The Journey, A Short Story by Susan Visvanathan

Chapter 1 It was a hot winter month. We don’t really think of it as ‘winter’, but that’s what the pepper traders called it, as they kept the calendar and seasons according to the language of the merchants who came from far off lands. Their boats would harbor in the ports and coves, and the traders would go out to meet them. So I lived far away from the sea, and though my husband had died when he was still young, they called me the ‘old widow’ not because I was old in years, but because because because.. who knows? Perhaps they thought that I should be thrown away like waste. Yet, in Chera country we were like vibhooti from the lamp of the Gods – they burned brightly, and we were to adorn ourselves with the ash that flecked off from ancient sooty lamps. It was always necessary to meet the King before going on a long journey. He was a large and swarthy man, a hunter, and with many lords serving him. How would I, a widow, be able to see him? We were from a hamlet of villages that he had gifted to us, and though we had arrived barefoot and hungry, he had fed us, clothed us, restored us to our dignity if not our former glory. A robber baron who had walked over the Nilagiri, he had some understanding of our journey which had not been as tortuous as his. He knew us as people who had laws and wealth, but had lost everything. The floods and droughts had followed in quick succession, and our poverty was multifold. He knew that we would embellish his kingdom with our arts, and was quick to acknowledge our usefulness. He had told my grandfather, “ I need priests. We are permitted to marry as our wish maybe, or not to marry, but our women must feel at home in our kingdom. I have loved a young girl, and while marriage is not a priority once our sambandham is over with a chosen girl, this one is a Toda girl. Now, the Namboothries leave my temples, and I must find new priests. I want you to serve me, and I will give you villages and concomitant lands to feed your people.” My grandfather was pleased by the king’s request. His job was to please the king, and to protect his clansmen and their families. Once they became recognized as subjects of the king, her grandfather would not be responsible for every family, every man, woman and child and the livestock that they brought with them from their famine ridden villages. He was pleased with the offer and immediately agreed, and the king’s bride was brought to him with a puzzled look. She wore the white and red woven cloths, her shoulders bare, her long black and silky hair neither oiled nor knotted, as was their custom. The king was besotted, neither caring who was watching or who was present. He had arranged for feasting and music, and the young girl went through the foreign rituals without comment. Outside the wild flowers had bloomed, the mango trees had blossomed, the cuckoo was loud and shrill, looking for his mate. It seemed as if the hot summer days (‘winter’ in traders’ language) would never end. At night, the storms had a velocity that frightened people, but lovers secure in each other’s arms did not think of tomorrow. This rejoicing over new homes, fertile lands, nestled next to the blue mountains, went on for many years. We barely remembered our old homes, where the peacocks called and the rice which grew, waving in the warm breeze, waited to be harvested. We did remember our gods, and the king gave us permission to build temples, so that each street had its lineage God, and we had freedom of worship. Having seen the King at his marriage, and remembering our loyalty to Shiva and Shakti, and his to Vishnu and Lakshmi, I felt immediately that he would bring me fortune. I was younger than his new Toda bride, but my gaze was on him through the new ceremonies, which neither he nor his new wife understood completely. They looked to the priests, heard the chanting, waited for the lamps and vermillion to be brought to them, provided guests with lemons, sandalwood paste and fragrant incense, and then before the rituals were over, they fled to their chambers to continue their love making. My gaze had been noticed by the King, who when he left with his bride, beckoned to me. I was only 10 years old, maybe he wanted me to be an attendant to his new bride. I shook my head, which he thought an agreement to follow him. My grandfather looked at me with a piercing kindly look, and had me married off to a boy destined to be a priest. I was married before I reached womanhood, which too came early to me. My husband’s village was Shekharipuram, named after his grandfather who was an old and benign patriarch whom everybody revered. You could say that the boy and I were strangers, chosen by our parents at an early age. Yet we came to each other as friends, exchanging curious glances, and shy smiles. He was small statured and dark. I saw in him an eager playmate, and though at first I was taller than him, as we grew older he became an athlete and was stronger, better fed, quicker than me. I guessed, in spite of his reticence, that he was interested in me. His eyes lit up when he saw me and for the first few years when we met as closely linked families at weddings, births and deaths, where rituals united us, we were not allowed to speak to one another. Years passed merely in exchanging glances, once or twice his hands touched mine, but our parents noticed and our mothers pulled us away. Of course we were related by blood, but that was encouraged in our families. We were small children but our parents knew each other, and our families had known hunger and poverty together, while walking those many miles over months and years, before we reached that place where we were fed rice gruel. How terrible those journeys must have been – bruised feet, aching backs, children crying, cows calling, and dogs barking as we passed through alien villages. To have been received and comforted with food and kind words meant everything to us. We brought with us our artisans and potters, and when we were given freedom to build houses, and land to grow food, we decorated our porches with the white rice flour with motifs which enclosed the cosmos in the austerity of the drawings. Our men earned money as land owners and priests and knew that as guests of the king, they were very welcome. There was a hauteur about them, and they kept their distance from their enslaved servants who toiled for them. They also discriminated against visitors who were not known to them by blood or kin or language, and women were usually recognized or classed by them in terms of blood and/ or marriage. I was thus a clanswoman, but also a bride. I learned to walk the tight rope of rules and expectations with some care. I thought of ‘my boy’ often, but as the years passed, the arts of cooking food, growing turmeric and ginger in our gardens, and knowing the etiquette of waiting and serving became more important to me. Sometimes our grandfathers taught us new poems and songs beating time with their hands on their thighs. Our grandmothers adorned me with delicate jasmines with a beautiful fragrance, often calling me Malli for short, or Mallika ( a Dakhni usage) as the priviliged owner of the home. I was happy and called my husband not by his name, but by a soft whisper, “Listen” , and he would obediently turn. Whenever he left our house which was in the same street as his, he would smile and say to my parents, “I will return”. But then he died. I became a widow before I could live with him, and as the negotiations for my cohabitation had already been agreed upon, I entered his house as he lay dying and remained a vassal to the family. He knew who I was, he loved me, but he was losing blood rapidly and his face was a mottled colour, and he knew he was dying. No one knew the reason for his death or why I remained silent in the long weeks when he lingered. I did not remove my marriage locket, or the jasmine flowers which I was in the habit of wearing every day, hoping he would notice me. Sleep engulfed him, and I emerged from the long period of waiting, knowing that he was free of pain and longing. But I was left with both – the sense that the smiling eager stranger who had been my husband would never see my body or lie near me, or be father to my children. He had died unknown, and I too, like other widows, disappeared into the vacuum of days without colour or fragrance. My mother- in- law was kind, so I survived. She allowed me to go home to recover, and I snuggled close to my mother and her siblings. I had left to be with a dying patient, a boy for whom I had a dreamlike but intense passion. The love I had for him bore witness for my servitude in the days to come. I was half way, between the living and the dead, hidden away from neighbours and friends. They did not know that I took my husband’s ashes with me, where ever I went. Not much had survived the sandal wood fire at his cremation: only a small concave bone from the lower spine, and a fragment of his skull from above the ear could be collected. Everything else had died with him, rendered to ash. This, with a sprinkling of holy water, I would knot into a remnant of his loin cloth, and float in the Ganga in Benaras. He had spoken of that gleaming city, and the Viswanathswamy temple there. He had heard of it from childhood and had sworn to me, to take me there. We were both laterally of the line of hermits, whose kin and memories we safe guarded. From that, came our memories and desires, and our families had walked over the mountains to Madurai, then returned to the rice lands when hunger drove us. The Kallar kings were well known to us and they too knew us as patrons of their arts. Without us, they could not wage their wars, or hunt or marry. Since it was their sisters who were lineally their rightful queens, they could choose their wives as they willed. We became their allies, imitating their habits and swearing allegiance. We women too, bearers of children were sworn to chastity if we did not marry. Barren women, widows and slaves – all of us lumped together and classified as abject. I escaped all that, because my grandfather supported me, and so did my husband’s grandfather. I woke up every morning at my husband’s home, the memories of stertorus breathing in my ears. He was not there, but the empty room spoke to me of his continuing presence. What a delight he had been to me, in the years before he died. A glimpse of him was enough to make me breathless, my mother looking at me and laughing. She knew what love was, that fish hook of desire. Then he died, and any one could see she was as hurt as I was. How could fate be so unkind? She had known him as her closest ally’s son, and together our mothers had hatched our marriage. How could our dreams have splintered so suddenly? My mother and I clung to each other, my father looking away. We did not keep the taboos, and they did not starve me, or shave my head, or deprive me of my jewelery: they merely hid me away. It was a secret: I had been married, widowed at 13, returned home at 14, stayed with my parents in an inner room facing the garden and the river, and forgotten by my husband’s people. In truth, my mother and my husband’s mother were linked by more than clan loyalties, they felt they had the right to protect me, and the men in our family did not object. Poor though we were, our fields were sufficient to feed us, and I was well versed in Vedic hymns, through the art of eavesdropping my husband’s and his father’s prayers. Reciting the prayers, though not fully understanding them was enough to pass the hours, the years. I had also woven a fragment of the shroud of my husband’s ashes, as compact as his loin cloth, and I kept it close to me, noticing if it had been moved from its hiding place. My mother remonstrated, my father tried to give it a sacred floating in the Kalpathy river, close to our home, with chants and flowers, but I snatched it back before the ashes floated away or the bone fragments dissolved in the water. That’s all I had of him, all that remained of a life, which had sworn to be as long lived as his grandfather. We cannot question it, for when we are happy we marvel at it, and when we are unhappy we hide our sorrow so as not to cause discomfort. I had the natural beauty of those who have had food and a house to live in, for our ragged journey over mountains had been quite forgotten. I was fed and clothed, my parents, and my husband’s parents believing that I carried the weight of memories. They saw me not as a misfortunate widow, but a young woman capable of love and prayers. Like a spinach plant that bears thousands of seeds, they saw my affliction as worthy of a soul transplanted in a woman’s body. I was not floated away like a dandelion seed, but yes, I was hidden away. Those who live silent lives without conversation or friendship become scholars. Their only companions are books or lessons learned by rote. I had access to both. I had sat with my husband as a child, and he had taught me everything he knew. He was a burly boy, full of laughter and an appetite for food which startled our mothers. Yet, he thought as quick as lightening, and even at the age of seven years, he could recite shlokas as easily as a young man. Whether he could understand them, we did not ask. Words rolled out of him like a river in flood. Sometimes a roar, sometime a whisper, he could modulate his voice according to need. I heard him chant with his grandfather during the blessing of the King and his buffalo loving new wife. A Brahmin was needed to strategically place the King and his bride within a framework acceptable to the people. The Brahmins cleverly placed the King as Yama pinpointing his right to the forest maiden as something sacred. As I grew in solitude, I often thought of the King. We ‘discarded’ women became sisters to everyone, and I looked out of the window. The sun was shining on the banyan leaves, the crimson flowers of the ginger were in bloom. I believed that my fate was to live in a palace. I had never experienced the thrusting carnal love of a man. The hymns that I learned always calling Shiva to me, presented life in the images of beauty and coitus. What I had not known, I could not miss. Words were enough. The poetry that was heritage through camaflouge and widowhood became my life. I spent hours every day copying out words, sometimes in the river sand, sometimes with stylus on leaves of the palmyra. No one noticed me memorizing verse, for everyone was busy with servants, harvest, or with the every day contexts of worshipping the Gods. These very Gods which appeared to me and blessed me were consorts who loved one another, played tricks on each other, ran to each other in the woods and water ways, and sometimes changed shapes so as to fulfill their lust for each other. We who were hidden away, we did not complain. It was our karma, we were told repeatedly. We were forever children, we obeyed our parents. We hoped there would be a surcease of pain, but there was not. We were guided through the mourning rituals, and not always excluded from the family. Manu’s law was a feared word, but not every family followed instructions as the priests demanded. Our familys were pretty low in the hierarchy anyway – imported mortuary priests speaking Tulu or Tamil depending on whether we had walked from the Konkan or Tanjavoor. The traders often spoke to us in either language, heavily dependent on us for mortuary rituals. They would lovingly bring the dead body from far off places, crying and beating their chest. After the cremation was over in the near by wood, the ashes were floated in the holy river Kalpathy, with cries of Shiva and Rama (we followed both). Our villages were revered, and while the king owned the temple and the land ,or his family did, we as officiants settled down to our peaceful lives, working and praying, and casting horoscopes for whoever paid us. There was nothing wrong with me and being in the company of loving old people, I learned to knit palm leaf mats, and sew and cook, and with my grandfathers I learned calligraphy and painting, along with the verses which they embodied. While the written word was not an everyday fixation, yet the iron nib and the stylus and the sooty ink came with the palmyra leaves. I became a master