts. Her heart is usually in the right place, but consequences rarely care for intention. Poor decisions have landed her in debt with the wrong people.
She’s a talented musician and singer, but her deepest mastery lies in an ability for composition and lyricism that cannot help but move. Her music communicates something in the soul, whether it be joy, sadness, anger, ecstasy or madness: nothing remains forbidden or taboo. Her performances are usually intimate and spellbinding. Though the lyrics are highly poetical (and not always in English), the feeling behind them is personal and raw: Lalitha cannot separate the two. She usually plays guitar or darbuka drum.
She’s an undiscovered talent, and a diamond in the rough, but she craves authenticity rather than fame. Her creative processes are all chaos unsuited to commercialisation.
Lalitha is small (5’1’’), with dark eyes and brown hair. She has various tattoos, all small images dotted around and down one arm. They include Ceija’s smiley face, a coffin, a jester, a slice of cake, a rainbow, a cartoon ghost, musical notes, and on the back of her shoulder, a crude dancing devil in red ink. She likes jewellery, often wearing intricate pieces made by her uncle Fennix.
Eirini’s own twin, Esma, had already welcomed her first daughter into the world two years prior, with childhood sweetheart Fennix Pekelniak, whom she had married at only seventeen. A daughter was cause for joy, but twins were cause for security. No one asked Eirini about the father since he was a gorja and she returned without him. Unmarried mothers were still not common amongst the Roma people, though the Vas Carnival had softened somewhat into modernity over the years, and the Veros themselves already shucked convention with their matrilineal lines. However, despite how badly they were wanted, the promised twins were not meant to be. Only one of the babies would survive the birth.
Three years later, Esma and Fennix finally welcomed twins of their own, girls Masilda and Maira, and the matter of legacy was secured – at least for the next generation. Despite it, Lalitha’s inauspicious beginnings left a mark that did not fade. Great Mami taught her the Vero ways, but always with a tut and grumble. Her mother said it was just because Mami was old, old enough to well remember the days when Lalitha would have been considered a didikai because her father was an outsider, but Lalitha knew better – it was because a twin sister inexplicably dead in the womb was as good as a curse for their family. But if the Vero women had one rule, it was that they never read the fortunes for each other. And whatever else Lalitha was, she was still a Vero.
The carnival was home to more than five Romani families, and the intergenerational community was tight knit. In those days they travelled the Custody, setting up tents and entertaining the masses wherever they were welcomed. In the provenance of fortune-telling the Veros were natural rivals of the Vas family, but the conflicts never filtered down to the children, who intermingled freely and without bias. Lalitha can’t remember a time when she was not a little bit in love with Dominik Vas, Renáta’s son. He was firm friends with Ceija, Esma’s eldest and Lalitha’s favourite cousin. She was always in their shadow.
As a child Lalitha was highly creative but fickle as a hummingbird. She drew with Ceija, fashioned makeshift ouija boards to summon spirits with Sámiel, and looked after the snakes with Viktoria. She was always making music, inspired by everything around her, but rarely wrote anything down. In their free evenings her compositions were spontaneous things, sometimes with just a clapped beat and impulsive lyrics. The singing and dancing was collaborative, most memorable when Roza Vas joined in with her violin. It was only ever for family, spun around the fires once the visitors had all gone home, but it always drew a crowd, even the elders – even maudlin Esper.
She was fourteen the first time she got drunk on Pekelniak moonshine, and it was like her mind opened to a whole new world. Bright with the intoxication, she encouraged Ceija to perform her first tattoo behind one of the tents, homemade with none of the proper equipment: a small smiley face on Lalitha’s inner forearm. That same night, emboldened by the alcohol, she kissed Dominik for the first time. They became inseparable after, though the relationship remained chaste in line with custom and the watchful eyes of both their families. Infatuation blossomed to something more; she fell in love quickly and deeply, consumed by feelings she poured out into music; melodies and lyrics she finally began to write down when the inspiration struck like lightning.
Six years later Dominik made their intention official. But when Renáta read the match’s fortune, she condemned the marriage to be a barren one and refused to give her blessing. Neither of them had expected it to be an easy persuasion; everything at the carnival was a performance to some degree, and the union between a Vas and a Vero was a noteworthy juncture in the carnival’s ever unfolding story. But neither had they anticipated such a forceful condemnation. After a family conversation from which Lalitha was excluded, Dominik acquiesced quietly to his mother’s wishes. Lalitha felt her heart break, as surprised as she was hurt. She went to her own family, begged her elders to read the fortune themselves and prove that Renáta was both vindictive and wrong. But even her own mother, who once abandoned the carnival and its customs for reasons she never shared, claimed that Renáta’s word was as good as law, whether it was true or not.
The rift between the two families deepened.
Soon after Dominik grew Sick and the carnival ground to what would become its final halt in Moscow. His younger sister Roza swiftly fell to the same illness, right on the heels of the most magical show of lights and awe and music the carnival had ever seen. Tents became colourful wooden houses as the anchor set in. Less than six months later it was Lalitha’s turn to suffer. She doesn’t remember if Dominik came to her bedside while she was writhing with the fevers, but Roza did. Like the others, she learned to control her new gift with music and dancing. Lalitha survived, but it felt like a death. Her life was changed.
Description:
Lalitha loves her home and her family, and would do anything for them, but she struggles to find her place there. With nowhere else to go she still lives in the little house with her mother and her aunt’s family. But now that the carnival has grown roots more and more often she roams the city, falling foul of a society that sees her as an outsider. The nightlife dazzles her. She travels between bars peddling her gifts, making no distinction between dingy backstreets and high end venues guarded by security that rarely lets her through. Not because she’s naive but because she’s fearless, and refuses to be categorised to where society believes she fits. Sometimes she busks in Old Arbat, though she doesn’t have a licence and is usually moved on.
Lalitha is persuasive, spontaneous and emotional. She can read palms and cards (which is to say she can read people) and is both superstitious and skeptical of the answers provided. She wants to believe though.
She has a knack for inspiring others and awakening desire and ambition. When she is passionate she is unrestrained, and in her enthusiasm she can easily get carried away. Alcohol often makes her incandescent, which others mostly find compelling, but it enhances all the extremes in her personality – good and bad. Risks seem like adventures. She doesn’t think before she acts. Her heart is usually in the right place, but consequences rarely care for intention. Poor decisions have landed her in debt with the wrong people.
She’s a talented musician and singer, but her deepest mastery lies in an ability for composition and lyricism that cannot help but move. Her music communicates something in the soul, whether it be joy, sadness, anger, ecstasy or madness: nothing remains forbidden or taboo. Her performances are usually intimate and spellbinding. Though the lyrics are highly poetical (and not always in English), the feeling behind them is personal and raw: Lalitha cannot separate the two. She usually plays guitar or darbuka drum.
She’s an undiscovered talent, and a diamond in the rough, but she craves authenticity rather than fame. Her creative processes are all chaos unsuited to commercialisation.
Lalitha is small (5’1’’), with dark eyes and brown hair. She has various tattoos, all small images dotted around and down one arm. They include Ceija’s smiley face, a coffin, a jester, a slice of cake, a rainbow, a cartoon ghost, musical notes, and on the back of her shoulder, a crude dancing devil in red ink. She likes jewellery, often wearing intricate pieces made by her uncle Fennix.
![[Image: Mat-and-Lal-baner-scaled.jpg]](https://thefirstage.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Mat-and-Lal-baner-scaled.jpg)