Can desire be inherited? Once upon a time in Bombay, a widowed Uma Bhatt refused a suitor. He was Muslim; she was Hindu. Unwilling to risk her reputation, she suppressed her desire. Shortly after, Uma died. What might be the end of a tragic love story is, in fact, the spark that lights up this choral play chronicling the struggles and pleasures of female sexuality in one Indian family. Over three generations, a few shenanigans and migrations, these women learn to embrace their bodies and yearnings, freeing themselves — and a fourth generation —  of long-held notions of womanhood. "Traces of Desire" is inspired by Lope De Vega's 16th c. comedia, The Widow of Valencia. While both plays center female agency and desire in a world of fixed gender norms, my play strays wide from its source. Playfulness and magic realism along with a soulful exploration of what binds us and what frees us from the undercurrent of a play meant to, like its original, please audiences.  In my play, female  agency and desire are still rich territory to explore, even as gender norms are expanding to encompass our full humanity. My play introduces not one, but three widows plus an adopted child: a fourth generation. Adoption shows continuity apart from the usual blood continuity and complicates motherhood, the way desire complicates womanhood. Today, women's full humanity is still undermined globally. Where Lope was interested in how a woman retains her independence while gratifying her sexual desires, I'm interested in exploring what woman-hood is and in what women do today that is considered transgressive. Whenever today is.