at inscription, copying down with my grandfathers’ supervision many things for people… genealogical horoscopes and religious verses and talismans. Whatever money I earned I gave it to them. I could smell from my grandmother’s kitchen the vegetables and pulses cooking together. Every morning I collected yellow lentils from the bush outside the kitchen door and tamarind pods from the tree. We had rice fields some distance away which was sowed and harvested by clans of chieftains who were original residents before the King gave the fields to us. He owned everything and every one, and no one demurred. Those who did not follow him, or hear the warning trumpeting of his war elephants fled to the Ay Kingdom, where they could not be traced. As a young child I had wandered through the rice fields, on the raised beds of embankments, alone or with ‘my boy’. We were often seen together arguing and laughing, running or exchanging riddles. He would save me from crabs, scorpions and aggressive dragonflies that buzzed too close. No one stopped us, we were married though not conjoined. If he touched me unerringly, a million cries of “Ayee!” rent the air from the boatmen, the women washing clothes alongside, the cowherds with their small and bony cows with bent horns, from small children writing their first letters with their teachers. The air resounded with admonishment and mutual embarrassment. Why was everyone looking at us? We had friends among the chieftain’s children who played with us hiding in the trees, throwing stones in the river, and running their hands through the harvested rice grains. All that was behind me now, my husband had died, and I was permitted to walk by the river in the early mornings or late at night when the stars had come out. My parents feared snakes and had me followed, but I came to no harm, as that part of my brain which anticipated danger had shriveled and died. I learned to address my prayers to the wilting moon, which never the less appeared sharp as a dagger. Chandran, my mother’s brother, dearer to me than any one on earth, distant, silver faced, with clouds floating in a rainbow gauze – how I stared and prayed. Earth seemed remote and the moon close, its very mountains reachable. Then it would rain, and with my attendants I would hurry home, knowing the pathways as well as any farmer. Some of their women slept on our porches, and were seen talking to our brothers and uncles. Nothing was hidden, rumors were always accepted as the bare and naked truth, and no one denied it. Sometimes the farmers’ daughters bore children who looked like neither of their parents, but there was no hue and cry. We remained guests at all time, treated with civility, and in turn providing comfort through our prayers and our knowledge systems of which we were indeed masters, keeping everything a secret in our families. We were quick to garner information from our servants and followers, but loath to part with any. The Toda princess had kept company with the king for many years before I became friends with her, Chapter 2 The princess was very much a coiffeured tribal, who refused all the meat from the weekly king’s past time of hunting. She was happy in in the palace, it was their turn after all to enjoy the beauty and the wealth. There were 9 families who were connected by blood and lineage, and seniority pronounced their turn. However, they were only karnavan, or brothers as caretakers, who had authority, but no power. This odd match of siblinghood and trusteeship sometimes made them bad tempered, as they just could not get their covetous hands on all that wealth. They could enjoy it, guard it, but not own it. Her servants brought her the thick milk of the buffalo every morning, which she drank up like a small child. In the afternoons, there would be the long naps born of sultry monsoon days, and cool winter sunshine. The King was eager that she learn their customs and wear the jewellery that he proudly brought her at every festival, and after every battle won. But he was as busy strategizing war and heading out to meet enemies and friends ( she could not yet distinguish them) . Bloody battles were continually fought among them, and the king generally victorious. He was easy to please, a quick thrust and then deep, silent sleep. He was quiet by nature, leaving poetry, song and ballads to delegates in court. He had no expectations of her except that she had to be present when he arrived. Of that the rules were fixed; be bathed, anointed, freshly clad and scented. He thought if her hair was awry, or her clothes crushed from sleeping in her soft muslin beds, that she had been unfaithful. He was slow to anger, but when aroused could be vituperative. She was afraid of him, as his deep voice had an unmistakable timbre, a shocking resonance. She never wanted to hear that low growl, that rage which could catapult the court into electric readyness. So there she was, always eager to hear of his arrival, running barefoot to rest against his shoulder, when he came back from distant lands. There was a metallic smell about him which she never asked him about. It was to do with spears, horses’ hooves and dogs. She held her breath, ushered him into their private chambers, and waited for him to emerge from the lotus pond in their courtyard, where his soldiers waited on him. He loved her, and didn’t keep a concubine, or married others as the Muslim lords he met in his campaign did, and which his brothers were used to doing. He loved only her, and she believed his words, the actions of his hungry body being tender and assertive, reciting to her that sensuous poetry that he had learned from his soldiers in war tents. He didn’t maintain any boundaries with them: he trusted them with his life, what was there to say? His jealousy was the only bar to the great love the King had for his Toda wife. He smelled her skin very carefully on arrival, noting the varied fragrances. Had there been a man masseuse among her innumerable servers, he would ask with some alarm, if he caught a hint of “polla” or raw tobacco around her. She would laugh at his expression, slipping out of her fine muslin sarong. She wore it in the Nair style: rich men who called themselves Kings were often of lesser status than their sisters, and married women less landed themselves, unless royalty was at stake which could well serve them economically. They had daughters born with them, who inherited their mother’s lands and had no claim on their father’s lands, just like their brothers. It suited everyone. Of course in her case, it was different, as she expected to bear children for her husband, who would live with them. It seemed obscure to her to send them back to the blue mountains. “Why do you crease your brow?” he asked her, as he showed her his wounds only newly healed. “I was thinking of children.” “We don’t need to bother. Just hold me, and don’t turn your face away.” “Its that time of month for me.” “Being covered in your blood will please me.” “If I was at home, I would be in a distant field on my own for five days.” “That long,” he started to laugh. The dread that she faced in being without him surfaced in her too. Life was too short, no one knew that better than her. When he had abducted her, she had not resisted. His eyes were a clear dark brown, and they had fixed her with a gaze she could not evade. Their own mixed blood was legendary – Greek, Roman, Persian and even run away followers of St Thomas. No one doubted their virtue, for they kept to themselves, and did not allow anyone close to them. Their embroidery in red and black threads was distinctive and kept the women busy through the long cold winters and the dense monsoons. The stories they told their children were always of escape and war, and their peaceful settlements where they could hide from the envious eyes of covetous merchants and warring princes. He wasn’t interested in her stories or reminiscences – that was the past – and he had nothing in common with her people. He didn’t even allow her to return to them or allow her family to visit. She cried sometimes, but there was no one to notice her tears, because after bathing, he would leave, while admonishing her always to look after herself, and settling her in the care of loving servants. She had nothing to do after that, except bedeck herself. She listened eagerly in the following days for the bugle to announce his return. They might be the richest family with lands that stretched up to the Ay Kingdom to the South, and the Chera Kingdom to the North, but Vijayanagara was bigger and always presented its oligarchic face, either through weapons of war, or gifts of diamonds for the Queen sister. While the King may have made some conquests of milk maids, honey collectors’ wives and princesses of smaller kingdoms, he never admitted it to his all powerful sister or his tribal princess. “Surely not!” he would blink demurring to the Toda princess, “If people lie, what can I do, Where I lie is my business, and its always next to you.” The occasional priests from the desert kingdom of Persia passed their castle, as did those from Golconda and Hampi. But the Toda princess knew nothing of it. It was said that she was deaf and dumb, and only smiled, but the truth was that she never bothered to speak either to the foreigner priests who had walked over the blue mountains, or to the King’s clan members. What did she have in common, a forest girl with silver ornaments chiseled by her own people? She had brought them away with her, and the king would not even allow her to look at them, as they were permitted only to wear gold and precious jewels. When she heard his bugles, she eagerly took off her silver earrings, armlets, bracelets and hip ornaments, and put on appropriate jewellery, studded with rubies. He always said on arrival that whatever she wore, distracted him, or poked him or hurt him. So as soon as they met, the soldiers and servants left to carry out their duties and prepared the banquets; husband and wife quickly shed their clothes and bared their bodies to each other, using their nails to scour each other’s body in a tempestuous passion that everyone remembered generations after. The king looked as if he would have a very long life, but the forest maiden did not. It was not the summer heat that killed her, as she was kept in the coolest of places in the palace. It was the loss of freedom, the voice of the ancestors that continuously beckoned her, the remembrance of terrible storms in the past that flooded their homes. She thought of her kin and friends, but there was no way of returning? What was it called? Exile? As a son descended from the line of the warrior, Shubhangi, her husband had nothing to fear. His great great grandfather too had married a forester, but he had been powerful and occupied the forest, and made their people vassals. The forests, the people, the produce were theirs. So the Toda Princess had arrived, and been absorbed into the palace, but not the family. They were clear about that. And there were according to her husband, princesses similar to her as the one locked up by her brothers in Gingee for her own safety, what interest could she have in war? She yawned, when he started on an off repeated story. There was their ancestress Shubhangi, who dressed like a man went to war, like Alli against Arjun.Yes, they venerated sandalwood and lime. Lemons adorned their windows, and left their fragrance on their bedclothes. The weavers were always at their doorstep, providing them with the softest of fabrics which they wore, much as they always had with sewing the edges with fine silk. How complex was the art of embroidery that the women in her village had mastered: using red and black threads, fabricating their surroundings in simple designs, which were truly symbolic abstractions. Sometimes to pass the time, she would create them on her clothes, but her maids would laugh saying “Princess, that’s what the fisherpeople who live near the streams in mountains do.” So it was fortune that she finally did make a friend – the girl from Shekharipuram ( they also had an ancestor called Shekhar, it was a common name, added to any Shiva derivative, or symbol. Chandrashekhar, it was a common name. )They, too, like their Gods were run by their strong dominant women, who were efficient, obeyed their husbands, but were able to communicate their wishes. Like the Nayaka kings, the Varmas were also considered shudras, having ancestress who were from lower castes. They had Brahminhood in some things, but for others, they were lower in status. The Toda princess was just achuth for the King’s family, and the Brahmins. She did not object – she had the love of the man she had wanted at first glance, and she didn’t care what others thought. The King was Chera in the Aykingdom, and Nembati in the Kollangode region, and Achen of Palakkad, and in Thozhivoor he became Narasimha. How could it matter to her? The general mnemonic of Verma applied equally, that was easy for her to remember. However, the King was fond of reciting the names of lineages and villages. Fortunately, he did not expect her to remember, as he could see from her vacant eyes, when he had finished recitation, that she was unable to comprehend the significance of his stories. “Potti”, he would say tenderly, and to that she would smile, and nod her head, or shake it depending on his mood. If she shook her head, that meant she agreed, but if she nodded, it meant she refused the title. That confused him, since he was by ancient lineage from Keralam, where the symbols for agreement and refusal were directly the opposite. They would stare at each other, and then go back to the mutual piercing of each other’s bodies where their cries were once more heard all over the courtyards of the palace to the shock and amusement of the young and old. What did they do to each other? That was kept a secret. They lived together as best as they could, given that they had nothing in common. Whenever some visitor asked the king, who his wife was and what was her parentage, he would mutter, “Vedda, Vedda!”