Her Chariot on the Horizon

Tomorrow, Navratri begins: nine nights of celebrating the Goddess. It has always been my favorite of all festivals. Nothing gets my Gujarati blood going like a velvet full moon night, bright with promise of garba, and when the first dhol sounds, my feet fly away from my will. I love going for garba, sought it out wherever the roundel formed and only the dying music would stop my whirling.

Of course, the past couple of years has seen my body giving way to my kidney disease and even though I did not miss any more nights of garba than I absolutely had to, I could not dance a lot. I had to sit on the sidelines, watching people more fit give in to the music. I loved that too. There is no feeling better than being at garba.

This year, however, I will not be able to attend for more than a night or two, at the most. My dialysis needs 8 to 10 hours and if I have to reach work the following morning on time, I have to start my treatments before the garbas begin. I plan to go to the temple earlier in the evening and just bow to the Goddess, tell her that I would miss Her and that I'd be thinking of Her.

I can't stop thinking of Her, actually. All year, I would do enough cardio exercises, just so I could dance the garba. I went through Navratri days as though someone had switched on a light deep within me; I glowed and people thought I was in love.  My name for my daughter is no accident: I named her for the Goddess. There are times when I believe that the Goddess did descend within my daughter, especially when I see her insisting on her rights, fighting for what she thinks is fair. My child loved Navratri too. I would buy the pass to go for the large garba sponsored by IRCC, and loved every minute of it. One year, my child, who was in highschool, gathered her few friends and I bundled them into my car and took them dancing till dinner was served after aarti, after 2am. It remains one of my fondest memories of Navratri.

Tonight, I am working on calming myself: after all, I cannot attend the festivities this year, so I should not feel excited at the prospect. However, I cannot help it. I went through the day today, smelling sugar; I almost bought some incense; I stopped myself from a mental inventory of my chanya choli, the odhni scarves that might need ironing, my favorite earrings and bindis waiting since last year in the drawer. But then, I see the dialysis machine waiting on top of the drawer, patiently waiting for me to remember it, and I have to laugh.

I have had so many wonderful Navratri memories that I do not resent having to sit out a year or so. I wish that my child would find a roundel to whirl in during these magical nights, to unleash the Gujju that lurks in her. I know that she is very far and I can no longer see her whirling with unconscious grace, with her unique steps and dips.

Tomorrow, when I go to the Goddess, I will remember to ask her blessing for my child and grant her a roundel all her own, so that years from now, if her body cannot whirl any more, she remembers this year's magic and it warms her darkening year. 

Three Mahabharat Poems

Once, I had a book contract: six stories that followed perspective of six women characters from Hindu Mythology (Sita, Radha, Shikhandi / Amba, Anasuya, Shakuntala, and Satyavati). This contract was triggered by my story, "I, Sita," which was published with Freedom Fiction Journal. I worked, re-worked, and revised all six stories, tried to meet expectations of editors across oceans. My efforts, however, fell short: the editors dropped my project, claiming that they did not have the editorial support my stories needed. It took me months to acknowledge that my work of over two years has come to naught.

I now have six well-dressed characters, waiting; I watch them sitting around on my desktop, adjusting their clothing, glancing questioningly around, and I wish I could apologize. They no longer have anywhere to go. How do I tell them? These six characters are very strong women: diplomats, queens, warriors, lovers, yogis, all ferocious, two attained apotheosis, one even re-born as a man to exact her revenge. I, their messenger of ill-tidings, would not be allowed to exist in the same room as any of them. Whatever will they say? What will they do to me when they hear? Do I even have language to phrase what I must tell them?

Well-wishers and friends keep asking after the book contract; how far has it gone? When is the book being released? My head hangs even lower at these inquiries. A lot of  people had promised to be the first to buy a book such as the one I was working on. How do I bring them to where my characters await?

I do not resent the work, of course. I'd do it all over again, and gladly. It was a labor of love. I learned a great deal, both about the myths and the way I write. I am not the same. Perhaps that is enough. After all, in the final analysis, I wrote mainly for myself. The one person who truly enjoyed the stories has been me; I wonder at my whining!

Let me remind myself: I do have a few poems published. Here are a couple of poems. They are included in Swaranrekha, an anthology of poets from the Indian Subcontinent. Perhaps these voices will give heart to me and my muted characters.

I.

