ZUBAAN
is an imprint of Kali for Women
Zubaan
128B Shahpur Jat
1st floor
New Delhi 110 049
www.zubaanbooks.com

First published by Zubaan, 2012
Copyright © Anil Menon and Vandana Singh, 2012
Copyright © individual essays with the authors

All rights reserved

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

eBook ISBN: 9789383074174
Print source ISBN: 9789381017043

This eBook is DRM-free.

Zubaan is an independent feminist publishing house based in New Delhi, India, with a strong academic and general list. It was set up as an imprint of the well known feminist house Kali for Women and carries forward Kali’s tradition publishing world quality books to high editorial and production standards. ‘Zubaan’ means tongue, voice, language, speech in Hindustani. Zubaan is a non-profit publisher, working in the areas of the humanities social sciences, as well as in fiction, general non-fiction, and books for young adults that celebrate difference, diversity and equality, especially for and about the children of India and South Asia under its imprint Young Zubaan.

Typeset by Jojy Philip, New Delhi 110 015
Printed at Raj Press, R-3 Inderpuri, New Delhi 110 012

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction
   Anil Menon

Introduction
   Vandana Singh

The Ramayana as an American Reality Television Show: Internet Activity Following the Mutilation of Surpanakha
   Kuzhali Manickavel

Exile
   Neelanjana Banerjee

Making
   Aishwarya Subramanian

The Good King
   Abha Dawesar

The Mango Grove
   Julie Rosenthal

Game of Asylum Seekers
   K. Srilata

Day of the Deer
   Lavanya Karthik

Weak Heart
   Tabish Khair

Sita’s Descent
   Indrapramit Das

Great Disobedience
   Abirami Velliangiri

Test of Fire
   Pervin Saket

The Other Woman
   Manjula Padmanabhan

This, Other World
   Lavie Tidhar

Fragments from the Book of Beauty
   Priya Sarukkai Chabria

Kalyug Amended
   Molshree Ambastha

Sita to Vaidehi—Another Journey
   Sucharita Dutta-Asane

Petrichor
   Sharanya Manivannan

The Princess in the Forest
   Mary Anne Mohanraj

Sarama
   Deepak Unnikrishnan

Regressions
   Swapna Kishore

Machanu Visits the Underworld
   Victoria Truslow

Oblivion: A Journey
   Vandana Singh

Vaidehi and Her Earth Mother
   Pratap Reddy

Falling into the Earth
   Shweta Narayan

Contributing Authors

About the Editors

Introduction

Anil Menon

A long time ago, the story goes, a young prince, the heir to a great South-Asian kingdom, threaded Siva’s mighty bow and won the heart of a brave princess. The story of what happened next, a story which begins where most love stories end, the story of the Ramayana, has been told and re-told countless times over the centuries. Hold on to a story long enough and it begins to make a people. The long shadow of the Ramayana explains why a popular Indian brand of cockroach poison is called Laxman Rekha Chalk; why a recent Bollywood superhero movie should have a villain named Ra-One; and why for some Indians the word Ram-rajya (Rama’s State) is a political ideal and not a mythical era. South-Asians have held on to this tale.

However, the twenty-four stories in Breaking the Bow are not about holding on to this great and ancient tale. They are about letting go and making ourselves anew. The Ramayana is important to this project as an inspiration, a context. To take the road not taken requires a road that has been taken. We are (mostly) interested in the road not taken.

This is very hard to do with the Ramayana. The idea that there is “the” Ramayana is one of those South-Asian facts: true wherever it is not false. As A.K. Ramanujan’s wonderful must-read essay 300 Ra-mayanas shows, there are many Ramayanas. The tradition is to depart from the tradition. There is the Jaina Ramayana. The Kashmiri Ramayana. There is Brij Narain Chakbast’s Urdu Ramayana. The Muslim poet Masihi’s Persian Ramayana begins with traditional Islamic invocations. If the great archeologist H.D. Sankalia is right, there is a Lord Rama story in the Zend-Avesta. Kamban’s Tamil version, Kambaramayana, would surprise fans of Tulsidas’ Ramayana for the respect it accords Lord Ravana. Kamban’s radical influence can be seen in works as recent as Mani Ratnam’s Raavan (2010). Even more radical is the Chandravati Ramayana. Composed by a sixteenth-century female poet and bhaktin, it is mostly about Sita; a feminist Ramayana. And this is just the subcontinent proper. There are the Ramayanas from Thailand, Malaysia, Burma and Cambodia. There are many Ramayana versions, many departures.

What usually happens in such a situation is that a tradition develops in the method of departure. The story is re-imagined with shifts in points of view, minority characters are given a voice, value systems are inverted, settings are modernized and/or the story is relocated in space and time. A few stories in this collection also adopt some of these traditional techniques. Despite our suggestion that writers avoid straightforward retellings, some of the Ramayana’s characters were not so easily silenced. For example, Lord Ravana’s sister Surpanakha—mutilated by Lord Rama and Lakshman for her inappropriate amorous advances was the subject of many sympathetic treatments. It was the quality of these retellings, not their ideologies, that persuaded us to include them.

Still, such retellings are the exception. We are aiming for a different kind of departure. Most of the stories in this anthology belong to the genre of speculative fiction. Spec-fic includes science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, slipstream, surrealism, neo-modernist and postmodern lit, and many other sub-genres.

What make a story speculative? A simple answer, not entirely accurate, is that a speculative story is a non-realist story. In a realist story, the story’s context—the stuff that needn’t be told- is this world, the actual world, common-sense world. In a realist story, if two lovers meet in Navi Mumbai, the reader can be reasonably certain they are meeting in Maharashtra, India. But in a non-realist story, there are no such guarantees. Navi Mumbai could a video game, the belly of a whale or the renamed capital of Sweden.

Just as topology evolved out Euclidean geometry by relaxing the set of permitted transformations, speculative fiction evolved out of realist fiction by relaxing various constraints. Stories no longer need to be about human or pseudo-human characters. They don’t need to be set on this earth. They don’t need to be located in the past or the present. They don’t need to be written in any known human language. They don’t need to respect science or sense . Their telling could be as rigorous as a mathematical deduction or as mischievous as the square root of a cheeky orange. Such freedom is challenging, not to mention frightening. To use an old Sanskrit term, it takes a certain chutzpah.

The ancient South-Asians had chutzpah. They imagined our universe as existing for a duration of 311 trillion years (100 Brahma years), about 23, 000 times larger than the scientific estimate for the current age of the Big Bang universe (~ 13.5 billion years). They imagined multiple universes, frothing in the event-sea of creation and destruction. They imagined space and time as being illusory in the absolute and relative across the sea of universes. They imagined consciousness in all of matter, not just human beings. Divinity didn’t frighten them. The Rig-Veda ex presses doubt on the omniscience of the creator. The ancients imagined weapons that could flatten mountains, unravel minds, devastate entire armies, destroy worlds and even annihilate the gods themselves.

The South-Asians were also fascinated with language. As the linguist Frits Staal remarked, what geometry was to the Greeks, language was to the ancient South-Asians. This fascination, combined with their speculative imagination, led to stories that pushed the boundaries of what was possible with language: self-reflective stories, meta-fiction, fractal stories, frame stories stacked eight or nine levels deep, stories in which reality and fiction merged seamlessly, stories that encoded other stories, stories which questioned embodiment, gender and identity…

Of course, as in all feudal societies, the storytellers were not to disturb the sleep of the privileged few. Predictably, the stories suffered. They could not explore moral, political or social issues with much honesty. The truth was fixed in advance. The stories were afraid to question anything directly. Imagination had to hide in women’s tales, live in kitchens, speak in regional tongues, sink underground. In time, there was no need to worry about offending anybody; when have the mute offended the deaf?

In this context, A. K. Ramanujan’s comment that no Indian— at least, no Hindu- hears the epics for the first time acquires an ironic flavor. The Ramayana with its fantasy tropes should arouse the adbhut rasa—the savor of wonder—but it cannot, because in India the pleasure of a first contact with the epics is not possible. Or more accurately, the savoring of the epics as a novel experience is not possible. The epics come in many diverse versions, but diversity is not novelty. We need the novum for wonder, and that is precisely what tradition cannot offer.

But speculative fiction can. This was brought home to us by Pervin Saket’s Test of Fire, written at a fiction workshop Vandana, Suchitra Mathur and I had conducted at IIT-Kanpur in 2009. I wasn’t excited to discover that the story had Sita as its protagonist. I had read quite a few stories centered around Sita. In fact, just before coming to Kanpur I had read Namitha Gokhale’s anthology on Sita. Pervin’s interpretation of Sita didn’t break any taboos. In its disappointment at Sita’s treatment, it wasn’t particularly radical. Yet Pervin’s Sita felt new. It soon became clear that the other participants also sensed a difference. Pervin, with a clever choice of setting, had moved an ancient tale virtually forward in time. The result was a taste of the adbhut rasa, the quintessential taste of science fiction.

Pervin’s story reminded us that we once again had a literature un afraid of the imagination. We began to wonder about the sort of departures that speculative fiction—not just science-fiction—could make possible. Consider Arthur C. Clarke’s use of the Odyssey in his novel 2001. Superficially, there is little in Clarke’s novel that reminds one of the Odyssey. Yet unlike many retellings, Clarke’s Bowman recaptures the existential loneliness of Odysseus. Perhaps that’s because our horizons are now pinned to outer space, and as we stand with Clarke’s Bow man we become Odysseus gazing outwards at the glittering infinite sea.

Clarke’s telling was as elegant as his setting was essential. We wondered if something similar would be possible with our own great epic.

