Stanford University

Cold, hard marble pressed against my paint–splattered legs as I pored over my near–finished painting. It was 3 AM, and the sari-clad, pot-carrying woman on my canvas stared back at me. Yet, by painting portraits alone in my room, what did I stand to change? Ascending the winding staircase of Jaipur’s Pink Palace, I entered the Zenana, the women’s chambers… “Beautiful, isn’t it?” We spent our lives here, but it was never ours. The Prince of Jaipur commissioned it to confine us, his concubines. It holds our stories, but we couldn’t tell them. The portraits I painted seemed empowering, but…