Gandhari Explains

My sons number in hundreds, like iron fillings

Almost indistinguishable, black and hard like my chosen darkness

The birthing was difficult; I prayed for death and release

Posterity wishes I had died, rather than birth what I did

I don’t, of course. I understand their necessity;

This black age needed them to prick itself with, to corrode from within, rust, disintegrate

This knowledge brings no hope, no comfort, no wisdom, no divine insight

I find the false light intolerable, like a transparent, insincere promise

Of a maybe-paradise-after-life if certain cosmic forces are benign

If I can embody ideal of good-wife, good-mother, good-queen

But these good-women cancel each other out, contradict each other,

Pop and blink each other out of existence when they try to be

I prefer denial, the softness of the blindfold, a chosen lack

To keep the balanced universe on its toes, force some boon,

The heavy price already paid in advance, like a flexible spending account

For I have known of my sons’ nature from the time they were a glint,

A splinter of shining metal, glowing darkly in their blind father’s eyes

Which only see his lot shortened, cheated, overlooked

No deity, demon, being can force me to watch in 3-D Kodak color

The slow destruction of an era dying in my sons’ faults,

Their thousand-and-one trespasses on divine patience

All their juvenile assassination attempts laughed off as boys-being-boys

Their malicious tricks and sneers they thought I was too blind to see, shards in my breast

They were indulged when they should have been slapped silly: an expense to be paid by

This world, the golden city my oldest rules justly, if not wisely

Do you wonder why I chose this blindness now? With a

Brother like mine, Husband like mine, Sons like mine,

Would you have chosen differently?

Yet do not call me cursed! I have that

Which Kunti, even, could not coax of the gods:

My dismissed daughter that you forgot, who did not forget me

Stoic and iron-willed, surviving father, uncles, brothers, cousins, husband

After the bloody apocalypse of eighteen days, I need only her touch to bless

My forfeit of illusory sight. The divine nephew, charioteer of victors and kin-killers knows

She is the kindness the cosmos was forced to surrender to my stubborn blindness.

II.

Ganga, Unable

The light confuses me, twisting colors, weaving hues

I keep squinting, unable to focus on a single dimension

Seeing too many tenses at once, unable to hold moments singly

Unable to dwell on a penumbra to tell if it’s dawn or dusk 

I should never have left my heavenly streams

There is such peace, such uniformity in darkness beyond space

This tellurian world demands I assume a safe domesticity,

Properly befitting my gender, scholarship, ancestry, origin

I try, tried modulating gracefully in sweet tones of wifehood, queen-ship

But these cloths, though silken and pliant like my waters,

Do not fit.

They keep slithering about, like the king’s promises,

Get stuck and break apart, like dark suspicions,

Whisper severe doubts along deserted palace halls,

Remain opaque and unyielding so my fluid self is cloaked

 I sit here, at the window seat, my hands idle

The mynah on the mango tree screeches sweetly as she despoils the fruit

I must leave soon; I see the forbidden question squatting on the sunset

Unspoken as yet, but imminent, inevitable, like you, my newly conceived son 

             I only want to keep you formless within me, my taintless child, spun of waves and swords,

Like this ageless song snatched from the tenuous plundering bird;

You don’t agree and insistence on proper whittling distresses me

I am relieved when the bird flies off to desecrate other unripe fruit 

A lucid glance at my husband shocks as I rise in greeting and recognition:

For when I see the king through my variegated veil, I am unable to un-see

                               The obsequious timeworn son behind the temerarious impulsive father.

Finally, here is one of my favorites. It was posted on this page some years ago and is included in my book.

Arjun at the Swayamvar

Being best friends with the divine doesn’t help

The same old intrigue and desperations led me to this contest and fire

My arrow, though true to its mark, is fueled by mortal sinew and blood

The eye it snags spits out tissue and nerve

The whole exercise feels like a hoax, a bad deal with too-tiny small print

But the Fire Princess seems oblivious to any cosmic conspiracy

Seeing only the promise and comfort of my muscled shoulder, my twinkling glance

Admiring only the sensuous garland entwining my bronzed epithelium. 

I lower my eyes (she is shorter by a full head) to hint at my noble humility

She exchanges a quick glance with her brothers, one divine, one fiery

Seeking assurance for the rightness of her choice, the propriety of what is happening

I too look around, but my brothers have forgotten me in the moment

They all are busy blinking tears, of victory, of gratitude

You’d think I’d blinded them when my arrow targeted the fish eye.

They do not smell the fog of envy that clouds the Hall

It stings my eyes as it rises to the canopy and darkens the skies 

 I wonder what sightlessness descended when my arrow pierced that eye

The contest feels weighed, like loaded dice, a veneer covering a warning

A clanging prothalmion sung as prelude to apocalypse

My shoulders sag under the heaviness of flowers as I lift the bridal garland with sure hands

And hang my head to accept the burdensome future of a dying age.

It is my hope that these three voices will remind me how much I loved the project, the stories, and the characters that emerged and began speaking. I am very fortunate that I was allowed to hear. Telling is complicated and could take long. After all, it took my characters all of my life time to reach me! But if they can reach me across the oceans of myths and millennia, I am hopeful that my telling may yet reach out those who await it.