I am glad to report our authors rose to the challenge. This is an inter national effort. We have authors from India, Sri Lanka, United States, Britain, France, Holland and Dubai. Some like Manjula Padmanabhan, Tabish Khair, Priya Sarukkai Chabria and Abha Dawesar are very well known, but we also have many new voices. The result is a one-of-a-kind anthology. Delicate fantasies such as Shweta Narayan’s Falling or Aishwarya Subramaniyan’s Making sit next to K. Srilata’s philosophical Game of Asylum Seekers, Pratap Reddy’s murder mystery Vaidehi and Sucharita Dutta-Asane’s magic realist From Sita to Vaidehi. Sometimes, like the long-lost twins in the Hindi movie Ram Aur Shyam, stories mirror each other because they are so different. Priya Sarukkai Chabria’s poetic Fragments From The Book of Beauty is city-twin to Molshree Ambastha’s amusing Why Me? Molshree’s story, written in the heart felt, irony-free style characteristic of Ram-leelas, perhaps has the best last line of all the stories.

We found other mirrors. Kuzhali Manickavel’s The Ramayana As An American Reality Show is in its way as hallucinogenic as Tori Truslow’s Machanu Visits The Underworld. Similarly, Neelanjana Banerjee’s Exile parallels Lavie Tidhar’s cyberpunk This, Other World. The desolate alternate history of Abirami Velliangiri’s Great Disobedience meets the grim archeology of Swapna Kishore’s Regressions. You will find many voices, many novums, many rasas. Bring a large spoon.

Acknowledgements: All editors should be so lucky as I was to have a co-editor with the sensibility and judgment of my friend Vandana Singh. Our anthology also exists because of the investment and imagination of the people behind Zubaan Books, especially Urvashi Butalia and Anita Roy. This independent press has the stoutest heart in all of Indian publishing. A heartfelt namasthe to Shweta Tewari for shepherding us through the process; our many bleats and excuses must have been in credibly annoying. And finally, Saras, for making my orbits around the sun such fun.

Introduction

Vandana Singh

I first heard the Ramayana when I was very little. From time immemorial, the epic has been carried down through the generations as an oral tradition. I heard it from my mother and my paternal grandmother; the Amar Chitra Katha comic books came much later. My grandmother was particularly fond of the Bal Kand in the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsi das, which describes in beautiful verse the childhood antics of the young hero, Ram, and to this day I can sing or recite parts of it.

It was my grandfather—a man of great intelligence, sensitivity and integrity, who first gave me a hint that there were multiple Ramayanas. He loved many aspects of the ancient texts, particularly the Upanishads, and was the first person to inculcate in me an appreciation of the sounds of poems in Sanskrit, especially the Geet Govind. Yet he did not hesitate to criticize when he had good reason to do so. (One of the great freedoms of Hinduism is surely the lack of a Big-Brother-style religious police to prevent you from having your say). I remember him raging about some sections of the Manu-smriti, or pointing out an absurdity in the Vishnu Purana. Once he told me that there were many versions of the Ramayana, and that some versions contained interpolations that were clearly anachronistic, containing references that belonged to times later than that of the original story. I didn’t think much about it then, being in my pre-teen years and distracted by cricket and climbing trees, but I remembered this later when I came across references to Ramayanas from the point of view of the villain, Ravana, and from Sita’s vantage point as well. Now I think of the Ramayana as a kind of palimpsest, a tapestry in multiple layers, a creation of many voices through the ages, an entity always in the making, and thus always alive.

Even as a child, I had, in a sense, encountered many Ramayanas already, because my mother’s version and my grandmother’s version, although both derived from the one written by Tulsidas in the late sixteenth century, were embroidered by their own interpolations and interpretations. During the Ramlila festivities in Delhi we would watch the great effigies being erected, and the young Ram, much painted and made-up, draw his great bow to let loose a flaming arrow. Straight to the navel of Ravana it would go, and the firecrackers inside the giant would burst into a great and noisy conflagration. Then there would be enactments in neighborhoods, and Ramayana ballets on TV. The characters in each were transformed, made alive, each in a different way. I still recall the great death-dance of Jatayu, felled in battle with Ravana when Jatayu attempted to prevent the kidnapping of princess Sita.

It was my grandfather who told me that the Ramayana is not simply a story of the victory of good over evil, but like that other great text, the Bhagavad Gita, it is also a metaphor for the battle in the soul. This stayed with me, as did my grandmother’s unexpected radicalism. She loved the Ramayana, and as a young woman she left home during the freedom movement to join the Salt Satyagraha, something quite unexpected for a girl from a good family in the India of the day. She loved the Ramayana and she hated the caste system. It was only later that I understood that the vanquishing of evil takes place as much in the soul as in the battleground.

There are many retellings of the Ramayana but where this book de parts is that the stories are not retellings. They are distributaries of the great network of rivers, that is the Ramayana tradition; they are modern additions to the Kathasaritsagara— the ocean of streams of stories—of the Ramayana. They are unique in that, as befits the imaginative scope of the ancient storytellers, the setting is not limited to earth but might be the cosmos itself, and the actors and tellers are as varied as a single mother in present-day India and a time-traveler from the far future. Speculative fiction, I believe, comes naturally to us Indians, since we have a tendency to embroider and prevaricate, to let the imagination run riot, and to argue incessantly. To me speculative fiction has a great revolutionary potential—merely by asking the question “what if?” we might overturn the established order, the conventional point of view; thrones may tremble and the mighty fall. Thus speculative fiction allows the alien (sometimes indistinguishable from the female, or a member of the other race) to tell its story. And in doing so, speculative fiction, as a new form of fiction, is completely consistent with a very old way of looking at things. Let me explain by telling a story from the ancient Upanishadic traditions. The divine principle, the story goes, was once undifferentiated. Nothing else existed but itself. In order to know itself the divine entity divided itself up into planets, rocks, stars, trees, humans, birds, all that now is. The great dramas of existence, including the war between good and evil, are all part of the attempt of the divine to know itself. The Sanskrit word ‘leela,’ which means “play” in both the serious and the playful sense, refers to this cosmic drama. This idea is a wonderful metaphor for writers, who create worlds in order to know the world. In that sense, then, these stories that take inspiration from the Ramayana tradition both depart from it and are part of it. They are attempts at “play” in the sense of “leela,” with the cosmos itself as the grand stage. Through characters as complicated, intriguing, layered and flawed as those in the original streams of story that form the great Ramayana tradition, they explore what it means to be human in this universe. They are testament to the enduring power of the great epics. When Anil Menon first broached the idea of the anthology to me, as it emerged from the unforgettable first SF workshop at IIT-Kanpur in 2009,I was immediately enthusiastic. Anil did a great deal of the work in making this project a reality, including soliciting and screening stories. It was a great pleasure collaborating with him on the editing of the final stories; his instinct for fine storytelling, his acuity as an editor and his good sense and friendship are things I cherish. I should mention also that Anil insisted on a previously published Ramayana story from me, to which, after multiple hesitations, I agreed. Equally I am grateful to the intrepid team at Zubaan for their enthusiasm, creativity and courage, and for putting up with the vagaries of my schedule with unrivalled patience. And I am grateful to the authors whose stories I had the privilege to read and edit—they taught me a lot about writing. Since many of them are newcomers, I am both ecstatic and humbled by the great store of story-telling talent so evident in the India of today—another way in which an old tradition remains alive.

The Ramayana as an American Reality Television Show

Internet Activity Following the Mutilation of Surpanakha

Kuzhali Manickavel

Statement on Surpanakha’s Blog to Fans

Hi everyone. I just want to thank all my fans out there who have been so supportive of me during this very difficult time. The doctors say my ears are going to be ok but it might be a while before my breasts and my nose grow back completely. I can’t even begin to tell you how traumatized I am over this whole incident but I want my fans to know that your love and support means so much and is really helping me get through this. I am thankful for each and every one of you, love you guys.

Comments Are Closed

Invitation to Join ‘Legal Action Against Lakshmana Now!’ Facebook Group

On last week’s episode of The Ramayana, millions of viewers were shocked and outraged when Lakshmana cut off Surpanakha’s ears, nose and breasts on live television. Lakshmana has some serious anger management issues but we feel he has clearly crossed the line here. Take a stand NOW! Lakshmana needs to be held accountable for his actions! Show him that it’s NOT OK to cut somebody’s body parts off, even if that somebody is just a rakshasi! Join NOW! We are starting a petition to send to the network and we need EVERYONE’S SUPPORT!

Invitation to Join ‘Surpanakha is an Ugly Rakshasi Bitch and I’m Glad Lakshmana Cut Her Tits Off ‘ Facebook Group

Join this group if you agree that Surpanakha is a fucking rakshasi and rakshasis deserve to get their tits cut off ! Full video clips of Lakshmana’s awesome sword skills in H-D now posted! Also join the We Love Lakshmana! Group to show your support for a homeboy who isn’t scared to DO SOMETHING when people he cares about are threatened! Show some love for his awesome initiative that finally got that bitch off the show! YAY!

The Real Rama’s Twitter Updates

My beautiful wife is doing fine now. Sure feels great to have such a beautiful wife! Hope everyone is having a great day!

Had a nice, long talk with L about what happened. Sure feels great to have such a great brother! Hope everyone is having a great day!

Just want to say that I totally support L’s actions. I love my brother and my beautiful wife. Hope everyone is having a great day!

Fans who want to buy a sword just like the one L used on the last episode, go to my website! Hope everyone is having a great day!

So thankful for my beautiful wife and my brother and all you great fans out there, hope everyone had a great day!

Transcript of Interview with Lakshmana Posted at lakshmanaloyalists.com

Admin: So there’s been some flacktalk about what you did to Surpanakha.

Lakshmana: Aw man, you know.

Admin: Some people are upset and.

Lakshmana: Rakshasas are upset. Don’t say people are upset, I haven’t met any people who are upset by what I did to her.

Admin: Well there are some people.

Lakshmana: Well I just want to know what these “people” would do if a rakshasi came and threatened their family. You know?

Admin: Yeah,

Lakshmana: Because I know that it must be real easy to sit at home in front of a television or a computer screen and think oh man, if that was me I would not have cut that bitch, you know what I’m saying?

Admin: Exactly, yeah.

Lakshmana: I mean like it’s so easy to say shit like that and just run your mouth when you’re not there. I live with the threat of those motherfuckers every single day.

Admin: Absolutely.

Lakshmana: And I know what they’re capable of. I know how their minds work. So if you want to support her, that’s your choice. But I’m thinking maybe that’s an easy choice for you to make if you don’t live with that threat or if you’ve never even seen a real rakshasa up front and in your face.