. The onlookers would look surprised as the sea voyage was but 8 miles and took a day, but when had the king made this journey to the Pearl Island, known best for the flamingos who bred in the salt plains? The King didn’t see the need to answer anyone, or assuage their curiosity. She was his, he called her Achamma, and she called him Ammachi. Both terms were made up by them, because she was young enough to understand that his virility came from transcending his matrilineality. By substituting the term ‘mother’ for this heroic person, she brought out his tenderness, his love and admiration for her, and the understanding that she could truly manipulate him at every turn. As soon as she looked at him, he became silent. He looked at her with an agony that she could not quite understand. She felt only pleasure in his presence, he was hers, there was no affliction. His sweetness, his gallantry, the way he smiled at her made her happy. And yet, her longing to return to the blue mountains was larger than everything, they had together. The forest, the wild animals, even the large flying bats which twittered like birds at dusk, all of these were hers forever. Her father was short, with perfect teeth. He had lifted her up to the trees, and helped her with her weaving and berry picking, always in silence. He comforted her when she cried, and took her to her large, plump mother, whose braided hair was the delight of their clan. There was so much assurance and love, that her lost childhood haunted her. She tried to find happiness in her new world, but she could not forget her parents’ kindness. So she asked to go back, and instead, the king laughed and had all her kin brought to her as guests to their palace. They too, laughed when they saw her, bedecked in jewels, and draped in fine clothes, but after a few days, they returned to their village and she did not meet them again. She was an outcaste for them too, and no love in the whole world or what little she knew of it, could match the ardour of the king for her. After her grandfather came to see her, reciting words she no longer understood, or remembered, her longing to return to their simple hay thatched dwellings became immense. She had no idea why that was so. It was perhaps because he had always looked after her when she was a toddler. How else to explain the tears that came to both of them when they had to part. It was he who had taught her to take the buffalos to the mountain streams and to plait reed mats, to read the early morning stars before they vanished to reappear at dusk, cluttering the sky. Here, her life had become encrypted in a simple act of waiting, and to evade the title of misfortunate queen (as she had heard songs describing her thus by the temple priests), she kept silent, like her husband’s sister, the Queen. Like her, she would speak only when spoken to. Who would approach them? Their lines had to be kept separate, and the king was careful to address her as Princess, as only his sister had title to “Queen” and every one called him Karnavan, since the title itself was mobile, divested at death, and not passed onto his son. When the Princess thought of the blue mountains, the peaks and ridges disappeared into the clouds, the rivers were clean and unnamed, the air had a quality the gap in the mountains could not match. They were by no means poor, and their patchwork past had consolidated into rule bound lineages who made sure that by isolation they could keep their customs and the black cows pristine. They depended on the Kotas for their music and earthenware pots and toys, and to the ridge climbing honey collectors, the Kurumbas, for the sweet balm they needed to make their medicines. For the rest, they were foragers, not eating meat, but content with their forest berries milk and cheese from their buffalos and their grasses producing varied cereals, whose names they knew by rote, which when harvested, kept them going through the long cold winter. “For us everything was a secret we were not allowed to tell. When the hunter brought me to the plains, he but did not know that that secrecy was our only true possession. My family was afraid when they came to know that I had run away. But then the songstress from Wayanad told them they had seen me in the courtyards of the palace and they were relieved. Of course I did not know how the king managed to get our entire encampment to move out and reach our palace. These kings and their chiefs by threats on embellishments, they do rule. My parents said that his great grandfather had done the same, and taken all their land to be his own, so they were not surprised when they were moved down to the searing hot plains. But they are also linked to the best metal smiths, so Kollengode was a good place for them to see, and some clansmen didn’t return. As Princesses we are kept only to be fed, and ornamented, and sit at heavy laden tables to distribute food to those who are loyal to the king. “ Her listeners, who gathered often to hold her hands and hear her stories were pleased by this account. They were always afraid that she would run away back to her people. The King paid many people both men and women to keep a careful eye on her. His thoughts were always on her, with her, creating a definite filament bridge of desire between them. He could feel her arms around him, when he was riding and like all his forbears, he was given to long rituals, and memorized chanting. Then, too, he believed that she kept him company. The Gods didn’t object, and the intensity of his prayers of gratitude were such for his good fortune, that he confused the Goddess to whom he prayed, and his wife, whom he imagined to be by his side. War was like a habit, he wielded the sword like a machete in the grass, not hearing cries of pain, or pleas for mercy. That he survived was truly a card of fortune, because enemies ringed him at every turn. So should he befriend Golconda or Vijayanagara? He was emotionally ringed by worship of Durga, and adulation for his wife whom, too, he had deified at sight. So he had to make his choices by intuition and desire, and most importantly logic. He closed off his ears to his wife, while in battle, only too eager to couple with her, the only human that he saw as his redeeming soul, this gentle deer like creature, who dwelt perpetually in his body and mind. Even as the days passed swiftly in the company of her beloved husband, Achamma the wife of the King regretted her birth and marriage simultaneously. She was wracked by guilt and longing, for her love of the holy mountains, the place of her birth, her ancestral cult became more than she could bear. She needed to be in the cloud country, where the fierce rains of the mountains made them understand that wealth and poverty went side by side. They understood that fate ruled them. The stars were thousands of miles away, but by their flitting light ordered their universe. Here, in the hot and dusty plains, the bullock carts and the Naika horses and mules from Hampi, threw up a continuous dust. She was afraid of the power of the great kings, of which her husband was one, constantly disputing and contesting the boundaries of their terrains. Her tattoos were gradually fading causing her immense agony. Once they were there to remind her of her lineage and the promises for the future that the Gods had made to her parents for her well being. The tilling of land, the presence of the dairy, the cattle wallowing in the pond, that had been her heritage. Now, in the King’s palace she looked at the huge trees bequeathing them fruit and shade. She should have been pleased. Pepper vines had been transplanted and wrapped themselves around pala trees. For her, the days passed dream like. There was the everyday existence which involved waiting interminably for the Lord to appear, the King as he was called. Nobody ever told her where he was, or where he lived. She had never visited his apartments, or was escorted to them. He was aloof when she asked. And she knew that if she persisted, he would discard her. What was the distinction between being an unfortunate princess and a slave? She realized that by thinking about it, she lost her appetite and was unable to carry out her duties, which were many. When he said that there was a Queen like her in the hill town of Gingee, she was perplexed. What did he mean? He was nonchalant. “We’re kings to some, and soldiers to others.” “What?” “They hire us to fight their wars. We appear when summoned.” “You mean the Rayas.” “Yes.” He fondled her hair, and helped to take off the heavy gold anklets and chains and bracelet that she had put on, only on hearing of his return. They were young, he had many years before him, why worry about the future? He looked at her carefully as she lay on the bed…then he stopped to gaze at the sky. It was a pallid blue, as the birds screamed in the summer heat. Monsoon was over, summer was back. “We are going on a campaign to Delhi, to escort the Rayas. We lost the war, and now we must pay the cost.” “When will you return?” “Perhaps never.” She sat up dazed. “I shall not burn myself. It is not our custom.” “Is that all you have to say?” He started laughing. He found her pretty in an austere way, and amusing, like a doll that lay docile in interim spaces before he rode off to war. Nothing really belonged to them, they turned their defeated peoples into tenants, and more powerful lords made them, in turn, their obedient vassals. There was life and there was death. She got up and fled to other rooms in their apartment. She could hear him desultorily asking, “Where is my lady?” But he was tired from riding for many nights and fell into deep sleep lasting many days, waking up for short intervals for food and drink and ablutions. She who had been waiting for many weeks for his return was disappointed, but this was their life together, absences and sudden fulfillment. It was not as if she questioned her fate, or his love for her. Every time he appeared in her chambers, her heart opened up to the new vision, the new hope (never realized) that he would stay. Since there were no competitors to her affection, she took his shield and spear, and his sandals inside the palace herself, secreting them from view till such time as he asked for it. She oiled his body, checking for new wounds, till such time as his guards called him for his bath. The days passed swiftly, and before she could draw breath, he was gone again. It was the other life that kept her occupied. True, it was her dream life, in which they returned to the blue mountains. As they were the defeated people, the poor and the forgotten, descendants of Porus who lost the battle with Alexander, they lived in hiding. They were of the oldest peoples of the land, but they found that those who desired them, would come in search of them, just as the King’s father had, and then him, the hunter-lord. They needed to hide from these vagrant kings who took their lands, their sheep, their black cows. They had never imagined that their hiding places were visible to these-would be marauders, who seeing their beautiful women would change their minds and seek to settle in their forest villages. So as the generations passed they hid themselves even further in the woods, and swore to their purity of blood. In turn, the new adventurers stole their women, and she was one such. When she returned to her dream world, cast in the hues that the sweet incense her servants provided her, she was always alone, a child entwined in the leaves of forest creepers, with scented flowers. She was alone, forever alone, and being one with the cosmos, she neither feared, nor demanded, or desired anything. It was that bliss of aloneness that she returned to when the King left her. The scented incense made of dried roses and jasmines made her drowsy. The King had asked the soldiers to ensure that it was not opiated, as he found her to be inattentive when they were lit. He had news of her wherever he went, however bloody the battle, his thoughts were on his wife, and the possibility of his return to her. It did not make him less valorous, but on the contrary there was a detached and deadly reserve about him which made him a terrible enemy. Not for him the distraction of casual coitus or the soft beds of an accompanying harem. His motto was “To Surrender is to Sin” and so his victories were well known, and when in need, he retreated and extended his life. “We are what we are!” he would say softly to his wife. His silence would be disturbing, and she longed for the words that calmed her, but he had none. “Why speak when everything is known?” he said quietly. But she knew nothing, and when he did not return from war, she entered that cavern of solitude from which there was no return. Chapter 3 He will come back” the petite, fair, fat, sweet Brahmin widow had said to her. “How?” “He will send word.” “He sent you to me to comfort me, I know that, but I do not believe you.” “He will return, I promise you.” “What news do you have of him?” “Only what my grandfather told me.” “What did he say?” “They have crossed the Narmada.” “Narmada.” “Its in the forests of the Deccan.” “The black soil reaches up to there?” “The sal trees and friendly peoples who know of you will help them, my grandfather said.” I knew, then, that my husband’s ashes would be safe. The girl who was the Toda princess, Achu they called her, looked at me in gratitude. She did not know how I as a young widow had joined her retinue. All she knew was that she had been left alone in the company of an amused community of village maids, who thought of themselves as of higher caste than the Toda princess. Ideally they would not like to have been servants to her, but they were too poor to object. She was after all a human being, not the tigress on whom their warrior Goddess rode. While she didn’t speak their language or know their customs, yet her sweetness and innate courtesy to all, made court life easy. She did not shut herself up, she roamed freely, even looking into soldiers’ chambers without guile. They understood her, and never reported to the King, how she knew every room and every street in the palace grounds. Though lonely, she was secure. Everyone understood that the King adored her, and protected her with his life. She never asked Lakshmi Amal to explain her presence in her retinue. But there it was, word got around and the maids who surrounded her were not so secretive with rumors. Lakshmi had escaped from her parents and grandfather. She had found life alone in her dead husband’s house very hard. It was easier to secret herself in the woods, than live in a house where her husband never returned. And of course, she was a polluted one. Not only was she a widow, but she carried her dead husband’s ashes in her waist band and could not be parted from it. Did the Princess know of this odd sepulchral habit, the maids asked her. “No. My husband did not tell me any thing.” “She stood at the gates when he was riding past. She stood in his path. They seemed to know one another. He recognized her, and waved her in, and shouted at the guards to allow her to in your retinue, as a companion.” “And how can that be?” “ If you know these landlords, then you also know their villagers well.” “Is she the child who was at out wedding? I do remember her. She came with her grandfather. I noticed the king nodding at her, but thought that they must have some link, maybe a sibling bond. Perhaps once our sambandham was over, my Lord must have thought she could accompany us to our chambers, a small child who would entertain us with her chatter and tricks.” “Oh no, Princess! Her grandfather married her off immediately not wanting the King’s attentions. They are his guests. Nothing was entertained by them, their women are antarjyathis, hidden away from sight.” “Don’t they get bored?” “Oh no, they learn prayers.” This simple answer confused the Toda princess. Well, she would have enough time to ask the young woman. There was a fearlessness about Amal, she had that quality of being loved and pampered all her life. The hardness and grime of widowhood and scavenging and being unwanted had passed her by. It is true that she had run away from her fate, which was most unusual, but who knows what her reasons were? She would ask Lakshmi Amal herself. She got the opportunity for a few months later when they were reading together. The language of priests, the secret language, forbidden to them had already been learned. Everything forbidden is available to those who are hidden away or are mendicants. They only had to find the right teachers, and sometimes the search itself took years. But in the King’s household, there was a Christian priest who was a magician and a martial arts teacher. He had been able to meet the Princess and the Brahmin widow, not in secret, but openly, in their chambers. The gift of mutual friendship was bestowed upon them by the King himself,f who was able to read the Samskrit and the Vattelu scripts and had taught them to his wife. He had left with the Raya kings knowing that his bride would be insecure, so to keep her company, the Christian and the Brahmin widow were hired. True, it was strange, but he told his companions as he rode away, “We keep to the rules and customs as best as we can, but to be free, we must allow others their freedom.” There was a certain foreknowledge that allowed the King to understand that sight and venom made for war – and to substitute for that there was a bed of nails. Why tell the young girl that? What they shaped together as lovers would run through many life times. They would always recognize one another, however often they pierced their ears as custom demanded to allegedly befuddle the memory of the past. Nothing stood in the way of their languor and their lust for one another, they would find a way to one another. Escorting the Raya Princes to Delhi was not a new task, as long as the Deccan Kings ruled there would be victories and defeats alternating with one another. Sometimes they went as prisoners, sometimes as escorts to visitors demanding compensation from greater lords for men lost in war, and demanding booty in return. In the constellation of Kings, these warriors served so many masters, so often, they accompanied one another to retrieve their losses. Sometimes the King was paid in diamonds, emeralds and gold, and these he brought back for his Toda princess, who accepted with a laugh, putting them on to please him. He could not distinguish between the Goddess Durga