Admin: Exactly. And I was just looking through some of these sup port sites and petitions and I’m thinking-

Lakshmana: Fucking bullshit man.

Admin: Totally.

Lakshmana: Every last one of those fuckers would have cut her same as me if they were in my position.

Admin: So no regrets?

Lakshmana: Absolutely not. I mean if I cut a rakshasi, she probably deserved it.

Admin: Oh man, we’re going to put that on some t-shirts. Ray, can we get that on some t-shirts?

Lakshmana: For real?

Admin: Oh absolutely. I think a lot of Loyalists will really vibe with what you just said and they’d be proud to wear a t-shirt like that. I know I would.

Lakshmana: Well that’s great man and I just want to say thank-you to all my fans and supporters and you Loyalists especially for just showing us so much love and support and being there and just being real, you know what I’m saying? I just want to say I really feel ya’ll, I really do.

Comments Posted Below YouTube Clip Showing Lakshmana Cutting Off Surpanakha’s Breasts, Ears and Nose

haiyourstorysucks: PWND rakshasi mofo

cakesmash47: we are occupy your boobies haha

CRAZY88Z: uh, excuse me but I can see your tits. ALL OVER THE FLOOR!!!

WMDZINURTITZ: ROTFLMAO!!!!!!

chucklefuck: epiclulz

skwirlAIDS: fake and gay

KumariLuvzAMonstr: I know she’s a rakshasi and all but this is going too far IMO. Why didn’t r just tell her he’s not into her?

suckitSurpanakha: um, she’s a RAKSHASI! And he’s RAMA! He rly haz to say something? Rly?

limpdik79: It’s funnier if you listen on mute!!!

imdoinurmom: Nowai, her screaming is the best part

oompaloompa94: Somebody should remix this

lolwut84: Somebody should autotune her screaming

alex7893643: Pretty good video! But I’ve seen better stuff on hot-gayteensexfullsucking.com. Check it out, you won’t regret trust me!!

gingershavsouls: Rakshasis have souls!

nahtseejoo: you can see her pussy when she falls down

jonezeezgrl: I feel sorry for her

stormfrontjaiho: nigger

The Real Rama’s Twitter Updates

Thanks for all the congratulatory messages, feels great to wipe out a rakshasa army single-handedly. Hope everyone’s having a great day!

Leading group of saints and sages thanked us for making the forest a safer place. Hope everyone’s having a great day!

You can order my booklet ‘How to Wipe out a Rakshasa Army’ from my website. Hope everyone’s having a great day!

‘How to Wipe out a Rakshasa Army’ video tutorial now available for pre-order on my website. Hope everyone’s having a great day!

Message on Surpanakha’s Blog to Fans

Hi everyone. I didn’t really want to post this but I feel that my fans deserve to know a few things. By now you guys have seen what happened to Khara and Dusana. And I know a lot of people are looking at it like a certain guy is so awesome for killing a whole army of rakshasas by himself. But the way I see it, I just lost my brothers who were trying to stand up for me. I’ve been dissed, teased, lied to and I’ve lost a lot of things in my life and every single loss has made me stronger. So I just want to tell all the haterz out there who hoped I would break down or cry or kill myself or whatever, fuck you haterz. I just keep coming back, I keep coming back harder and stronger and the more hate you throw at me, the harder I come back. Haterz gonna hate but I feed off that hate. I’m a bad bitch and when I say bad, motherfucker you have NO IDEA how bad.

I know a lot of people have been saying stuff like I deserve to get cut and K and D deserved to die because we’re rakshasas and we shouldn’t have even been messing with humans in the first place. I’m not even going to respond to that because I’ve been hearing that shit all my life and I’m so over it. If that’s what you think, fine. I don’t give a fuck.

If a certain guy really wasn’t interested in me, he could have been straight with me instead of being a player and lying. He could have been real with me like I was real with him. But you know what? I’m so over him, I’m so over his perfect wife and I’m so over his psychotown brother. I really am. I think there are things that just happen and they are bigger than you and all you can do is take the lesson and move on. I’m about to head out and stay with my brother Raavana for a while. I’m very upset about what has happened and I just need to be with family right now. Big love to my fans.

Comments

GenCodemidget: Why did you shape shift when you met this ‘certain guy’? I don’t necessarily mean this as a criticism. I guess I’m just interested in how this is ‘real’ or how his reaction was any less ‘real’ than yours and your implications of ‘real’. I mean, how real am I? I am just some pixels on a screen but does that make me less real than you? I’m just not sure I understand your constructs of reality and why you believe they are important enough to alter or why I should care. If you think I’m not real, does that mean I should change myself?

AnonymousHaider: I think it’s neat how you came into a discussion about someone who got mutilated and had her brothers killed and made it all about yourself

GenCodemidget: I don’t think that was necessarily what I meant to imply but I think it’s interesting you got that impression. I guess I’m more concerned about the concept of reality and its deconstruction. It’s something that mildly interests me, like when I go to the Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, how does everything there and its reality relate to me? And how is that reality more relevant than, say, a plastic bag?

AnonymousHaider: Mmmm, combination pizza huts.

GenCodemidget: I don’t think I meant to necessarily imply any thing about combination pizza huts but I think it’s interesting that you like them. I guess I’m ambivalent about them as reality constructs.

SurpaFan89: Love you Surpanakha, stay strong!

Rakz4EVR: Rakz gonna break it down like a crazy motherfucker. It’s a brand new day son, you better RECOGNIZE. We got your back S.

Surpanakha: First of all, thanks for all the love you guys, you’re seriously the best fans ever and I am humbled and grateful for every single one of you. Second, to GenCodemidget. If I hadn’t shapeshifted and gone up to this ‘certain guy’, I would be dead right now. That’s what’s real. That’s reality. Do you run the risk of getting killed just for being who you are? If you don’t, you need to shut the fuck up. I’m not ashamed of who I am but I’m not stupid. And I know how people treat rakshasas, I live that. That’s my reality. It’s obviously not your reality so you need to be thankful for that and just step off because you obviously don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

Comments Are Now Closed

Leaked Emails from Surpanakha’s Account to UltimateLoveGuru.Com-Free Love Advice From Real People Who Really Care! Not Outsourced!

Hi. I have this friend who really likes this guy. And she told him she liked him and he didn’t really say anything. Like he didn’t tell her to fuck off and he didn’t cut her or anything and that’s good, right? Anyway, she really likes him. She can’t stop thinking about him and she thinks they would make a great couple and he’s got some issues he’s trying to deal with right now and my friend knows she can really help him out. The thing is, he has this wife who’s really pretty and perfect. I mean she kind of just sits there but whatever, he seems to like her a lot. And my friend is nothing like the perfect wife. I mean, I know my friend is awesome in a lot of other ways but when people see her, they’re like whatever, you’re a fucking rakshasi, get the fuck out of my face, bitch. You know what I’m saying?

Anyway, this guy has a psychotown brother who cut off my friend’s nose and ears and tits because he thought my friend was disrespecting the perfect wife. And I didn’t even touch her! I didn’t even touch her and she was like all scared and screaming and shit. I didn’t even touch her. And anyway I’m looking at her and I’m like, bitch please. If I had business to take care of, I’m thinking that I would want a bitch that’s got my back instead of a bitch that just sits there and screams, you know? But whatever. Anyway, after that there was a lot of drama and the guy, the guy my friend likes, he killed my friend’s brothers. And even though that’s like epic disrespect she still really likes him. So what should my friend do? She has this plan which could totally work to get him to like her. I think it would work. I mean she told me about her plan and I really think she should do it but she would like your opinion too.

Hi!

Wow! That’s quite a problem! Isn’t Love just a big, crazy game? No wonder you seem so confused! Trust me honey, it confuses all of us! That’s why this website is here to help! We not only have the perfect solution to your problem, we also have a certified Life and Love Coach on hand to walk you through the program and answer any questions you may have. But that’s not all! We’re also going to give you a 12 CD set of soothing and inspirational songs and poetry about love, our specially-designed Strong Love Aromatherapy Kit, the Raw Food And Real Love Cookbook and a Huggin Armz Body Cushion which you can hug every time you feel a little down! Click the link below to chat with DAVID who will take your credit card information and be your personal Life and Love Coach on your exciting journey. Don’t worry! DAVID is a real person from this country and NOT outsourced!

We are honored that you chose us to take this journey of Love with you!

Love,

The Ultimate Love Guru. Com- Free Love Advice From Real People Who Really Care! Not Outsourced! Team

Hi. So you’re saying my friend should do it, right? Because I totally think she should. I think it’s a good plan and would totally work and after it works, the guy, the one she likes, will see what a good plan it is too. I totally think she should do it.

Hi!

Wow! That’s quite a problem! Isn’t Love just a big, crazy game? No wonder you seem so confused! Trust me honey, it confuses all of us! That’s why this website is here to help! We not only have the perfect solution to your problem, we also have a certified Life and Love Coach on hand to walk you through the program and answer any questions you may have. But that’s not all! We’re also going to give you a 12 CD set of soothing and inspirational songs and poetry about love, our specially-designed Strong Love Aromatherapy Kit, the Raw Food And Real Love Cookbook and a Huggin Armz Body Cushion which you can hug every time you feel a little down! Click the link below to chat with ANGELA who will take your credit card information and be your personal Life and Love Coach on your exciting journey. Don’t worry! ANGELA is a real person from this country and NOT outsourced!

We are honored that you chose us to take this journey of Love with you!

Love,

The Ultimate Love Guru. Com- Free Love Advice From Real People Who Really Care! Not Outsourced! Team

The Official Ramayana Twitter Updates

Surpanakha’s Bro Raavana To Join Cast? Check The Site For The Exclusive Inside Scoop!

Storm Clouds on the Horizon – Is Something Big Brewing for the Happy Forest Family? Watch Tonight’s Episode To Find Out More!

Who Is Raavana? Read All About Him On The Site’s Bio Page!

Don’t Forget to Enter Our Contest to Win a Free Stay With the Cast in an Authentic Forest Hut!