and her, as both were equally dear. She was his daughter – wife and her very presence brought out in him the gentlest and sweetest emotions, ever ready to please her, quelling his arrogance and self pride. To see their King so quiescent pleased his court. They felt that they could enjoy the peace that was suddenly rendered to them in the palace. They strove to please him, and kept away messengers of war. And to their amusement, the Princess never enquired “Who won the war?” His absence for the year that followed created a furore. For her the days extended without end. Although the lovely Brahmin girl kept her company and was ever cheerful and compliant, offering her food and talking nonstop when she thought the Princess was going to cry, it made no difference. “He will return.” “He said he had no plans, fate will decide.” “They all say that.” “He didn’t turn around and say goodbye.” “The permission to leave was already given by you, in silence, that night be he teased you.” “You heard us?” “Everyone hears what you both say. Its not just that the wind carries your words.” “The Queen knows where he is now?” “She too has no word, though she has spies everywhere.” “Maybe he is dead.” “My husband is dead, and he still lives in my heart.” “Maybe he is dead!” “I have said that I have lived without him for these many years, but have vowed that I will float his ashes in Kashi in the Ganga.” “What a strange thought. You will never be permitted. We were not allowed in the Dairy in our forest village. What makes you think that your people will allow the widow of a dead priest to travel across from our land to the sacred river of birth and death and renewal?” “The King has promised to help me.” “You asked the King?” “Yes, when he asked me to give him the favour of accompanying you everywhere. The Queen, his sister was not pleased when she heard of our exchange of promises.” “It is only I who do not know of these abstractions and promises.” “It is nothing, my lady, just words.” “Words have power. Our priests would swear, dance and milk the black cows with sacred words, never allowing women near them. We had to use two rivers for the purpose – one set apart for the Dairy and the other for our every day needs.” “I am without a home, and you very kindly allowed me to stay.” “ To tell the truth, I didn’t notice when you came. And we became friends as soon as you spoke to me. I did not know these secrets between you and my husband. A widow. And carrying a dead man’s bones like loose coins in your pocket.” “Don’t speak like that, Devi, I will lose my courage, and when the King returns, as surely he must, then I will leave.” With that, Amal left the room, saying sadly that they could only talk about Death together that was their destiny. For her, the presence of those whom she loved were always with her. Their voices and their remembered kindnesses accompanied her through the days’ pleasant chores. She was in charge of so many of the personal belongings of the Toda princess. It was thought that because she was an ascetic chosen by the King, it was safe to break the ritual customs. Chapter 4 “We are humans, polluted by the fact that we return to Earth in a new form, enlivening our bodies by the catapulting of a dead spirit brought to life. So we cannot deny that we too are forever polluted by our past desires, and our unattained ambitions.” The Queen was quick to defend her brother, to the heartbroken princess, lambent in her misfortune. Sometimes in the quiet stillness of her heart, Achu sensed that her attendants were sorry for her. She had everything, and yet her love for the King was a mantle too heavy to bear. Her grandfather had walked for four days, old man though he was and had come to meet her. His face was wrinkled by age and the seemingly never ceasing droughts, for forest fires had arisen, and streams dried up. They did not know from one day to the next whether they would see the sun rise on the holy mountain, so piteous was their condition. And then the rain had come with such ferocity that the people blamed him for the terrible nature of the storms. They wished to tie him to an old sprawling tree with iron chains, saying it was he who had brought them to this fate by permitting his granddaughter’s marriage. He hadn’t even known about it, till the King had forcibly gathered them all to settle around his palace. They had accepted courteously and left very soon The Palace guards had seen the naked forester who wore only the spathe of the coconut tree around his waist. Recognizing him as the Toda princess’s kin, they allowed him in. She ran to hug him, but his bones were so sharp that she withdrew from him. He carried the same odour of cloves and cinnamon that she remembered as a child. His wrists and ankles carried the signs of his manacles. He was weeping and destitute. For the seasons, and for poverty there was no solution. How could she help him? Before they could attend to him, he died of the terrible heat that he had absorbed on his journey from the mountains, his scrawny limbs exposed in the last rattle and upheaval of death. The Brahmin woman kept away from the Toda princess’ quarters for many weeks after that. And she did not ask about her. It seemed to her that there was no solution to disaster and loss. One had to accept it, or as in her case, turn her face away. She had been asked to keep the Princess company, but the odour of ancient death remained in her rooms. Her squalor was hard to bear. She neither bathed, nor ate. It seemed to her that she was the cause of all the difficulties her people were facing. She could not bear to be away from them, and she thought that the King would not return. Running away from the castle was not possible – she was surrounded by too many people who were loyal to the King. Her grandfather, though he had walkd twenty five miles a day was in good shape when he arrived. Wizened and cheery, he had brought her toys, and rice which had been made into round balls with jaggery, crisp to the tongue, with a delicate fleck of anise. She had been so pleased to see him, it drew tears to her eyes. She flashed him a wide smile, the beads of joy glittering like jewels at the end of her sharp nose. He smelt of sweat and arrack, and though he was apologetic, his perfect joy in her company was palpable to all. Somehow, they were aware that everyone was watching them, exulting in his nakedness and poverty. Word would have reached the King of his wife’s grandfather’s arrival as runners (messengers) who stood at every village border were quick. The old man had visited the King’s family shrines, and had made simple offerings of flowers. The one he had spent most time at was in Kalpathy, where a very large, very heavy Shivalingam had been found, while the King was bathing. He had pulled it out from the mud and installed it. Here, people gathered to make votive offerings to Shiv and Visalakshmi. The King always had food ready, and simple though it was, people gathered to pay the Lord homage, and to remind others of their subservience to the King. How simple life was, the old man had thought…rice, coconuts, pumpkins and gourds everywhere grew so easily. There was never any struggle. Exultation was in every breath. How comely the women were. Not as beautiful as his mother and grandmother, but still he could not stop staring. All of them seemed to be bathed in milk and covered in rubies. Her grandfather had thought he was in heaven when he drew his last breath. He had thought that he would gift her a son with his sorcery, though she had laughed and said here, daughters were preferred; but his emaciated body had not withstood the long journey. He did not know he had died, but he had seen the look of joy in his grand daughter’s face and understood that love did not change with circumstance. What he had seen on her attendants’ face had shocked him. They saw a famished destitute old man, and when he suddenly crumpled at his grand daughter’s feet, from an excess of joy, they all screamed and shouted for help. The Princess knelt and held him close, hearing his wavering heart beat echo with her own galloping loud one. “Do something!” she wept. “Yes. Princess. We have asked for the Doctor.” ‘He is not breathing.” “His age is such, Princess.” “The Doctor.” “It will take some time to reach his rooms as they are very far from yours.” “Cannot any one help?” “If he is already dead, what can anyone do, Princess?” “Where are my soldiers?” “My dear Princess. Our very own Princess. They will arrive.” “Now! Find them now” “He is dead, Princess. Nothing for us to do, but wait for the cremation!” The Doctor arrived. He was a slim haughty man, who never the less, produced a ready smile for his patients. When he saw the condition of the Princess, he had her moved to her bed, and gave her medicines and oils, and called in the masseuse, and had water heated with aromatic herbs for her bath. He looked cursorily at her grandfather, and said he would have the King informed. There was no need to do more. The physician then left. Death was an abject condition, the servants would know what to do. Lying in her bed, ignorant of everything except that her grandfather still lay crumpled on the floor where she had run out to greet him, the Princess felt that life was a hollow bamboo in which they were forced for a duration of time. Then they were breathed out into the cremation fire, or in the loamy earth. The Goddess Terkahsi would be present as the ashes and remnant bones would decompose into the earth. Would she able to take the ashes back to their village? She cried bitterly. There was no one to hear her. She saw that the Doctor had sent a bier of green leaves for her grandfather. She tried to leave her bed to give instructions of how he had to be placed North-South as was their custom. They were already doing it. She could see them from her bed, shutting his eyes with gold coins and straightening his limbs before the irrevocable stiffness of death set in. It was only she who was paralysed with shock, unable even to move her hand. No one looked towards her. The soldiers too had arrived. One of them was saying, “Everything must be a secret. No one must know where his ashes are buried in the forest.” The Princess ‘ racing thoughts and her still body were in tandem, though pulling in opposite directions. So, there was some one in the room who understood their customs. Her tears were still running like rivulets, streaming down her face. Every moment of childhood returned to her in memory. Then she heard the soldiers lifting the bier. She glimpsed the tilt of the leaf ornamented bamboo raft and saw her grandfather’s face for the last time. He looked peaceful. Then they were all gone, and the room was empty. She could still hear her grandfather’s voice, and longed for the moment when as a little girl, she was carried aloft on his shoulders to see the Dairy. The moon was up, the crickets were chirping very loudly, and through the circular door he showed her the buffalos before they were milked. “You are a little girl so I shall say the rules don’t apply.” “Shall I tell my father and mother?” “No, don’t tell anyone, its our secret, we only peeped through the bushes, even the goats do that.” Chapter 5 The Palakkad Raja returned to his home, and the Brahmin widow left for Kashi wih her husband’s ashes. No one noticed she had gone. It was raining, and she secured an elephant and a mahout for her journey, following them in a wagon driven by two ponies escorted by a soldier that the King had commissioned when he came back from the war in Hampi. They had enough hay to feed the animals and would refurbish supplies at every small town they stopped at. Though the rivers were flooding, seeing Amal to be a royal traveller with servants, possessing the king’s seal and money, they were permitted to rest every night in the homes of chieftains. The trio of female ascetic, elephant, mahout and wagon driver travelled fast, and they had no need of weapons and never lacked food. A royal pilgrimage! People came out of their houses to felicitate them with garlands which the elephant ate at night relishing the rose petals and mint leaves. The monsoon rains dwindled as soon as they crossed the Palakkad gap in the mountains, and they never looked back. Why was she travelling so far? Surely Basava had announced and Adi Sankara before him, that everything was a “one-ness”. It permeated the body and the cosmos. But for Lakshmi Amal, her love for her husband had entered the annals of memory. The King would provide her protection as he had messengers lined along the route, and she would bring back to gift him as tribute whatever alms she collected on the way. Seeing the elephant, neither tigers nor robbers attacked them. They were assured safe passage for the year and a half they travelled, stopping every night and resting in the hot afternoons. After they reached the blue mountains, the mahout died of the bitter cold and their elephant ran away, and they, (the wagon driver and Amal) were bereft not knowing what to do. But after three months of prayers and missed opportunities, the King sent a local mahout and another elephant. They could give no orders to the new mahout, as he was a soldier, but he was loyal and faithful to the King’s orders. Wars divide territories and people, but messengers could also be allies. The King had passed this way before retreating to his palace and the spontaneous ardour of his mating with the Toda princess, or so they were told. Lakshmi Amal woke up in the morning in the fisherman’s hut. The river was flowing smoothly and the bird songs were loud, a symphony of alternating sounds. The air smelt clean, a monitor lizard with red eyes was basking in the sun. He looked contented, having had his fill of insects. She walked warily past, not catching his gaze. The heat was over powering though the sun had barely risen. She would say her prayers by the river, cook her simple meal of rice, gourds and lentils all in one pot, on a fire built over stones. It was the only meal that she permitted herself. Her companions both ate well of the fish that their host had caught at dawn, and cooked for them over the embers. They were both large men with appetites that startled her, and she kept out of their way till they had whittled the fish, cooked and eaten it. The toddy seemed to swill out of wayside shops, as they stopped often. Soon they would be out of Chera country, the Nilgiris far behind them. Already the terrain was replete with the fronds of palms, very different from what she was used to. The red gravel was gritty under her feet when she stepped on it, and the rice fields gave way to millets and yams. The people were swarthier, bedecked in silver jewellery unknown in design to her people. They could however understand one another and the women came out to sit with her, as she sat in her damp clothes, stirring her gruel which was slowly cooking over a fragrant fire of damp green wood, buttressed with dry hay. “Your husband allows you to travel alone in the company of these two fellows?” “I am a guest of the King!” “Which King?” “Palakkad Raja!” “That fellow! The hunter who married a young Toda girl!” “Yes, that one.” “What does he give you?” “Safe passage.” The women made some lewd remarks and moved away to cut grass for their cows. She did not tell them she was a widow. They were poor women, but judgmental of those who did not fit into their framework of expectations. “Why was she wearing rings, ear studs and a nose ring if she was widowed?” one curious bystander had already asked her escorts this question. “As a disguise to fend of questions from women like you and the overtures of strangers who want to seduce or marry me!” Amal had said when her servers reported this to her. Now, she could hear the unspoken thoughts of the grass cutters. “And you think the disguise has worked? We know you to be a loose woman. Only those who are capable of misdemeanor dress like you. Men will offer you money, and you will accept it. There are no children with you. Your marriage locket is tied on a thread and not on a gold chain. Shame on you.” Amal could hear them through their silence and their raised eyebrows though not a word had been said between them. Silence was her constant companion. They took a boat to the