Statement on Surpanakha’s Blog to Fans

Hey guys, big shout-out to my fans, you guys are amazing. I’ve been literally flooded with messages and emails and just a lot of goodwill from all you out there and I want to thank you all so much. I’m feeling a lot better now, being with my brother Raavana has been a good change for me. You guys probably saw him on last week’s show and he’s really an amazing guy. And I’m not just saying that because he’s my brother. I’m going to be real with you guys and tell you that we’ve had our problems in the past. But in the end, he’s a man I truly admire and I think as you guys watch the show, you’ll see what there is to admire in him. I’d really appreciate it and consider it a personal favor if you guys could go over and show him some love on his blog and his Facebook fan page. He’s also just joined Twitter and I’m going to give you those links at the end of the post so you guys can head over and say hi.

Also, I just want to say that I think some big changes are going to be happening soon. I’ve been having some really serious, heart-to-heart talks with my brother. I can’t talk about anything just yet but to all my fans, please stay tuned, you won’t regret it, I promise you. Some serious shit is about to go down, I can guarantee it. So don’t forget to keep watching, show my brother Raavana some love at the links below and big love to all of you guys, you mean so much to me and I value each and every one of you. Peace out, ya’ll.

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Exile

Neelanjana Banerjee

I sneak through Exile’s side entrance, hoping I can make it into the costuming area through the Disfigurement Room, the DFR for short, without being seen. Val wants us here at eight pm on the dot, but it only takes me forty-five minutes before I hit the floor in full character.

It’s dark so I feel my way past the VIP section, which will later be cordoned off by a stationary smokescreen. Under my fingers, the plants and vines that cover the living couches break off and turn to dust. Something must be wrong with the irrigation system again, another reminder that we’re barely second tier in the Ramayana cosplay club scene here in Outer Vegas.

Sure, Val has ex-space station security and fast-running kiosks to make sure the clients spend up to twenty percent of their expense budgets, but we’re just not classy. Our authenticity rating is low because the club just looks like the warehouse it used to be and not like you are walking into the Dandaka Forest. The clients’ Sita and Ram costumes are made with fourteen-hour synthetics and they tend to unravel at the end of a long night. To be expected, since they’re mostly call center workers and web clerks, with a heavy smattering of border thugs and other analog criminals. We don’t see the hackers, enviro-moguls and blogcasters here—they stick to the top tier clubs like 800 BCE and Ayodhya on the Strip. Their gear is made from fiber-optic silks programmed to shapeshift you into your favorite character. Even us players are using second-hand equipment, skin lightening chambers and silicon suits from five years ago. Regardless, Val has an eye for raw talent in his players and it keeps Exile as busy as most clubs in the top tier.

I’m almost safely concealed inside the DFR when the light goes on in Val’s office. I duck down, hiding behind one of the dance platforms, still un-retracted from last night. Val’s office looks over the whole club from the top floor of the building. It’s the only place in here that has any sense of authenticity design, with its ambient flame lanterns hanging from the ceiling and a desk that looks like it was cobbled together from axe-cut trees and sanded with monkey hair. But the big draw is the custom-built ant farm that runs through the far walls. He is Valmiki, the scribe, meditating until the ants build their giant mounds around him; or Val, the club owner, watching his world play out below him.

It’s a great hustle, all of it. There’s something special about that office. People tend to buy Val’s whole “wise sage” con up there with his shaved head and ambiguous looks. I did, before I figured out who he really was. When you’re up there you forget about the rest of the club, with its watered-down elixirs and poorly done character summary videos that loop in the atrium to try to catch people up on who’s who of the Ramayana. In top tier clubs, if you don’t know Sumitra from Kausalaya—you can’t get in. But top tier clubs here don’t even com pare to what goes on in India. There, it’s all gone CGE, or computer generated environments. You just plug in and you’re deep in the forest, dancing with a ten foot tall Hanuman.

I peek over the platform and see Val perched on the edge of his desk talking to someone. I don’t want to risk moving, even though they probably can’t see out onto the floor. I can tell by the way he nods his head, his hand thoughtfully cupping his chin, that it’s some girl. No doubt some new player that’s trying to bump her way up the ladder by sucking up to Val. He reaches out to touch her, maybe stroke her hair. She stands up and I see Anita, one of the floor players.

Dammit

Anita has had it out for me ever since I started. At first I thought she was just pissed that I started as a character player and didn’t work my way up from the floor. Then I realized she’s just a backlasher, that she hates anyone that ever had a possibility of reversing to India, especially Indians.

Most of it all happened before Anita and I were even born. Even the history books aren’t quite up to date, so what I know I pieced together from my mother and news archives on the web. I guess The Reverse started at the beginning of the twenty-first century as a slow trickle of retirees and young tech workers. Then about forty years ago, India’s technology infrastructure began to hyperleap anything going on in the First World, especially in America. The massive “earthquakes” that destroyed the technology centers in California had a lot to do with it. Most people think that they were caused by some kind of underground nuclear attack from China, but there has never been solid proof. After that, Indians were the first to reverse, followed quickly by anyone in the upper tax brackets, and then everyone else. But the population of India was so large, that there was no need for any industrial or even menial labor. India’s slums became refugee camps for American and European immigrants looking for a piece of the high-tech Indian Dream. Around this time, India began to control all media production, with everything— cartoons, game shows, soap operas, huge action movies, interactive web series—coming out of the revamped Bollywood studios. The Indian epics became source material for all of it. The cosplay scene grew out of the super popular Ramayana web-comics and animated web series.

Ma says that during the heyday of The Reverse, India’s system was fairly corrupt, which meant that a lot of Indians—especially rich ones—used family connections and bribery to push their immigration paper work to the front of the line. At the same time, as all manufacturing shifted to India, many remaining Indian Americans began to monopolize the lucrative import business. There were media exposes and protests against the corruption but it didn’t do much to stop the gradual transfer of wealth to this one community. Rich Indians began to segregate themselves in clusters of premium, gated high-rise apartment complexes that mirrored those in suburban Delhi and Mumbai. Ma remembers the early stories about the backlash attacks, but it was always written off as a wealth and disparity issue. Of course Indians were subject to violent crime, the media reported at the time, they had the money and America was in economic freefall.

About twenty years ago, India shut down its borders to preserve quality of life. That’s when it got real bad for any Indians left in America. There were bombings and fires at the gated communities in New Jersey, the center of Indian wealth, driving residents out into the streets where mobs were waiting them. It wasn’t much better anywhere else, even for my parents who never had enough to be considered even middle class. It’s been five years since the Backlash Laws, but it’s ignorants like Anita that screw it up for everyone. If only she knew that, even though I’m Indian, I probably have less of a chance than her of ever ending up there—especially if I want to help my mother.

I sneak a peek up at the office again and see that they’re staring out the windows, pointing to where I am hiding. Dammit dammit dammit. I hear them come onto the balcony outside of Val’s office.

“There’s the disfigurement room,” Val says. “You take clients in there for the role play, and then a hatch leads you back down.”

“I know the DFR in and out, Val,” Anita says. “I know I could do a better Surpanakha than she does.”

I hear their footsteps moving towards the spiral staircase that leads onto the floor. As they wind down, I take the opportunity to slip into the room and disappear.

At the kidney center, my mother’s dialysis machine beeped louder and louder, like the UV alarm at our apartment on particularly bad days making sure we don’t even open the skylights. After the earthquakes of 2020, anyone on the West Coast who didn’t reverse ended up somewhere in the Greater Vegas area—even though the neon gas leaks have destroyed the ozone layer, making it practically impossible to go outside without serious protection.

The nurse actually pounded on the machine with her fist to make it work. “Does that usually help?” I asked her. She just pounded it again, making my mother jump. “Hello? Does that fix it?” I said. The nurse looked Mexican, or maybe Filipino. It’s hard to tell because everyone’s so mixed. Lately, there’s been a huge influx again from Mexico, the Border gangs have been especially active in bringing in new people, and pulling strings to get them into jobs. Jobs that they are not qualified to do. I glared at the nurse, who looked like she was nineteen years old. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Don’t yell at her. It’s not her fault,” my mother said patiently, smiling at the nurse. “Que esta bien.”

The nurse pounded the machine again and the beeping stopped, but then the machine powered down, all the lights and numbers disappearing.

“What happened?” I said, getting up. “Wait, what’s going on? It can’t just stop. It’s…she’ll…that’s not good. Ma? Ma, are you okay?”

After the nurses revived my mother from fainting, the other machine was freed up and the same nurse who broke the first machine hooked her into that one.

“Don’t look so worried, Sapna,” Ma said.

“How old do you think these machines are anyway? Do you know what they can do in India now? They have a regulator that they can inject into your bloodstream that replaces the kidney. You don’t even have to get surgery.”

“I could get surgery across the border in Arizona.”

“Ma, are you kidding? Do you know what they do to Indians over there? I’m going to take care of it,” I said, looking at my wrist browser for the next shuttle to the entertainment sector.

“With your call center job?” She fixed her eyes on the machine.

“I’m late,” I said, kissing her on her sagging cheek before leaving.

The costuming room is overly bright, everyone’s LED mirrors turned to high. I rush into my area and quickly peel off my UV suit. I have a feeling that Val and Anita are going to show up and I want to be well into my skin-lightening process by then. The place is already toxic with the epoxy Monroe uses to put on the layer of hair for his Hanuman suit.

“Monroe! How many times do I have to tell you to use the fan or go do that somewhere else?” I yell over to him.

“Damn girl, you getting any sleep?” He says, looking over at me over the aerosol brush he uses to spray another layer of body glue across his large hairless chest. Samoans always play Hanuman because of their size and hairlessness. They also have the best REM reducers, which I need to keep up my pace of work. I sink into my makeup chair and think back to Val’s hand stroking Anita’s face.

“Everything okay?” Tania emerges from the bathroom with her Golden Deer suit on. It’s not lit up and glowing, like it will be under the black lights, but she still looks beautiful. The last Golden Deer, Maria, looked like she was wearing one of those fat melting suits the rich kids in Mum-bai wear when she wasn’t on the floor, but Tania is different.