Pearl Island after crossing forests and deserts of scrubland, where nothing grew, but temples to Shiva and Shakti emerged in arid zones. When they saw the turquoise river going steadily to the sea, Amal’s heart filled with joy. They left the elephant and his mahout to meet them in Kashi, and with the ponies embarked on their first sea journey. Having spent considerable time, exchanging their consignment of pepper with flawless rubies in Lanka to take back to the King, they set out yet again to sea with a consignment of good cinnamon. Taking many months along the peaceful Bay they reached the prosperous Eastern coast port of Tamraliph. From there to Varanasi was a simple route, where people were hospitable to traders and foreigners. Chapter 6 Having reached the Pearl Island, I lived there, with the taciturn bullock cart driver and all the valuable paraphernalia we had carried for many months. As the elephant and the mahout were wandering over the hot plains, and the rugged Vindhyachal mountains I saw no reason to hurry. The sea was blue and the people were kind. We were lucky not to have been crushed by the waves as there were signs of ship wrecks both on the coasts and the sea. I was glad to be there, as the spice trade was flourishing and so were the people. We understood that we were foreigners to them and so kept a shadow profile, coming out of our huts only when the moon was out. And yet, and yet, keeping the ashes of my long dead husband close to me, I was rewarded by happy memories of our childhood together. It is true that he was sick for many years, and had stopped speaking to me altogether, but that sudden flash of his smile was sufficient for me. Even in the days of acute suffering we understood each other. He knew I was in pain over his imminent loss, and he was on the other hand, overcome by joy by the conflagration of love that consumed him. Now, after many years, I was pursuing the moon, and was guided by the stars. If we were steadfast, we would reach the holy land of our ancestors, where the river flowed in a vast expanse of blue. I did not need much by way of food, and my sole companion was the king’s soldier, Vignesh, who drove the cattle we had brought on the ferry. The two bullocks who would make our journey simple over land, and the white calf and her mother who fed us sufficiently travelled with us. We had sold the ponies but swore to ourselves to buy them back as horses were good currency where ever we went.. We had lentils and red rice with us in plenty, and showed the King’s seal whenever we needed to. We had heard from the King’s messenger at the port at Kandy, that our young elephant had been wounded by tigers in the forest, and had been lost, but the mahout Arumugam was alive and well, having hidden in the boughs of a tree. He was waiting for the King’s instructions and had been told to wait in the temple in the town, till another elephant had been arranged. I had cried a lot when I heard this news. That leathery hairy skinned creature had been our friend and companion, eager for the bananas I fed him, smiling with his sharp bright eyes and opening his mouth, while waving his trunk, his ivory tusks revealing his age. Life is a continuous embellishment of hope, and then a plummeting into the dark trough of woe. I felt that if I remained on one place I would be swamped by tears and lost. There was no haven in grief. So I collected my belongings and thoughts, left the glade of cool trees and bright moonlight with its many temples to Hanuman, and moved onwards. Kalinga too was a subterranean battle site. After a peaceful sojourn of many weeks out at sea, stopping at any harbor where the King’s golden seal was recognized and purchases possible, we completed our long journey from the Pearl Island to Kalinga without difficulty. Of course, we paid in pearls, while hugging the coast, and our own valuable pepper was another form of currency which we hid under the hay boughy for the cattle. This interaction between strange and unknown peoples was hard for me. I had for so long been an antarjati (dweller of the innermost chambers) both spiritually and physically, living in my own world, dreaming at night of unknown people and of the past, time galloped along. Sea journeys were pleasant, and I was lulled and rocked by the boat. As a widow, my food was usually parched rice, lentils, and occasionally the wild berries on land. Since I had not known marriage, I did not experience widowhood. When people asked where my husband was, I replied truthfully, “Travelling in unknown lands.” When they asked, “When will he return?” I pointed to the skies, and said “Lokasanchari, it is not known.” I had not seen his body burn; that lovely lithe boy was always mine. The fulfillment I received in his company, and the delight that I remembered so well was the habit I covered myself with. No, not a shroud, just a remembrance of his ardour. When I floated his ashes in the Ganga at Kashi, I would be free. The King had promised me the valour of his soldiers on duty. A widow was fair play, so he had threatened death to his men, should I be harmed. I received comfort from that and walked barefoot and brave. Actually, the bullock cart and the ship were well endowed with rugs and pallets and sedan chairs. The mahout who had gone ahead of us would meet us in Kalinga and with an even younger elephant. The King had no money to give us. I carried none myself other than for trade and tribute, but services were assured as we progressed on our path. I was not in the habit of speaking with Vignesh. He was a quiet man, ready with his sword. He made it clear that his duty was a burden. He had no idea why he had been chosen. He spoke to me in sign language, usually cursory in its motion. He felt that his valour was quite wasted on a puny woman like me. I had heard him talking to his friends, while they drank under the stars. “ She is a weak and foolish one. Who could care for her?Her voice is light, and she has enticed the King. Why else would he set a whole train for her, palanquin, elephant, horses, cows, bull and its progeny, the white calf. Tell me, what has she given him in return?” “Just my friendship,” I said softly, though they could not hear. The eagerness we serve the Gods is beyond comprehension. I cannot explain that the moment he saw me, he knew I would be of use to him one day. Immersed in battle from year to year, he needed a companion for his young wife, the Toda Princess. Now that she is dead, I am free, and he wishes to repay me for the many years of service. I ask for nothing – he paves my path, and he knows that I will bring him untod riches from Kashi. For us, Benaras is the gleaming city, the city of light, withheld from most by distance. It is because I am bequeathed with a second vision, that I can see beyond the present, I can conceive the future. I can ask and I receive. From the King I see the signal to “keep distance.” I didn’t mind. To him, I was polluted, being a widow, and his manners were tailored accordingly. Sometimes I laughed softly to myself thinking of happy days. He thought widows should not be amused, or show emotions or have hobbies or travel by water. The fact that we took the ship was itself because of the kindness of the Samudran who had a boat with Christians and Mohammadans on it. Loss of caste was not an issue for soldiers, and so they were protected. They went where the King told them, and slept on stones, and climbed trees on seeing a tiger. However, he was a gentle person in his own right, and while he used sign language with me, he spoke at length with those whom he had to deal with. I had heard, in the old days, through the thin curtains that separated the royal couple and me, long stories about battles in distant lands (actually, to tell the truth, in kingdoms which were just two nights march away.) With the King were accompanying kin, other brothers who had sworn loyalty and fealty to one another as comrades. In war and in death, there was a feeling of equality and moments were measured by eternity. It was not that she was afraid because of that particular torpor of death, of which she had acquaintance. Terrible things had happened to Amal in childhood. Ten years had passed in keeping house for the King’s wife, whose life was like that of any other princess marooned in war. What was there to hope for? The end could only culminate in the fire which burned memories and will rise in incandescence before the rot of old age set in. Here she was in Kalinga, where the bodies of thousands of soldiers lay till Ashoka’s wife had threatened him with conjugal abdication. The breeze blew, the trees were green, and the leaves whispered. There was nothing to fear. Madness visited some people when they were wronged or felt they had lost everything. In her case, she felt the hollowness of time, the sense that life itself was drilled moment by moment by the cacophony of desire. How could she interpret the King’s love for his Toda wife and the beneficence of good will toward her? Had she really caught his eye when she was a small child? Yes, he had smiled at her and beckoned. But she remembered him as a full grown man given to war fare and hunting, and seeing the exchange of glances she had been very quickly married off to a known youth. And then when at fifteen her husband had died, and the years of being secreted were over, she had been sent away by her grandfather to be companion to a lonely princess, though everyone was told that Amal had run away from home to the woods. From there, she had advanced in years and etiquette to actually to be indispensable to the court. It was not her plump and vacuous beauty that set her aside, it was her ability to give orders on behalf of the Toda princess. Everything had to be perfect, and from gardeners to cooks to the masseuse who gave baths to the royal couple, the young widow was in charge. Since her marriage had not been consummated, the interrogators to her presence in court always sidestepped her inauspiciousness. She was a young woman, more high born than the courtiers, a favourite of the king, her antecedents not quite known. It was as if the King’s love for her was an unspoken bond between them. He did not speak, or ask her questions, but when he returned from the sporadic wars that he went on, he was ever grateful. What was her name: he was never very sure. Still, in the exchange of glances, the affectionate tone, she knew the King held her in high esteem. When Amal asked permission to make the long journey to Benaras, he was wrapped in his wife’s shawl… that red and black mosic weave on white, and he merely nodded his head in acquiescence. She wasn’t sure that he really saw her, and when his eye met hers, he generally looked away quickly. Yet, yet, it was as if they recognized each other, embarrassed by the love that flew between them, lighting no sparks, not even hinting at concupiscence, but always present. If there was mutual love, it had no future, but she was not going to shrug it off. She was there to serve his lady, and was willing to die for her. Now all that was in the past. She could only move forward, there was no return except in memory. She often recited her prayers with the image of her patron the King in her mind. He was big, burly, strong, dark skinned and of contested origins. She realized that because he had saved her life, and given her a new one, she was ever beholden to him. After all he asked nothing of her, and while journeying he made every anchorage safe for her. One did not win wars out of rectitude, but because there were among warriors, a mutual acceptance of benefit and usury. The King knew everyone everywhere, and once he clapped his hands, people sprung up from odd corners to execute his will. She felt lucky that she, Lakshmi Amal was in his favoured circle of courtiers – a mere servant, definitely not a courtesan, but a close and trusted aide. The young elephant, so tender in years joined them at Kalinga with the weary mahout, who did not know how to tame him. “By the time his tusks grow, I will know, if I am not dead by then” he said loftily. Meanwhile, they gathered their belongings into the cart with their bullocks and cows, and walked for many months on well trod pilgrimage roads to Varanasi. The elephant teetered along, hardly providing dignity or majesty to their very minimalist entourage. Who were they, after all, only three religious people going to sign a ledger at Varanasi? None of them could write Pali or speak Bhojpuri. It was 1390 by traders’ calendar , 490 Malayalam era by their own, so the King’s seal, and their names would be inscribed for curious souls to know hundred of years later, that they had been present in the holy city of Benaras. For the three of them, travelling in silence together, it was a mortuary trail. Chapter 7 Benaras was beautiful in the golden light. The King’s umbrella, under which a Brahman priest sat reciting in the holy language was easily found. He was not pleased to see the widow, ageing in the starkness of the summer heat, dishevelled and without words. The soldier spoke on her behalf, somewhat tersely. What was there to say? The King had spoken, here was the seal. The Brahman obeyed, recited prayers, lit a lamp, called the good boatman and sent the fine linen pouch with the ashes preserved for many years against the hot body of a grieving young woman into the sacred waters. He accepted the coins the woman gave him without thanks or question. She had travelled 500 miles from the Pearl Island by land and sea, not taking a linear route, but stopping in many ports and forest towns. She looked emaciated and yet full of the piety that wrapped her in an inviolable innocence. Many years later, the priest would say of her, “She was a small round woman, of indeterminate age. Although shrunk by fasting and penitence, her clothes which were clean made her seem weightier than she was. Since the King had sent word that she was to be treated well, I found her servants a place to stay, and ensured that she would be safe in our rooms in the courtyard. She spent a whole year in Viswanathswamy temple, and became accepted by all the pilgrims. Then there was a flood, and she left with elephants, cows and servants to return home. I heard that she was a good business women who made much money by the sale of pepper and pearls. Gold coins were harvested by her in exchange of these commodities. More than that I do not know or remember.” In Benaras they found a perfect peace just as they had been promised. The King’s wrath at the lost elephant had been appeased, and he had sent bushels of red rice and green gram by ox cart, enough to last them several years. The widows of Benaras chanted the name of Ram a thousand fold in a practiced synonym with the mourners at the pyre. The sound of crackling pyres accompanied their chanting. They became used to the sight of the priests turning over the charred flesh of corpses, and the smell of clarified butter, and ghee from the pyres of those who could afford it. Interspersed with these routine sights, no longer dreadful was the image of the rising and setting sun on the great river. The years passed swiftly and easily. There was a lot to learn. Sometimes she was mistaken for a whore, as she continued to wear her bright silks, and the diamonds glinted in her nose and ears. No one rebuked her, as they did not know who she was, except that she was accompanied by an elephant, a soldier and a mahout. If a courtesan of the king, here to carry out his wishes, was she available to others too? When lewd men tried to make a deal, she chased them off with bamboo poles. She was a strong woman, round bosomed and though seemingly puny, her thighs were as muscled as those of her guards. She came from a line of martial artists, her maternal grandmother was well versed in Kallari Paattu, the martial arts that all Nairs knew and was submerged in the sambandhan unions of the Brahmins, invisible unless war called them to account for their unstated instincts. There were happy days, yet when her solitude was unbearable, she walked barefoot by the river, her hair untied, her feet dirty, her prayer beads constantly twirling between finger and thumb. People avoided her then, looking curiously at the empty dirty loincloth which still carried the