“Lot going on,” I mumble. Tania makes me nervous, with her shiny dark skin and hazel eyes. She’s new here and I feel like it’s a cliche that I have a crush that’s so debilitating, since her job is to be slightly out of reach. Even the Lust Dust baggies I see on the floor at the end of the night come with Golden Deers printed on them.

“Can you help me with something?” Tania asks and I come over to her table. She says she can’t figure out how to get the right color out of the eye makeup console. I give her some basic options: black, blue, brown.

“But I think this color would really work for you,” I say and type in a code that produces a gold tinged green. “It’ll bring out your eyes.”

Tania smiles at me in the mirror. “Thanks,” she says and I feel my cheeks get hot. When I am back at my station, undressing to go into the skin lightening chamber, she turns my way.

“You really Indian?” she says softly. I clench my jaw. It’s always the nice ones that will give it to you the worst.

“So?”

“Oh no,” Tania says. “I mean, I didn’t mean anything. I just … was curious.” I keep my scowl on, but her big hazel eyes appear concerned and I wonder if she’s, maybe, telling the truth.

“What’s your background?” I ask, still cautious.

“I don’t know, some mix, like everybody else. Supposedly, I had great-grandparents that came from Brazil before the fires started burning down there. But I think mostly I’m Mexican,” she shrugs. “That’s why it’s cool, you know what you are.”

Part of me wants to tell her everything that’s going on with me. She has that look. Her neck is impossibly long and fragile. Her lips are lush and she has slightly crooked teeth—the kind that don’t need a trip to the unlicensed dentists across the border to fix. I mean sure, I want to kiss her, but I kind of just want to talk to her. I want to tell her that without better dialysis, my mom’s not going to last two years. I want to tell her how in India, the health care system would mean we wouldn’t have to pay for dialysis or even wait for the implant. I want to tell her how I have it figured out, that already recruiters have been approaching me to work on the space stations, not just the moon—but the Mars satellites and further. It’s totally unregulated country out there, so the clubs are crazy but they’ll guarantee enough money in the accounts and enough connections to get my mom to India. Most contracts are two years at a time, but we’ve been living underground in Vegas long enough that I’ve forgotten the concept of living under regular earth sunlight anyway.

But before I can say anything, Val comes in. I can hear him talking to the other character players: the Filipino drag queens that he hired away from some top tier club to play Kaikeyi, Sumitra and Kausalya, who complain that they don’t have their own costuming area; then round-faced Kika, who plays Jatayu, complains to him that her feathers fall out and then the clients steal them. She wants security to help her take them back from the clients before they leave the club.

When I catch sight of him through the garment racks overflowing with silicon suits, prosthetics and glittery synthetics, I am so angry I want to spit at him for even engaging with Anita about giving away my job. I observe his thin, finely-shaped beard and his shaved head. It’s so obvious to me that Val’s just like me, an Indian left behind—meaning his family waited too long, like mine, or made some serious mistake. But Val could pass for anything: Mexican, Central American or even some Filipino mix and probably never had to deal with being Indian because of it. I never had it so lucky: my hair just curly enough, my ass not round enough, my skin a different enough shade of brown. And when my dad was killed, we were all over the news. Passing just wasn’t an option for me. It makes me a better player though, especially for Suparnaka, and Val knows that. I’m sure that’s why he hired me, but the knowledge between us makes things strained. He’s always given me a hard time, not like the other girls who fuck their ways to bigger percentages.

I scramble to get the settings on the skin lightening bed ready, but the machine takes a few minutes to warm up. Then suddenly he’s there, standing behind Tania, placing his hairy knuckles on her shoulders.

“How are you feeling?” he asks. Tania smiles back at him full-force. I bite my lip, mad at myself for falling for her flirting. She’s smart and knows how to get whatever she wants. This is Vegas after all. “You know, the Golden Deer look, it’s really all in the eyes.”

Val grabs the laser eye liner and tilts her chin towards him. He punches a different color code into the controller. “Now, close for me.” He sweeps the glowing brush against her lid, drawing a tapering bronze streak towards her hairline. Tania opens her eyes and it kind of takes my breath away.

“Perfection,” Val says and Tania giggles, her damn crooked incisor like a little stab in my heart. The lightening chamber dings and Val and Tania look my way.

“You’re not ready yet?” Val asks, his expression turning stern.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say.

“I want you here early so you don’t look all rushed.”

“It doesn’t seem to be a problem for me or my clients.”

“Look Sapna, you’re supposed to lure the clients in by looking like someone they want to fuck,” Val says loudly, making a big show of it just to embarrass me. “If you’re just all demonness, maybe I can cut your pay in half.”

“I got it, Val,” I say sweetly. “Now, if you leave, maybe I can get ready.”

He opens his mouth to say something else, but then Anita comes into the room behind him and makes a big show of explaining why she’s late. Val ignores her and she rushes off to her area. I narrow my eyes at him and he hesitates at the door, but then turns and stomps off . Tania catches my eye again and gives me a sympathetic look, but I ignore her.

I reach for my silicon suit that compresses my belly flat and concave. It even turns my large full breasts into small perky ones. It works better when I have to transform into Surpanakha’s true form in the DFR, where the client gets to cut off my nose, ears and breasts. It’s all done with flesh prosthetics and special disappearing blood serum that covers everything, but is gone by the time the client leaves the room. For as much as Val gives me a hard time, the club wouldn’t run without the Surpanakha player and the Deer. We make the most money, and it’s well deserved. I can turn demonness like it’s nobody’s business.

In the chamber, I try to fight it, but I fall asleep, the REM reducers wearing off . In the dream, I’m walking with my dad. He’s dressed like King Dasaratha, in the best costume I’ve ever seen. He has a heavy gold crown and ornaments and is robed in real silks made from silkworms. He’s even wearing a fake beard made of real human hair.

“I thought you hated the Epics,” I say to him. “Remember?”

He points and I look ahead of us and Tania is standing on a dance platform, naked, her small breasts curving up towards the ceiling. She presses a button and molten gold drips down from the sky, covering her body. Then my father walks over to her and presents her with a set of bronzed antlers fitted with gemstones. I look to my right and see Val disappearing down a corridor. I go to chase him but then remember my father is here. When I look back, it is just Tania, glowing so brightly I can’t see anything else.

“Where is he?” I yell, but the air is sucked out of my throat. “Where did he go?”

The lightening chamber timer wakes me with a start.

After my prosthetics are firmly situated and the blood packets are full, I pull on a blond wig over a skullcap covering my thick curls. I pick a silvery sari with a strapless blouse and line my arms with glass bangles. I lean close to the mirror to apply the lip thickener and eyelash lengthener. I’m going to be focused tonight. I’ll show Val how good I am. I’ll make people tip out over their allowances.

While I’m turning in front of my mirror to make sure everything’s in place, I see Tania looking at me.

“What do you think?” I say.

“Not sure yet,” Tania says. “So, we’re like, the same thing, right? We’re the bad guys?”

“Not in this place,” I say.

“What’s she like?”

“Who?”

“Surpanakha.”

“You just saw her.”

“You didn’t really seem demonness-like.”

“Huh, well, you should come into the DFR with me sometime,” I say, heading towards the door.

“I’d like that,” Tania calls after me. I shake my head, try to remember that it’s her job to seduce me, wonder what she wants.

I usually have a strategic pattern for the night that I switched up recently. I used to go to the bar first, get an elixir—something super strong to jumpstart me, and drink it with a straw. I’d use that time to scope out the floor, make sure I was using my lips and tongue a lot. I shake my hips and sing to the remixes. That way I can scope the whole room, clock what kind of clients we have going on. Then maybe someone would pull me onto the dance floor. But tonight, I just push to the middle of the heaving crowd, DJ Adhara mixing tracks from the latest Ramayana movie—The Taking of Ceylon, III—with reverberating sounds from his electronic tablas. MC Indus wanders through the crowd rhyming the Ramayana verses in his signature Spanish-afflected flow. Adhara loops a haunting flute melody that brings everything together. I dance with my eyes closed, feeling the music. I don’t even think about pulling anyone for the first twenty minutes, I just lose myself. I find it attracts more people in the end, even though I already start to sweat off the skin lightener. By the time I get to the bar, I already have a few people clamoring to buy me drinks.

There are a couple of Rams, their costumes identical, the kind you buy at the big, cheap hundred dollar stores on the main drag—overly-bright blue skin pigment that’s already evaporating around the eyes. You can tell they’re new to the scene. They’re young, just finishing their vocational year that will place them in either a call center or a service center job. They’re the kind of clients that all want to chip in for one session in the DFR. I refuse their drink politely, say I have to powder my nose and catch the eye of a Ravana on the other side of the bar. I nod at him slightly, make my way over.

His costume is nicer than the ones I usually see. He’s wearing a thick crown that projects holograms of Ravana’s ten heads on either side of his own face. He’s wrapped smartly in what looks like real high quality red synthetic, in fact, it almost looks like silk.

“How you doing?” I yell over the crowd.

“What’re you drinking?” He yells back.

“Whatever you’re having, your highness.”

While he’s dealing with the bartender, I look out at the crowd. The club is full. I check out the VIP sections and see the regulars. The Russians with their Filipino wives—they never come in costume, just sit behind their laser ropes and wavy smokescreen and get bottle service all night. Then there’s the older Mexican men, who look ridiculous in their designer costumes, like they don’t know exactly what they are supposed to be doing but they know it’s hip, sipping on their elixirs in rough hewn wooden cups. One time, Val brought one over to me and when we went into the DFR he got so freaked out by the scene, he ran out without paying and Val blamed me for not taking the client along on the ride with me. I think he meant I should have just rubbed one out for him.

The Ravana, whose skin is dark, so I think maybe he’s Nicoya, hands me the Brahma Elixir. It’s the most expensive one we serve. I wonder what illegal way he makes his money, and wish I could ask him. The way he’s dressed, he probably runs some kind of border trade, most likely people. I reach inside my blouse and set the transform timer.

“So, what do you do?” I ask, fishing for whether he wants to play this traditional or modern.

“What do you mean? You don’t know who I am?” he says, his holograms flashing their demon teeth at me.

“Oh, of course I do, King Ravana,” I bow before him. The Ravana clients are usually perverts, because the story gets twisted into some dirty incest thing. I keep telling Val that we should employ all the char acters. The Ravanas would have a field day with a Sita abduction room where we could have a flying chariot. “I am just a maiden wandering along the Godavari River, picking flowers for my hair. Would you like to accompany me on my path?”

He nods and I take his thick hand and weave into the dance floor. I dance in front of him for awhile before he begins to move. He does the un-rhythmic dance of someone too thick with muscle. I smile at him and he grabs me by the wrist and painfully turns me around, holding my arm against my chest and groping at my breasts. I elbow him off of me but he grabs a hold of my waist and grinds into my ass instead. I elbow him again but it makes him grab me even tighter and I surrender to his breath in my ear. Luckily, the timer goes off and I turn around violently.

“Ravana, don’t you recognize me?” I scream, ripping off my blonde wig and skullcap and letting my thick black hair tumble out. “It is I, Surpanakha, your demonness sister!”

The people dancing around us cheer and point, I smear off my face makeup and release my body-altering suit and Ravana’s face twists in disgust.

“Vamanos,” he says roughly.

I lead him through the crowd, hissing and spitting at any Sita I see, to their delight.

In the DFR, I type in “Ravana”, and make sure the security monitor is on. Even though I have full reign to do whatever I want and the client can only use the hologram swords, it doesn’t mean that they don’t try it. Once everything is activated, I get up on the pedestal and scream and pound my chest.

“Ravana, brother, I was disguised because I no longer want to be a demon like you, you disgust me!” I hiss and kick at his head.

He stares at me blankly. I point to the dialogue generator monitor next to him. He looks down.

“How d… are you,” he barely reads, pausing over the last word.

“Sister,” I fill in for him.

“Sister,” he repeats like a wayward student.

“You are the filth of the earth! Demon king? Ha! Rama is a God, a god that will destroy you. You are nothing! You think with your fine clothes and your many heads that you can rule the universe, you don’t even have power over me,” I screech, spitting on the floor to the left of him. “You are nothing,” I improvise. “A dark-skinned peon on this universe. The true rulers will inherit the earth, and nothing you do will stop them.”

I’m laying it on thick, my screeching sending showers of spittle down on the dude and I can tell he’s getting irritated. But I’m on a roll. I know his next line reads: “Sister, you have betrayed our kind and I cannot let this pass.” He looks down and opens his mouth, but I cut him off .

“You are the betrayer, the betrayer of your people to lead us astray like this. Rama will turn you into a little girl, he will use his Monkey God to cut off your balls and then I’ll be more of a man than you! In fact, I always was more of a man than you, brother.”

It feels good to stand above him, my clothes ripped and my blood on fire. The Ravana is angry now and he reaches for one of my legs to pull me off the pedestal, but the shield is up and it shocks his hand, making him jump back.

I laugh at him loudly, but I know the next screen advises him that it is his time to disfigure me. He struggles to read the screen, but then suddenly he figures it out and turns to me excitedly, revenge in his eyes. I continue to laugh at him, belittle him. The hologram sword emerges from the floor and the pedestal sinks me to the ground.

The Ravana line reads: “Sister, I worshipped you more than any woman, but you have brought this shame on yourself. I cannot look on you, and no man shall look on you.”

I humble myself, begging Ravana’s forgiveness but raise myself enough that he can swing the hologram sword at me, pretending to chop off my breasts, nose and ears, blood gushing up from special pipes in my costume. When he looks down, all he sees is my hair whipping about in rivulets of red.

While I am screaming and thrashing, the monitors start flashing: “Thank You for Playing at Exile! Please exit to Account Kiosk!”

I continue to thrash on the floor until I hear him exit, then I get up, gather my parts and take the back way to the dressing rooms again. I have fifteen minutes to rest, get a new costume on and make it out again. On a good night, I’ll play with eight clients—on a slow night four or five.

I’m drinking an energy elixir and flipping through my costumes, when Val comes in.

“You need to stick to the script,” he says.

“Why are you watching me work?”

“I watch everybody work. This is my club and I want you to stick to the script.”

“So, I improvise a little. They love it.”

“I’m not messing around Sapna, you stick to the script or I’m switching you to a job that you can handle,” he huffs. “I don’t need you getting hurt and calling attention to this place.”

“I know this is just cause that Backlasher Anita is sucking your dick and wants my job.” He ducks his head at the mention of her.

“Don’t call her that,” Val says.

“Of course, you would defend her on that point. What’s your real name Val? Raj? Oh no, wait, maybe it’s Vivek? That was always a popular name for an Indian boy.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Val shakes his head. “I’m just trying to look out for you.”

“What? Are you joking? I have enough shit going on without this. If I was losing percentages, if people were asking for something else, that’s one thing, but I do a good job, so leave me alone.”

“Sapna, look…I…don’t know what’s going on with you, but don’t do it,” Val says seriously, looking down. His cheeks are red, even through his dark skin, and he looks suddenly like a little boy.

“What are you talking about?”

“The recruiters. I have to let them come in because of…because of some of our investors, but, please, don’t talk to them.”

“I have to,” I say, embarrassed.

“Look, it’s against your contract. You break your contract and we’re gonna have big problems,” Val is all business again and I can’t believe for a second I thought he actually cared about me. I stare back at him evenly, though my heart is hammering with fear. I don’t know if he’s bluffing or if he really could trap me with some stupid contract shit.

Suddenly Monroe comes in, the fur on his left leg hanging in a strip. “Val, man, I need an upgrade. I sweat like a mofo out there and it just burns through this body glue.”

After my run-in with Val, I jump into the ion shower that removes all the sweat and makeup, but never leaves me feeling very clean. I think about the Ravana, how he could barely read and his rage-filled eyes, like how he would have murdered me if he could have gotten close enough. I know the space station jobs would mean I would play Surpanakha without a barrier.

I check my browser and see a message from my mom saying she got home okay. She knows that I don’t work at a call center, but we keep that charade going to keep things simple. She doesn’t get the cosplay scene. My mother is fourth gen, so she doesn’t actually speak any Indian language or know much about the gods. I know more about Hindu mythology than she does because I grew up with it on TV. The Reverse was just ramping up when my parents graduated from high school. They met in their mandatory agriculture year, farming inside the domes in Iowa. Now everything is grown or synthesized in India. Anyway, agri year sounded crazy—a year of hard labor, drugs and poly sex. Ma was wild, living up to the expectations of it all. My father was quiet, she said, the type who did his work and whose only contraband was a pile of paperback books, which were banned just that year when everything went mandatory digital. She heard about his stash and went to see him one night and found him with a light source under the covers of his bunk, reading. She says she fell in love with him right then.

After agri year, they decided to take another year off and travel around the Americas. Ma says they rode around in an old electric pick-up. Dad was part of a whole underground scene of analog-heads, and they would get together and trade in paper books and vinyl records—smoke drugs rolled in paper. After settling down in North Vegas, they became a part of the “slow life” movement. Americans who were against the reverse and thought they should embrace the times by becoming self-sufficient—growing their own food, creating their own media, even making their own paper—my dad’s specialty.

Their parents and brothers and sisters kept putting them on lists to reverse. My mom’s brother had a good job lined up for both my parents as managers in digitizing a jute mill outside of Kolkata, but they were against it, too caught up in their stupid movement to understand that it had no future. My dad started a blog called Slo-merica about his analog interests and Ma helped out by getting a call center job. When they got pregnant with me, Ma realized she wanted to be with her family and friends, but by that time India had shut down the border and you needed to have millions to make it back. We were stuck.

I’m back on the floor extra fast. I don’t care what kind of mind games Val is playing, there are obviously recruiters around and I need to find one. It’s getting more crowded now, and I’m in a silver wig and white sari that glow like a beacon in the black lights. I do a pretty standard Lakshman. He sticks to the script, and giggles through the whole thing—not getting too riled up, even though I stick it to him about his emasculation next to his God Brother and dirty talk him about how he masturbates at the thought of Sita.

Then I’m back out with a long braided wig and an ancient sari wrap with no blouse. I set up by the bar this time. Tania appears in the balcony next to the DJ booth. The crowd murmurs, looking up at her as she undulates and even I can’t look away. She disappears again and a bunch of people run to the kiosk to bid on being the one to capture her, which pretty much means a private dance where you get to aim arrows at her until she dissolves. It’s a lot more sensual and pretty, less harsh and violent than my job. The Lust Dust people love it, the arrows have these light bursts at the end and the whole thing is mad erotic.

After the buzz around Tania’s appearance settles down, I see a Lakshman clocking me from across the bar. I can tell from where I am that his costume is upscale, his simple arm bands have the heft of real gold or at least painted metal—not like the usual soft plastic. Instead of waiting for him to come to me, I move towards him and he watches me dispassionately.

“Hey there,” I greet him. “Wanna dance?”

“Let’s cut the shit and go straight to the room,” he says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” I protest, turning to move away.

He reaches out and grabs my wrist, his hand like a vise.

“I heard about you,” he says lecherously, motioning to the VIP section and I see that the Ravana is watching us. Next to the Ravana, is a short Russian man. They point at me and talk. Then, suddenly, Val is there, whispering into the Lakshman’s ear. He looks at Val menacingly, but drops my wrist and walks away.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I yell at Val.

“I wanted to do a session.”

“What? Did you see that guy’s costume?”

“I’ll pay you double,” Val grabs me by the upper arm and I know he’s not playing. I see Anita clocking us from behind him.

He pulls me into the DFR and once we get inside, I look at him and he motions towards the pedestal. “Go on,” he says.

“Those were recruiters, weren’t they?”

“This has nothing to do with that. Think of this as a performance review.”

“There’s no script for you,” I say.

“Freestyle it. That’s your thing anyway, isn’t it?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because there are people in line for your job.”

I roll my eyes and then realize there’s nothing to do but play.

“So, what, the timer has already gone off ?”

“Whatever.”

“I can’t just start from there.” I go to the control booth and punch in an especially sultry number, low bass and deep beats. I order Val a double elixir, push him back on the sofa.