shadow remnants of her husband’s ashes. She had retrieved the cloth from the Dom who had scattered the ashes into the river. If her husband had lived, they would have had children, her parents and his parents would have taught them manners and customs. She felt no bereavement about that – she herself felt incapable of loving. All that she had known of those short years as a child had been snatched from her by the death of her beloved. From there to servitude had been a short jump, hastily conducted by a lack of ritual and the acquiescence of her parents. She had lost the ability to love – no, she was not undemonstrative or uncaring or indifferent. She had understood that others love, that others have emotions, for herself she felt only the need to wander, to run away. The King had given her every protection. Under the guise of a hunter, a warrior, a lover he had spent the best years of his life. But he too, like her, was truly a mendicant and unable to carry out his vocation, he had transferred it to her. She was his other, the one who would carry out his dreams, his wishes, his desires. As they had spent many years with the Toda princess they learned from her the concealment of anguish. She had died, and they had understood in her absence that she held the key to their secret. People always wondered about the King and her, the Brahmin widow who dressed in silks but wore her jewels. Wherever they went, the necessities were laid out for them: the clothes, food, accessories, household things necessary for their daily tasks, They lived simply, using as little as they could of the lentils and rice and spices, safeguarded by the order of the King for them in every town. Sometimes they gave away more than they ate…after twenty years in Kashi, the mahout and the soldier were also wiry and penitent. Their stay in Benaras was only to float the ashes of Amal’s dead husband, but all of them had arrived into an empty space, without thought. The sky was blue and cloudless, the water was clean, the people were friendly. Nothing seemed unusual or strange. It was as if each day was marked by their piety and the constant surveillance by the King. He did not want his seal to be misused or his reputation to be besmirched. The constant queries were by the local people , who wanted to know why a wealthy chief from a foreign country, provided for a widow who fended off enquiries. They were never rude, and there was never any violent rebuttal. They, as pilgrims, were on the path of silence, and the providers of daily victuals would fade away, not receiving answers, but knowing the gift of benediction, a sweet smile of recognition from the widow and her two caretakers. Whatever contempt they actually felt for her they hid, for their loyalty to the King was total. The mahout was busy all day, providing for the elephant and goading him to take walks to the sugarcane fields, where he could eat his fill, and the soldier had errands to carry out on behalf of the King, which involved obeisance to many deities in small and large temples, and devoted repetition of the same, day after day. The soldier carrying the seal on his person worried about its safety every day. They felt that without it, they would be lost, imprisoned, reviled. A common ritual language of piety and memory was not enough. They were able to communicate they were not strangers in the holy land, but people though kind, were always suspicious. Now that their task was completed, why were they not returning to their kingdom? The widow and her attendants had no answer to that. “When God decides” and “When God provides” was their answer each time. They felt embarrassed by their penury for Benaras was full of the estates and guest houses of kings and their sheltering under an umbrella was a statement of the rights of their principality. Amal swore as the years passed that she would ask her King to build steps into the river Kalpathy, to recreate the river in Kashi, on their own land. To that end, they lived in Benaras, eating little, giving much food to widows and accepting alms themselves. The soldier and the mahout were keen to see their families. Twenty years had passed since they had left home, and they had lived for a year or two in every large town on their way to Kashi. It was easy to deal in pepper, receive alms and find hospitality as guests in temple towns. They ate their food, slumbered, spoke little, got communications from their King, through trusted aids and carrier pigeons, and left when fights broke out among the civilians. The harshness of conflict was not for them, as they were dusty mendicants always setting up near a river. Overlordship of local chieftains and local kings they ignored by taking on the mantle of spice traders when need be. To cross forests they bought horses by selling their bony white cows. When they reached a city, the sold te horses and bought fecund milk giving cows. Leading quiet lives, speaking little, and using their wits they had learned many languages, not with pedantry but with a sufficient scattering of phraseology and proverbs. “Why do you want to go back?” the widow asked. “The King has sent word.” “Not to me.” “He put you in my care, and the elephant tusk must be protected.” “The elephant has no tusk.” “True, but he will have. That’s the real reason.” “We will return home when there is a sighting of it.” “Sighting of it…” Vignesh laughed. “ No more time by the Ganga floating ashes of your dead.” “That was done years ago, we are here to collect money to build a temple in honour of Shiva and Parvati.” “Yes, Yes, but the pepper we brought to to sell is gone, the money has been turned into gold, and the alms we received from the kings who mourn their dead are sufficient to build two temples. We cannot wait here any longer. We have many months of journeying and there is danger at every turn.” “We’ll wait till the king sends more soldiers.” “Am I not enough to protect you?” “Yes, yes, but now we are speaking of hefty tribute.” “I’m leaving, the King’s message is sufficient for me.” “Its not so simple. How can I be sure that this is his message?” “My sons are to go to war soon, and my daughters to be married.” “Say that then.” “I’m taking everything with me, so even if you remain her, it will be by your wish. You follow God and I follow the King. He will pay me for my righteousness as I have fulfilled his every wish. I have guarded you, and protected you, and you have benefitted from my constant attention. But my family needs me and the King has permitted me to return . So I will be leaving, taking the money owed to him from our years of begging at the steps of the King for alms. You must keep to your divine interventions, and I must keep my promise to the King.” “Without the King’s seal, I will be another beggar without honour or means of livelihood. I cannot afford to feed the elephant. So we will all travel back together and the money I collected for a temple of our own is my own money. Do not say it belongs to the King, as it becomes his only when I give it to him. He gave you to me as my servant, and by your silence, I know that you agree with what I say. You are here to guard me, and provide me safe passage.” “I obey the King’s will, and he says he wants you to return.” “You told him that I was happy here in the company of mendicants, and no longer grieving for my husband who has entered the world of the ancestors.” “That is true, lady. The King replied that it does not take twenty years to float ashes in a holy river, and you should feed the crows, in your village of Shekharipuram.” My parents are long since gone, and my grandparents became ancestors even before that. I did pray for the Toda princess as you know.” “She needed no prayers for they belonged to another secret tradition and was not assimilated in the royal lineage.” “The King had many wives, but of this he was specially proud that he could marry this young girl. You know that he asked for the Lord’s blessings in Kashi.” “Many think that you took her place in his heart.” “Lies, slander.. no one thought such a thing.” “Your parents were grateful that the King sent you away in your childbearing years.” “ My parents and my husband’s parents treated me as their daughter not as a client of the King. You dishonour my family.” “We were never friends, I did the King’s asking.” ”How can I trust you now that you have imputed something that did not exist between the King and myself.” “I could ask for the accounts which show how much the King spent on your journey to float your husband’s ashes. Why would he have spent so much?.My uncle was the ledger keeper, and so I was trusted with the seal and your body.” “I have no body, my soul resides in Benaras.” “Why would he send and elephant to protect you. One with tusks, and when it ran away, another was promptly sent to safeguard you, though you preferred the water crossing by boat, increasing our journey by many years.” “It was safer as the land route was crossed only by warring soldiers. Yes, the King loved me for the careful way I looked after the Toda princess, and extended her life. He loved me because I was a dutiful child who grew alongside her.” “Two elephants for a widow, and a third when two were lost? The family does have a way of losing elephants in jungles, but then they are hunters.” “ How much does the King spend on war? Two elephants to commemorate the memory of his ancestors in Kashi is nothing. He has spent more on his concubines than he has spent in war. Two elephants to propitiate the memory of his dead wife is a pittance.” “Yes, I went to every temple and read out his prayers every day while we lived here, but its now time to return.” “I’ll ask you no questions, I abide by the King’s will.” Chapter 7 Lakshmi Amal returned to her native land, confident that she would be recived by the King, after her long sojourn in the Northern kingdoms. She carried a Shivalingam identical to the one she had seen in Viswanthswamy temple. She told everyone that she had found it in the flood, along with a bag of gold coins. As they were travelling for many years, afraid of robbers, she had hidden it in the hay that they had bought for their animals, while passing through many towns. They did not take the sea route, but with the giddy young elephant who frightened off the curious with his trumpeting cries, they went over hills, plains, mountains, forests, rivers, into the Deccan with its hlack soil where they stopped to rest for some years. Wars were raging, it was 1423 by the Pepper Traders calendars, and the madness of lust for death pursed them . It was not known how many men had lost their lives across the border of Golconda and Hampi – rivers ran with blood, but the old widow, the mahout and the soldiers knew only one thing, that they were on the winning side. Lakshmi Amal knew she was a figment of the imagination. People knew of her, they knew every last detail of her life, and the final signature that legitimized her was that the King owed her a favour for keeping his lovely Toda wife safe while he was away at war. It was all so long ago, and her youth was barely a memory now. His debt had been paid. It was known that she had safe passage across kingdoms and ports where ever the copper plates were legitimate. He had given her his royal seal, and with that was her anchor, a commitment that she won both prestige as well as perfect security her and her men. Thampan, the Mahout was very upset when he was given marching orders by Vignesh. The monsoon was just over, the roads were slushy, and there was no dry hay to be had. What was he supposed to feed the elephant when they left the sugar cane field? “God will provide!” Lakshmi Amal said loftily. Thampan wanted to prod her with his javelin. He turned his face away. “I would have stayed longer in Benaras if the King had permitted,” he muttered. “I love the city as much as you do, but our orders are to make the journey back. The King will provide for all of us. Has the King ever left us in doubt?” Amal replied. Vignesh said, “Why do you bother explain to Thmpan, His job is to follow me. I am going ahead, and you must keep my pace.” “I will pack my belongs few as they are and I’ll ride the elephant,” Amal said. “How will you do that?” She laughed, looked at them, made the young elephant kneel. Then, she was quickly tying the ends of her shawl in such a way that her long brown legs were exposed to them as she clambered up skillfully. “When did you learn to do that?” Vignesh asked fearfully. He had never seen such a sight. The elephant was docile so she easily climbed up its bristly leg and up its island like back. The mahout had placed the sedan and the thick quilted cloth earlier that day. He understood perfectly that he was now in charge of the cows and provisions. Thamban was astute to the way of the world. No one could ask questions of the woman who had the King’s favour. He thought to himself that twenty years have passed since we left, and five more vagrant years will be our lot as we return home. There is only the way forward, with the King’s runners telling us what we must do and how we must behave, and who we must talk to. The woman though far away from the King is his consort in lieu of the dead wife. He has made her his own by magical rites, “Follow the path, be with her, communicate rapidly if she takes on a lover.” Those were the rules Vignesh and I were given. The King and she are sibling souls, they understand one another, she has no difficulty following his orders and he permits her the feedom that women do not ordinarily have. She was definitely intimate with the King, though they had not seen one another. How did they communicate? Through messengers ofcourse! He had seen letters being delivered to her, and she too had traveled this vast distance with palm leaf and stylus. He knew that she lay awake at nigh, reading and writing, that often she wandered out with fruit for the elephant, and spoke to it tenderly. He did not think it unusual. Strange, maybe, but if one travelled with a soldier who carried the King’s seal, then it was understood they were important. This elephant barely 3 metres tall was for show, a dwarf elephant, always calling him baby elephant. They dressed him up every morning with canopy or umbrella and soft cloths sewn together to form a nice cushion. People gave them money, and farmers allowed them entry in their fields for the pleasure of standing near the elephant. There was nothing to fear, as the loud trumpeting of the elephant was sufficient to frighten robbers and scoundrels away. When they left Benaras, Lakshmi Amal wept a lot, and could not be comforted. It was as if they were being separated from a body part, and their bodies would never be whole again. “We can never return” Vignesh said softly. Amal was dressed in her best silks, though not wearing jewels, as she had put them in the pouch she carried with gold coins received in alms. Up on the elephant no one could reach her. The elephant did not jostle her, and seemed to know the way back. Although there was the soldier ahead and the mahout behind, he really seemed to know the way home. There was never any problem for food or water, they were well provided. Word of their arrival reached their lodgings weeks earlier, and there they would stay for weeks or months, till the seasons made it possible for them to move onward. It was the great flood after they had left Benaras that brought them the greatest gift of their lives. It was a small shivalingam. “The Gods have spoken,”Amal said with utmost joy. “Its not ours, should we return and give it back to the temple?” Vignesh said nervously. Which temple?” Amal asked with irritation. “There are so many in Kashi. How do we know which one flew out with the sacred waters.” Vignesh spoke again, “It looks like the one from the Viswanathswamy temple.” “That’s not possible,” Amal was terse. “You know how carefully they guard it. They never allow it out of their sight.” “There are four of them in different sanctuaries.” “Yes, Yes, if this is one of them, they will just replicate it. They have stone smiths; they can reduplicate this precious lingam.” “The King will not allow a stolen shivalingam to enter his kingdom.” “It’s not stolen.” “It does not belong to us.” “The river brought it for us. Gangadevi knows