“There is a whole art to this thing,” I say, winking, trying to get the rage out of my head. I want to show Val that I’m an expert.

I dance for him in my costume, letting my sari slip and my waist beads jingle in time with the music. Val eyes me warily, his eyes darting to the door and to his watch.

“What? You gotta be somewhere?”

“No, just go ahead,” Val looks increasingly uncomfortable. I come off of the platform, and kneel next to Val.

“So, Great Sage, I’ve heard of your amazing feats, that you meditated for so long that you can control all of your animal instincts and urges,” I whisper into his ear, breathily. I place a hand on his leg. “Is it true what they say, that you have mastered the arts of…”

Val brushes my hand away and stands up, looking angry. “See, you shouldn’t be down here. This is what I’m talking about. Just get on the platform and go ahead and transform.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” I get onto the platform and press the button that changes the music into the manic frenzy of beats I use for my transformation.

“Oh Valmiki, great sage, I recognize you better up close. You’re nothing but a thief, a lowlife…you didn’t create this story, you just wrote it down,” I say harshly. “You hide behind this disguise, but I can see through you.”

I throw the braided wig onto the floor and shake loose my real hair, that’s gotten increasingly more and more tangled as the night has progressed. I quickly insert my fanged retainer.

“You dirty old man,” I yell. “You false idol, you fakester! You should have been buried by those ant hills you sat upon, that would have been better for this world, than perhaps Sita could have told the story properly, Ravana…even Hanuman would have created this world better than you. You think I’m a demon, a raksha? You’re every bit a demon as I am, but at least I can admit it.”

All the while, Val sits on the couch staring up at me, holding me steady with his gaze. My costume is in shreds, my sari hanging off my shoulders. I don’t know what he wants from me.

“Do it,” I say.

Val shakes his head. I hand the sword to him. “Do it! We have to play it out!”

“I know what you do, Sapna.”

“Then why are we in here?”

Val stands up, takes the sword from me and puts in back in its stand. “I’m sorry. I’ll make sure you get paid for this. I want you to take the rest of the night off .”

“What? Val, you can’t fire me for Anita.”

“You’re off the floor, tonight,” Val looks down.

“Look Val, is this about the recruiters? I’ll pay you the contract difference. I need the money.”

“No. I’ll give you an advance. How much do you need?”

“Val, what the hell? You can’t help me, okay.”

“Tell me how much you need,” Val pleads with me and I can believe his intensity.

“I need a reverse voucher,” I yell and Val looks shocked. He slams his fist onto the platform by my feet.

“You don’t know what it’s like up there, okay, my dad worked space station jobs because he thought that’s how he could get us to Reverse, and…and he never came back. It was just me and my brother, okay? So, we didn’t have anyone to protect us from everything. So, don’t get on me for not claiming being Indian, okay, I’m not. They beat it out of me a long time ago, all right?”

The transformation beats are still blaring and I hit the button with my toe to turn it down, and then we just hear the beats distorting from the rest of the club, the movement of hundreds of people.

“Look Val, I’m sorry about your father. But you know, my father went half a mile from our house and never came back. And now, they’re gone and we’re surviving, however we can.”

Val nodded at me solemnly. “Just be careful,” he says. “I don’t want to lose you.”

I look at him and see the weight of running this place, the stress of the years of passing, the sincerity of trying to protect me from whatever danger he thinks is out there. I kiss him on the cheek, and he smiles. It looks sad.

Back in the costuming area, I sit down at my mirror and wipe away the make-up with a shaking hand. I pull out my demonness retainer that gives me big sharp teeth.

I was a little girl when the Epics first started dominating all the media. The backlash was just beginning and there were protests against the movies and TV shows and cartoons, before they became the only stories told. I used to watch the Ramayana anime with my dad. His favorite episodes of the original series was when there would be guests from DC and Marvel, like when Superman was helping Ram fight Ravana, or when the Wolverine from X-Men came to India and fought and then became friends with Hanuman. My dad used to complain about the Epics, saying that the Indianification of everything was a sign of the end of times.

“Even if it’s one of the greatest stories in the world, there are a lot of other stories out there,” he said. My mom teased him, told him to go out and join the protests himself. It was when that could still be joked about, before Indians were being shot in the street.

He was writing about comic books then for Slo-merica, trying to go around and collect them, even though my mom was trying to convince him into a practical job with her at the call center. He was going to pick up a collection of old magazines and comic books that talked about the Ramayana. He was going to do post about it, but I know he wanted the artifacts especially to show me, show me the history of the stories. It was at a warehouse in North Vegas where he often went to trade or buy contraband paper goods. The police later said that someone was probably tipped off , knew an Indian was coming, and that he would probably be carrying cash. A lot of Indians were known to have cash at that time, in getting ready to Reverse, a lot of people liquidated their accounts so they wouldn’t have to declare anything and leave behind the thirty percent that the US government instated that year. It was probably four guys with cro-bars, or planks of wood. When they looked in his wallet, all they found was a benefit card for people with low percentages. No one was ever charged with the murder.

I pull off the remains of my wig, and try to untangle my black curly hair. The streaks of whitened skin and dark skin make me look diseased, mottled like those Indian kids who waste away from plugging directly into the web for twenty hours a day. I need to get Val out of my head, I need to get everyone out of my head and just do the work, get Ma to India, or somewhere close enough that at least has good dialysis machines.

It’s Tania’s time of night now. I watch for awhile from the tunnel before emerging onto the floor. The Golden Deer is always a dancer—gyrating and twirling on the platforms. My Golden Deer crush makes me think she’s otherworldly, and the crowd does, too. They are going wild for her now and she leaps from dance platform to platform. I decided to forego the wig this time, though I straightened my hair, made it a big mane around my head. I wear a black sari with fluorescent embroidery. I step out onto the floor and ease my way into the crowd, the Lust Dust creating large masses of writhing bodies—connected by a hand, sweaty waists, tips of fingers. I went easy on the skin lightening, at this time of night, it’s better to get out to the crowd, people tire of the disguises, they just want the story.

Someone taps me on the shoulder, and I turn and it’s the short Russian man I saw earlier with the Nicoya Ravana. He is sans costume, dressed in black and carrying a small case.

“Can I interest you in an elixir, maybe a moment in our booth?” he asks, all business. He motions over to a private booth in the corner. I can’t see much, but I know that this might be the break I’m looking for. I nod and follow.

The booth is empty but it feels warm and sweaty, as though it was recently evacuated. The Russian pours me a drink from the faux-bamboo carafe on the table.

“Terrible touch, the carafes. Everything should be bronze, silver or Gold,” he says, sneering mildly. “You’d think Val would have better taste.”

“Val makes mistakes,” I say.

“He certainly knew what he was doing with you,” the Russian says, finally looking slightly lecherous—it made me relax more, the expression familiar. “You give great demonness, I hear.”

“Not hard, growing up here.”

“Ah yes, the best players bring themselves forward,” he says, looking me up and down. “My client is willing to offer you a substantial percentage to come to work for him.”

“Tell me more.”

“He’s creating his own stable of players—they would work where he requires, but it’s worth it.”

“Space stations? West China? What are we talking about here?”

“My client has various locations. He is working on developing some frontier boutiques.”

I feel my heart thud in my chest, frontiers, that could mean space frontiers or the Border. Either way, the play would be rough and possibly deadly.

“Sounds exciting,” I say boldly. “I’ll do it for a Reverse voucher for my mother.”

The Russian looks at me carefully. “There’s no such thing,” he says.

“Oh really? That’s too bad.” I say innocently, getting up from the booth “It was great to talk to you. Sounded like a great opportunity.”

“Wait,” the Russian says, looking around. “The voucher can probably be arranged.”

“Oh, how nice,” I reply. He hands me an encrypted chip with his information, tells me to get in touch within the week. I get up and kiss the Russian once on each cheek. His eyes are an icy blue.

“I look forward to working together,” he says.

While I’m walking away from the table, I see Val looking down at me from his office, his arms folded across his chest. He’s just a silhouette and, for a moment, I imagine I can see all the ants behind him, burrowing into the synthetic sand in his walls—imagining they are doing the work for a reason, protecting the queen, their own epic played out as part of our fake one. Val shakes his head at me. I smile up at him, thankful. I can’t remember the last time someone actually looked out for me. Then I turn back to the floor.

Tania glows in front of me, her costume shooting out holograms of herself reflected over the room, so we can only see her image if we tilt our heads up. The ceiling has clouds projected over it to make it seem like we are in the jungle, that we are all dreaming the same dream somewhere. I stop and look up at her image flashing.

Suddenly, she is in front of me, her golden costume covered in tiny beads of sweat that the latex breathes out from the heat of her body. I hear the crowd stir, even in their sluggish Lust haze, because the Deer never usually touches the floor. Tania smiles at me with her crooked incisor, mischievous, daring. She starts dancing with me and I move with her. Before the crowd swallows her up, I see the Russian out of the corner of my eye, standing with the men he works for, the men I might soon work for. I see Val above us, watching all the pieces of his universe. And then, I just close my eyes, and dance, the glow from Tania’s costume flickering behind my eyelids. The music flowing through us, the vines of the fake trees climbing towards the sky.

Making

Aishwarya Subramanian

Months from now a god will casually touch a squirrel. A deceptively human gesture of thanks, his touch will burn through it and alter its very squirrelhood; searing the marks of his fingers onto the backs of all squirrels forever.

Mythili has been touched by a god. He has given her no ornaments, but has traced lines around her neck that glow like chains of gold, anklets for her feet, a line of light that sweeps up into her hair. He has drawn bracelets round her wrists (his hands gripping them tightly, thumb and forefinger just about meeting at the point where she can feel her pulse). These are the marks he has made deliberately but everywhere he has touched her she is radiant. His lightest touches have dappled her skin with brightness. Wherever she stands she will always look as she does now in this forest under these trees, patterned with leaf and sun.