who her true believers are.” “We can all be true believers, but we cannot take temple property or touch it.” Amal said nothing. She whispered in the elepahant’s flapping ears. He was only too happy to obey her, and pulled the shivalingam out from the river sludge. The elephant washed it in the river, and then triumphantly placed it in an expensive shawl that Amal put out for him. “Untouched by hand,” Amal said triumphantly. Her round face was missing the vermillion that she had worn for no reason other than for confirming her identity as ‘a widow who was not a widow for her husband lived in her heart’, and the Toda queen had long ago permitted this indulgence. Vignesh sent a message to the King, who replied to his “friend” Amal. “Bring the shivalingam to me. Do not return to Benaras. I will build a temple for your lingam. You have now transcended womanhood.” She was pleased with his answer, and had her head shorn of hair. Vignesh saw that she had become more independent of her status, not because of her persona as a mendicant, but because she was the owner of a lingam which she had found and was taking as a tribute to the King. The Mahout was, unlike Vignesh, a stubborn idiosyncratic man. Many years ago, he thought he had been downgraded by having a baby elephant to look after, as even the weight of the carriage was too much, and now, with difficulty it took on the woman and the shivalingam. Tiny though the lingam was, compared to the weight of the one the King had dredged from the river so many generations ago, each one persuaded that he was the genitor of that vision, it had immense value. The woman with her shorn head was a liability too. He had to hold her hand every time she got down from the elephant. With her tonsured head gleaming in the dusk, she looked young and vulnerable. As she was on the path of silence, he rarely heard her voice, and could never remember its cadence in passing thoughts. Was she young or old? They had been in Benaras for twenty years, and the seasons had passed swiftly. The King had left them well supplied with the visits of known merchants and well wishers. They had never known any want, any sorrow other than what they had carried with them as baggage. It had taken them many years to reach Benaras, but they were now beginning the slow journey back. It would take less time, as the monsoons were behind them, they were not taking the sea route because the baby elephant was there for show, not for celebration. There would not be any stop or stay at various harbours, only the tedious plodding through a long Winter and Spring season. The mahout had an ass to ride on, while the lady travelled on the elephant, and Vignesh managed the valuable bullock cart, as the ponies had been sold in Benaras for a large sum of money. The lingam was ornamented with flowers during the day, and hot embers of incense danced in the shadows of the early morning. Their bathing and ablutions were completed in the dark, food was cooked at dawn and dusk (always the same red rice and green gram, ‘kanji and payr’). The simplicity of their routines sustained them through the dust and drab coldness of a Northern winter. They fed the elephant as well as they could and since he was never chained, he was good tempered and obedient, his bright eyes twinkling as he drank up the warm rice water and was hand fed jiggery. The mahout was quick to use the javelin when his ward looked to wander. Sometimes in the cold of the morning, the elephant would drop on the ground, and refuse to move. Then the lady would whisper in his ears, and he would whisk his tail at her, and with his trunk extended, invite her to climb on his back. The mahout would settle the carriage and heave the widow up, grumbling at the pollution he had incurred. She was an old woman it was true, having seen 45 summers, but the labour of heaving her up required two men, so Vignesh devised a chair and holding the legs of the sedan, the task became that much easier, and less contentious. In any case for them, as servants of the King, whether they carried dead bodies or a woman on their shoulder was immaterial, they did what they were told. Amal carried the lingam on her back wrapped in bark of sandalwood and expensive silk. It was hidden from robbers and the gaze of the covetous. If someone accused her of it being stolen, she took out the parchment that showed it was the property of the Cheras, her King being a dependent war lord. This matter of hierarchy and chieftainship was beyond the mahout’s comprehension. When they returned home, it would not be Aychen, often called Udaya who met them, but quite another, his nephew from the extended family of 9 Lords. It was not for them to weep at the death of one Varma or another. Rule and duties were delegated. Life went on. In any case the King had commanded the servers not to inform the widow of the King’s death, and the natural succession that followed. The widow was arriving with silver coins as tribute, gold coins as gifts, along and inexplicable fortunes received for her commendable work in maintaining the suzerainity of the Kalpathy rajas, were all to be dedicated to the current raja who had supported them invisibly these many ears. They wept for the loss of their patron and protector, but life must end in death, this is the law of nature. The soldier and the mahout let the old widow believe that they were petitioners for the rights of their King and he was immortal. Thamban, of the twisted face, governed his emotions as best as he could as his rage had made him palsied in his youth. Since he spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him, his vocabulary was limited to guttural calls to the elephant, and bird like cries to the widow, when he wanted food or help. She was always considerate to him, as he was her servant, and she pitied his condition. He was always on call, to protect her, carry her when she was tired, haul her upto the carriage – so many acts of intimacy that made her deferential and him arrogant. He got confused sometimes and treated her as if she was a rare object. She accepted the pendulum of his emotions: sometimes she was a sack of coal, at other times he was as protective to her as if she was an infant. She had asked him many questions, and he had answered as best as he could, with signs, wild gestures, and petitioning glances to Vignesh. “Where is your village? He gestured that it was far away. “Are you married?” He nodded, smiling pleasantly. “How many children?” Five, showing his fingers. “How old are they?” He gestured by height, size and number. “How many girls? “Two”, he said plaiting his daughters’ hair in ostentatious mimicry. “And their mother?” “Dead” “Who looks after them?” “Grandparents” Thamban mouthed in reply, imitating the walk of ancients. They would be so different now, the widow thought. Unrecognizable. Would they remember their father? Yet, they would have learned to protect his fields and the King would reward him well. The Varma who had protected them for so many years was a nephew of Udayan. He was a tall lean man, dark skinned with a shock of curly hair, who looked like his mother, the aunt of the King who had died.. He had been a robber baron who had ridden from Kallar country, a poet and horseman. She cried, though now dry of tears, thinking of his love for the Toda princess. People often gave her odd enquiring looks, because they thought she was the King’s intimate friend. He was dead, rumors had reached her ;she missed him, but she was somehow, inviolable, nothing could hurt her. What she carried back was so precious that the King’s seal was sufficient to her. For twenty years she had received royal letters and privileges believing he was alive. Her life had always been lived at a tanget, she was never harmed or brutalised except by the ever present shadow of Death. Even as a stranger in Benaras, she was protected by her virtue – she had nothing to lose. Widows were stigmatized, but she was not, it was truly a mystery though living a lie had come easily to her, and virtue a natural instinct to survive with the help of a patron. She thought of her parent and grand parents, the Toda Princess and her husband, the King. She was always lost in thought, transcending the discomfort of journeys and public scrutiny. As she had not cast aside her nose stud, her vermillion marking on the brow, and the jewels on her wrist including the golden arm band, no one had thought of her as a widow or treated her as one. It was a crime to impersonate normal women, but what choice did she have as an antarjyati risking public attention? “My marriage was not consummated so how am I a widow?” she had said in her youth. And thus she had survived the travails of her situation, first locked up in the castle with the Toda princess, then with her attendants who treated her with candied sugary deference as they thought her to be the King’s mistress, then in the many cities where they lived in comfort where the ownership of the King’s golden seal was sufficient to bring her renown. The ascendance of the new King, and the acquisition of the lingam by him changed things ofcourse. Since her menstrual flow had ceased, there was less to worry.. The rules of pollution were beyond her comprehension. “Don’t we sit with our feet next to our banana leaf when we eat?” she had asked the priests when she was a child, and they had laughed. She was a creature who lived by instinct, dependent on the kindness of Kings. Their patronage had been essential to her. The magician whom she had met in her youth had taught her the arts of sorcery “to defeat the devil by learning his tricks.” For herself, she made no distinction between God and Devil, as her servants all used sorcery and astrology too and were adepts. Poetry was their craft, learned women who were respected for their charm. They kept others at bay with their disguises, but now with the new Lord, they would have to learn new ways. It was said of him that he was valiant, true, and yet displayed his skill through rote. With the old Lord who had died before their return, there was an intimacy, a familiarity. Sometimes other women in the court sized her up as she went through her duties. She was used to those sideway glances, enquiring looks which were directed to her and the other serving women. They were there because the King had decreed that they were necessary for the sustenance of his wife. Yet, since he was never separated from her unless the drums of war demanded, or the trumpets of governance called, she had known him almost as intimately from a veiled distance. She thought of him often, the way his breathing was punctuated by sudden stops of breath, and the way he flung his arm over his wife’s throat, almost choking her. She would stop fanning the Princess, and remove the heavy arm from her delicate throat. As servants, nothing was expected from them but their invisibility. Now that man was dead, her patron, her wiell wisher, her Lord. Long live the King. The new one, angular, young and gauche, used the same seal, made the same provision for them as his mother’s brother, and used the same amanuensis for twenty years. He sent her letters of affectionate regard, and pretended to her, that he was his uncle. When he occupied the palace and the pilgrims had returned, he chose to remind the old widow, that they had met when he was a small boy. She remembered him vaguely - the broad forehead, the large bulging eyes, the Kallar ferocity though he was not yet in his teens. He said in his missives penned in ink on palm leaves stapled together that he had already built a temple for the lingam as he was waiting for her return anxiously. He asked her to count the money that she was bringing as tribute from pilgrims who visited his priests for their mortuary rites. He asked for fine Chinese silk for his consort. There was no end to his requests. She piled them carefully in a wooden box so that she had evidence as they travelled, that she indeed had a patron. Not that they were assaulted by robbers, or that she was mistaken for a prostitute. Now that she wore the white draperies of an austere mendicant and her head was shaved, there was not even a second look at her. People were used to the sight of wandering ascetics, and while women usually were hidden away in their sedans, the old widow was on an elephant with two soldiers as escorts. No one dared to look at her, or meet her fiery gaze. What she carried with her was hidden under expensive cloths, and the fly whisk of white yak tail was sufficient to keep away amorous or covetous gazes. Chapter 8 The elephant did not have a hasty gait. Like all things young, it was playful and enquiring. Children ran to pet it and feed it bananas and sugar cane. But the pilgrims returning home were in a hurry, and did not encourage friendliness. Word had got to them that all of Benaras was looking for the lingam which had been lost in the flood. There were hundreds of lingams of similar age and size, all sunk in the sludge, and yet the priests would not accept them, saying that wherever it turned up it would be installed as the linga for Viswanthaswamy. Ancient priests keeping ledgers knew that from generation to generation there would be those who recognized the power of the lingam wherever it was. At night the soldiers and the old widow put up their tents under the sky, laden with stars. There was nothing to veil the brilliance of comets or the moon, sodden with light. When they reached the forests of Wayanad they came to Pulpally and the Sitadevi temple. The floods had come, leaving devastation in its wake, but the potters, tile makers and the quila (fort) keepers had arrived, and the temple was over run with masons and threshers. Food was plenty, it was now the harvest season. They left the elephant there, as it was beginning to show signs of restlessness, and the mahout said it was in ‘mast’ and rebellious. They had no idea what to do, and thought it was because Thampan, now calling himself Arumugam, was from a village close by. The elephant remained small in size, though now 25 years old and more, and the tusks had been encased at the ends with silver knobs, indented with the King’s seal it was mature and ready to mate. They remonstrated with Thampan, but his concave face, with its blunt nose became increasingly vituperative and spit began to fleck the sides of his mouth. He said nothing, his guttural echoing speech creating shivers in both Lakshmi Amal and Vignesh’s spine…together they felt ants were crawling in their brain, and they felt fear, horror, disgust. It was best to turn away, and tell the King that this elephant too had run away. Vignesh said they only had to wait and the King would send battalions to carry back the sacred lingam. They had no cause to hide it any longer, they were back in familiar territory, the principalities of their chiefs. Thampan’s disappearance with the baby elephant was a cause of great embarrassment to Vignesh, as was the news officially received that all the letters, messages and appearances of couriers was from the King’s nephew Aditya. Those loving attentive notes had not carried a name, and Amal had presumed that they were the servants of Udaya, though she had heard that he had died, she had not believed it. Names meant nothing to the servers, one KIng died, another came. But the conquering hero had solved their problems never letting them know for sure that the one they had served had died. So it had always remained a rumour. They knew, but they didn’t know for sure as they were so far from home. The widow was after all an inconsequential node in the story. Even the St Thomas Christian magician had prophecied to her, one day, traders from a far off land will reduce you to legend, and pass you off as a strange wanderer to pronounce you aberrant but successful, born under the sign of Poovarsha, and good for the claimants of alms to know. What did it mean? The umbrella had to be served, the tribute brought to the King, the ledger maintained, the new members of the Achen clan entered into the Brahmins’ safe keeping in Kashi. That work had been his and he had completed it with honour. That they had not been met with misfortune on their jorney to Benaras was because Feroz Tuglaq had been ruler, and he was loved and order was maintained. The kingdoms of the North and South were a fragile economy, and all passage way granted to those who had the copper plates of authority, and the seal of the King, reigning in any principality. Ofcourse the plam leaf missives exchanged between the widow and the seemingly widower King were now null and void. He would have to destroy them in case word circulated among the people that Udaya’s nature had been forged and appropriated in the letters dictated by the amanuensis on the orders of the King. It had it seemed to him one function, which was to keep the widow safe. For twenty years she had believed the King loved her in a pristine way, as a youth might love his mother’s friend. Her strength had come from this intense feeling of a mutual reciprocity, born of gratitude and friendship. The King had loved his Toda wife without measure, and the old widow had received a seeming avalanche of love from the King, because he knew that without her, the Toda princess would have died earlier. In 1388 when the pilgrims had set out for Kashi, they had thought it was the beginning of the unthinkable, a journey of romance and the intellect. They had charted maps, become friendly with the strangers they had no hope of ever meeting again. They had lived together wihout bringing scandal or shame to their families, who had soon got on with their lives. Now with Thampan refusing to complete the journey, saying he had not received wages for 25 years, and asserting that the baby elephant was his. He would serve the village temple, and the elephant would have a home. Its tusks were worth much. And Thampan would be the heir. When Vignesh informed Aditya, Achen said nonchalantly, “Boil him in oil, I am Shaktan Thampuran. The Christian magician has told me that one day such a one will come who will win wars and throw out those not following his wishes.” Their only recourse was to complete the journey, and they took the water roure secretly at night. Forty three rivers went to the sea, and they used the known maps of the tributaries of the Neela and the Pamba, arriving laterally and safely to Achen’s place. There, the lingam was dutifully given to the King, who in turn presented it to the Brahmins whom his uncle had invited to serve his kingdom. The King received more money as tribute from his priests in Kashi than he had anticipated, and called the widow to his chambers. She stood there, whimpering with grief, lost in her memories of her love for the Toda princess and her royal husband. The King had survived only five years in her company and those were interspersed by war. “What is love that you should carry it in your heart, so many seasons after their death?” Aditya asked the old widow. “It was his love for her that made my life have any meaning. That he died so soon after her was not known to us. We thought that we would make him rich by our sacrifices. He was our Lord, and we wanted to bring the wealth of Benaras to him as was his due.” “To think of Kashi is to receive liberation.” “Possessing wealth, another’s wealth did not make us rich.” “You safeguarded his tribute due to the Chola empire. I too am an old man, and will surely carry the memory forward. The Rajas were our patrons and we were never made to feel lesser than them, inspite of their great riches.” “I would have come much sooner, if I had know Uday had died. He gave me permission to float my husband’s ashes in the Ganga in Benaras.” “You have brought the Ganga to us, we are grateful!” “Then build a temple for the Shivalingam in Kalpathy!” “Kallu Patti, the stone grandmother, Parvati the sacred mother.” “Kai Patti – it was the divine hand of the mother that Uday saw, and then he found the great lingam, which became the source of the strength of the temple.” “ I will institute your lingam, and create a Benaras for you. People need not walk so far. Ofcourse, I will have rights over the income for maintenance and ritual year round. It is after all, as you said, our family sanctuary.” “Your kingdom has been blessed by a long reign and many wonders. The King owns the temple, we are merely devotees.” “Let the people bring their dead to the river here, and I shall proclaim your valour in stone.” Lakshmi Amal looked to Aditya in gratitude. Their names had collapsed into one another, and others would repeat them with respectful intonation. She had never known that the transition had occurred so many years ago. The King’s golden seal in their possession had been sufficient to chronicle the passage of time. This great favour of patronage and the great kindliness had passed from his amanuensis by order of the great Ammachi and Achu. The Toda princess had conveyed her grace onwards to future generations. Lakshmi Amal returned to Shekharipuram having returned the seal and the letters exchanged between them, to the King. “It makes a good story”, the King said, throwing their letters in to the fire. “There will be no evidence of my part, in the favour extended to you by virtue of your service to the Princess. She was not one of us. The King loved her and used your people to get her entry into the castle. “Let it be”, we said, as his sambandham had anyway, already been completed long ago. We didn’t care whom he loved or bedded, but he was one who gave his heart to an outsider. We felt sorry for her, what could she know of our ways? And after she died of the hot air and the rich foods of the plains, he could not hide his agony, but went barefoot and ragged, walking all over his kingdom. People did not recognize him, as learned in the Vedas, and an expert in the art of war and verse, he was merely a clansman of the King, disguised as a vagrant. And then he disappeared wearing his armour into yet another war, and hearing of his heroism in battle, his death was foretold. I was a young man by then, and remembering that two shepherd soldiers had been harnessed to a widow, so that she may return with the alms and tributes owing to us, I did not send news of his death to her. Her misfortune was in abeyance during the pilgrimage, and good luck followed her in her pious task of floating her husband’s ashes in the holy river in Kashi. What need would she have of more bad news. The loss of elephants (some say two, and others say three) were not her fault, but that of the mahouts. So I hid from her the news of the King’s death. We too believe that kinship is divine and the King never dies. So I had the amanuensis write those letters on my behalf/ his behalf. As the last Chola king, I was interested in defending our boundaries, extending my empire, fated as we were to be swallowed up by Vijayanagara. Yet between the rule of the slave kings, before the widows journey commenced, and the arrival of Feroz Bin Tuglak who took upon himself the planting of trees, and the making of guest houses, lay Gingee. The widow returned to my kingdom through a landscape known too well by us, bloodied by war, but curiously innocent of lust or greed or venom, or so we would like others to believe. Some are like that, rendered transparent by their asceticism. Her long journey home had rid her of all weight. Of course I remembered her when she left on her pilgrimage, her scavenger’s bag of a dead man’s bones against her rounded hips. I thought of her as Sita’s pet vulture, a condor with an ashen head, whirling in the Northern skies, never flinching from the sun or the desert sand of the North. And here she was, returned to us like a delicate swan, untouched by volence, or greed, ever protective of my armed soldier Vignesh, whose hair had grown grey, guarding the tribute and the chance legacy of the floods in Kashi: a shivalingam, as if we didn’t have enough of those. Vignesh had placed a silver seshadri (protective serpent head associated with Vishnu and the holy mountain) over it, and had made it ever more precious and sacred. Of course he knew Uday had died and Aditya was King but he was told not to inform the old widow, whose name we never took on principle. She was virgin and widow, a philosophical contradiction. And by my uncle’s kindness to her had been marked by an auspiciousness around which legends grew. We never took her name, because we didn’t want our kinswomen to wear their jewels and walk to Benaras. It is a habit that few can afford. Because Kingship is a sodier’s right, we, Uday and I , could give her the protection she needed. And she was grateful. Her letters gave me an understanding of the world, and many different species of birds, animals, fish, humans – so respectfully did she write. All her village was devoted to us, and my long reign was the result of their love and patriotism. After she brought the shivalingam to us, my simple duty was to house it, and accept the remuneration that the priests routinely sent us from Kashi. We housed them, protected them , and its true, we did not have a palace there to house our guests. The Shekharipuram kings were never very wealthy, riding on the backs of the Chola, Kochi Kings, and Samuthrans, and the blessed memory of the Cheras. We had our sense of valour and duty offering our services to those who most need them . Warriorhood was so repetitive and our duties so malleable (if we survived them) that we named our sons Komban after the lost elephants we sometimes retrieved from those who stole them or passed them off as their own. So whether I was Uday or Aditya or Marantanda, or Ravi, hardly mattered to our subjects, as Komban Achen sufficed for each uncle and nephew who had the right to rule, and we married into royal families so that our children would have proprietorship of their mothers lands. Its true that Lakshammal was horrified on arrival on seeing me, but she hid her despair as quickly as she could. Politeness demanded that she ask no questions and accept me as her sovereign. It was I who had to put her at ease, as clearly, she was acting as if she was twice widowed ( if such a thing were possible in their esteemed community). My Konganad blood was getting clotted at the sight of her tears, her bedraggled appearance, her loss of the ecstatic expression with which she brought the precious shivalingam. That sacred object which she had brought with such care was small in comparison to the weight of the lingam that my ancestor, Shubhangi’s son had dredged from the river. This one was small and delicately fashioned for truth to tell, its ability to transform people’s vision was such that the fame of our temple went vey far. We had the papers ofcourse, so no one could claim the temple’s revenue for personal gain or community gain. We alone were the keepers of the faith, with jurisdiction over temple priests and care takers, and all the precious sacred objects were accounted for in our ledgers. My duty was to safeguard the old widow’s gift to us, so I had no reason to enquire from her, why she wept so much, or why her shorn head was suddenly like a translucent pearl, all the blood having been siphoned to her face and neck. Did my presence shock her so much? “Why do you cry, dear Lady?” “I have no reason.” “Yet, you see my face and you weep. Is it my ferocious gaze?” “When I left 25 years ago, you were a small large eyed boy, eve present in the court.” “It is my beard, then!” “No, my Lord. I did not expect that my master was dead.” “I am your Master.” “I accept you as so.” “Do you fear me?” “No, my Lord!” “Then you should.” “You repeat yourself.” “How did my mistress die?” “You were here then.” “Of heartbreak.” “So also my mother’s brother, of the same cause.” “So after I left with the permission from Ammachi, he died?” “Yes.” “And no one told me?” “Your tears are enough to fill a lotus pond, though you have heard the news so late.” “No one told me.” “What could you have done? My amanuensis continued to write letters on his behalf.” “He was dead.’ “His ghost spoke through me.” “I was writing to him.” “We do worship our ancestors. My uncle was my dearest friend, and most loving companion. He had no children with his slave wife whom he had robbed from her people.” “She was no slave.” “Not to the slave who served her, but to us she was just that.” “He loved her.” “And so he died.” “It is as if you took his words from his heart, and wrote them out for me.” “I did. I wanted you to live.” Amal stared aghast, her large eyes no longer under lined with kohl, did not blink. “You lied to me for 25 years!” “I thought you were precious and your love for your husband was visible to us all. Your gratitude to my mother’s brother was evident to us. As I had seen you from my early youth, I understood you. I thought you would die if your patron stopped writing to you. So I took on that role. We all felt it was better that you continued your important work. And look, you have brought home this powerful lingam from the very source itself. I will establish an alcove in our family temple in Kalpathy, and people will have all the arts to view when they visit. Do not disappoint me. Give me the honour of continuing the work the King asked you to do so many years ago. You have been a faithful subject. Your letters gave me news of the many kingdoms you passed through. You described how you were treated. Marthanda would have been pleased, all of us are named Marthanda or Komaban. You know that nothing personal could be written by the King. Yes, you told me everything about yourself, and notated daily, the roster of expenses. You never enquired about my feelings, nor could you, it was not your place to do so. As for the lost elephants I could not go in search of them, as my uncle left me so many duties and obligations, and I had to maintain peace in our kingdom, while waging war on behalf of other more powerful kings. How could I say, “I am not that Martanda, not that Komban”. The enormity of camouflage was evident to them both – how could they hide their tears and laughter? He clasped her close to his chest and she thought this intimacy his against nature, but then he wiped her tears, called her ‘mother” . tenderly took the Shivalingam away from her. “Its ours”, he said “and your name will never be forgotten. You have returned the gold seal that belongs to us and took you safely across many lands. By delivering this lingam, and the tribute from our constituencies in foreign lands, you have proved your loyalty as our subject.” She bowed her head and walked all the way back to Shekharipurm in the dusk, where she became known not just was the woman who floated her husband’s ashes in the Ganga, but also one who had the King inscribe a pillar in her name in gratitude. She wondered at the enormity of it all, at the way in which fate had preserved and protected her. The King owned the temple, and the lingam, and the revenue that came from it. He visited every morning, and flung himself in prostration before it. He lit the lamp, and said his prayers, starting the day in all its holiness, the sun rising. He completed his purificatory ablutions. He had heard that the woman who had carried it to Kalpathy was a famous temple artist, but in time, as his reign was long and he had to consolidate the loot of war, he forgot about her. He never went to Shekharipuram to seek her, or to give her money, and she never sent word to him about her poverty as she was content with the rice and pumpkins and lentils that the temple priests cooked and gave her. Why weep while the paintbrush was still wet, and the faces of the Gods and Goddesses smiled back. Susan Visvanathan, 14th May 2025, Aleppey. We who were hidden away, we did not complain. It was our karma, we were told repeatedly. We were children, we obeyed our parents. We hoped there would be surcease of pain, but there was not. We were guided through the mourning rituals and not excluded from the family. Manu was a feared name, but not every family followed instructions as the priests demanded. Our famly was pretty low in the hierarchy anyway – imported mortuary priests, speaking Tulu or Tamil, depending on whether we had walked from the Konkan or Tanjavur. The traders often spoke to us in either language, dependent on us for mortuary rituals. They woule lovingly bring the dead body from far off places cyring and weeping, and beating their chests. After the cremation was over in a bear by wood, the ashes were floated in the holy river Kalpathy with cries of Shiva and Rama as we followed both, and were free to do so.