Yet it is she who looks at him. Her husband’s long eyes are shaped like lotus petals. His skin is so much finer than her own that the blue tracery of his veins comes through. He is leaning against the wall of the shelter he coaxed the trees to form in this glade where it is always breezy and mild. When he hums to himself tiny flowers spring up out of the earth in response. He smells of earth and herbs and the very trees yearn towards him, bending their heads closer to the ground to be as near to him as possible. Mythili recognises that feeling better than anybody.

They are being watched. Brother and sister hide in the bushes. When they leave, the grass where they stood is brown and dead.

Meenakshi in her workshop crafts a body fit for a god. Limbs long and smooth, skin petal-soft . The feet are long and narrow, the hands small but with long nails. The hair is copper (they must stay true to their roots) and as it captures the light of the forges it glows. She cannot help but wonder what it will look like when the man in the forest has laid his light-giving hands upon it. Underneath the hair a perfect face -straight nose, wide mouth, lovely, fish-shaped eyes that slant. She lines the eyes with coal dust.

“It won’t work.” her brother Vishravan sounds almost sorry.

She plays with the hair (her hair) and runs a finger down the lovely profile that will soon be hers.

“It will.”

His own workshop is as far away from hers as possible. Meenakshi can do a thousand things that he cannot. She can imitate the waxy texture of the surface of a leaf. She can make small birds that fly, look and sound exactly like the real thing. Only Meenakshi could make herself a body fit for a god. If he asked her to, she could fill the city’s gardens with trees and flowers and birds, make of it the place he dreamt of when he begged for ten years for a kingdom of his own. He does not ask.

Vishravan thinks too often about the frenzied sea turned white and the huge, pliant, living rope so strange under his hands. He has brooded for so long on that ancient story of a contract that was broken that sometimes he believes he was there himself. He knows how proud the Daityas were at being approached, how strange it was to be around these beings with whom they were now equals. The twinge of triumph at being needed, even if only to make up the numbers. And then, when it came to the time to divide the fruits of that great labour, finding out that the decision had been made without them. He doesn’t remember how the Gods looked at him, but he remembers that they lied.

They were promised nectar and given poison. It seeped into them and leached away what powers they had. They crept into the dark corners of the world (often forests, out of some perverse need for revenge) and nursed their wounds. Where they lived nothing would grow. Daityas turn the grass brown when they stand for too long, and animals flee from them as if their breath was toxic. But they can still make things.

Meenakshi’s greatest creations are the ones that look the most real. Vishravan will have no truck with the real. He will let her have her workshop but everything on the surface of the city he prayed for for so long must look made.

He is in his sister’s workshop when Meenakshi leaves. He is still there when she brings back her broken body. Even now it is so lifelike that he can barely look at it. There is a gaping hole where the nose was; one ear still dangles on a tag of flesh and her skin is melted and corroded as if someone had thrown acid at her. His sister is shaken and hurt and also furious. As he comforts her he plays with her beautiful hair and notices how the light falls upon it. The god in the forest must have touched it. He prefers not to think about this.

Mythili’s husband sits under a tree. When he returned from his hunting he wore smears of demon blood and an expression of distaste. Asked where he had been, all he would say was “protecting you” before cleaning himself in the river and sitting down to meditate.

The low, rumbling note that comes from his throat is the oldest thing in the universe. Every living thing in the forest feels it stirring within them when they hear it. What must it be like to be at variance with that sound, as is the creature he has defended her against today? What must it be like to be forever, fundamentally discordant?

The thing the demon builds in his forge bears little resemblance to an actual deer. It is unashamedly fabricated (as if anyone could be taken in by a gold deer)—all polished gears and gleaming metals. But its gait is rather lovely and the bowing of its neck as graceful as that of any real animal. It is very beautiful.

“Capture it for me”.

Mythili has never ordered her husband to do anything before. She is prepared to argue her case (it is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen) but he is already off chasing it through the trees.

Her captor seems strangely uninterested in her. He is a huge man dressed entirely in bronze armour. She cannot see his face. She thinks that he must be blisteringly hot in there. He speaks to her just twice on the journey south, both apologies. Once for the kidnapping, and once for the “barrenness” of his city. They arrive at night and all she can see of his home are the lights in the houses and the gleam of the domes.

Her servants (she has had none since her marriage) are automata, and her home is pink marble. She spends most of her time in the garden outside. There is no grass in Vishravan’s city, but the ground is paved with coloured stones. There are trees of dead wood and dull iron, and the leaves and flowers (she will learn that they were made for her by her captor’s wife) are tinted glass. The strange deer-like thing she saw in the forest is also here, though she doesn’t ask how.

Of necessity she spends a lot of time in the palace. Everyone is wary of her, all but Vishravan’s wife Mandodari. From her she learns that her captor has many brothers (she never sees them while she’s there and all she really remembers is that one is particularly pious and one particularly sleepy), and that the quiet, middle-aged lady who sits next to him on a throne is his sister, a widow and a clever craftswoman. She senses that Meenakshi avoids her on purpose, but even her new mentor doesn’t know why.

She learns that this palace (a wonder in crystal and coloured stone) was made by her protector’s father. In years to come he will make other celebrated palaces but this one, for his daughter, is his masterpiece.

So thoroughly has she been taken under Mandodari’s wing that she is safer in this city than anywhere else in the world. They even hear a story about how her new protector dramatically stepped in to save her from rape by a besotted kidnapper.

In Vishravan’s city the physically strong are called upon to build. They make bridges and monuments and roads from strong blocks of grey and pink stone. The king himself is among them, carrying massive quantities of rock effortlessly. His sister is there too, as strong as he. Mythili has grown up among farmer kings and the first sight of the vast engineering works of Vishravan’s city fills her with awe. The great turbines are constantly in motion on the shore. Water and steam power the city, and massive machines powered by systems of toothed wheels. She will learn that Vishravan has war machines as well.

Those who do not build apply their skills elsewhere. Mandodari is teaching Mythili how to weave cloth from the thin metallic wires that she herself draws from her forge. They are so thin as to be as soft and pliant as thread. Mythili learns to make elaborate pictures in the resulting cloth, and hangs her home with tapestries that gleam where the light touches them and make tiny chink-chink noises when the wind shifts them against the walls. Once she has become proficient their creator weaves for herself a cloth to wear in the rich copper of Meenakshi’s beautiful hair.

She does not like the forges themselves. But the one time she enters Mandodari’s workshop she does make something—a thick ring of pure gold. She presses her fingers into it to decorate it; the metal is still hot and it blisters her fingers but she is pleased with the result. Even when she learns (Mandodari laughs at her) that pure gold is so soft that she could have let it cool. She has had no ornaments since her marriage either.

She will give the gold ring to the first of her husband’s ambassadors along with a message: “Can he not rescue me himself?” By himself, for her, a personal act. Not some sort of cosmic war.

Word comes that her husband’s army has reached the mainland shore.

Ridiculous to imagine that it is outraged pride that propelled the long chase southward. He is hardly a jealous local king. Yet for some reason she has never quite understood he must act out these petty human performances, as if he could not merely think different circumstances into existence. So he performs rage, and standing on the edge of a sea he could part with the mere flick of a hand sends mortal creatures to do his work instead. A vanar is crushed to death when he strays into the path of a boulder that is being rolled into the sea. Her husband has already shot one vanar in the back for the sake of his story. He reaches out a hand to stroke a passing squirrel whose only contribution to this huge enterprise is a handful of pebbles.

Everybody knows the war is coming.

It is while her husband and his motley army are throwing stones into the sea that Mandodari leads her into the forges for a second time. Around them everyone who can be spared from their regular duties has been drafted into making more weapons of iron and bronze; Mandodari is the only one to use gold. Mythili watches as her friend crafts first a necklace and then a thick belt of linked panels of gold.

“To remember us by,” she says, and Mythili realises that she knows how this is going to end. This is the worst moment of all.

The belt is a story. She sees the birth of Vishravan in one panel, and she sees him praying for ten years for his city. And she learns what everyone in the city knows, no matter how hard Vishravan tries to escape it. And she learns that when he crouched in the bushes with his sister, he wasn’t looking at her.

When the city catches fire molten bronze flows through the cracks in the paving into the forges below. She does not know if her friend has escaped.

On the day that she is to be tested Mythili arms herself in metals as an act of defiance. She wears the copper cloth that she wove for herself as a sari, and covers her head. She wears Mandodari’s necklace and belt and covers her arms in bangles.

When she moves forward the heat blisters her skin. She can feel molten copper and gold running down her arms and legs. The ground has already begun to rumble even before she steps into the fire. And then she does, and the earth shatters.

The Good King

Abha Dawesar

The new barbers had yet to master the sequence Ravana had given them. One finished his work even as the other started shaving the last of Ravana’s faces. Ravana was irritated, he was a stickler for timing and symmetry. The idiots were out of sync and as if that weren’t bad enough the last of his faces had an itch. It was the only one he couldn’t reach without curving his contiguous heads. He should never have let his regular barbers go on their annual holiday at the same time.

But this is Lanka, he reminded himself. Whatever the index, Lanka, his Lanka, came out tops—GDP, GNP, health, female literacy, retirement services, child welfare. The quality of life was excellent not just for him, but for every one of his subjects. That brought a smile to his face.

“Anything else, Your Majesty?”

Ravana looked at the eight-foot long mirror in his bathroom.

“I have an itch on that far face just above my moustache on the left side,” he rolled his eyes in the direction of his five heads.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

The barber gingerly ran his fingertips on the few centimeters of ex posed skin beside Ravana’s thick tangle of whiskers.

“Majesties itch like other people, use some force, Barber. And your nails!”

The barber scratched him harder.

Ravana grunted. He knew the man’s name. He never forgot any name but when he was angry he preferred addressing people by their titles.

“Your Majesty, there is an emergency. Your sister is here,” a sentry broke into Ravana’s chambers.

His sisters followed on the guard’s heels. As Ravana opened a mouth to say something she bawled.

Fine-tuned by modern science and amplified by his twenty ears, her cry seemed a lot louder to Ravana than it was. He interrupted it quickly.

“I get it, I get it! Your rhinoplasty has gone wrong again. I told you not to get another nose job. They’re redundant these days. I can configure any form for your face and when you tire of it you can get an other. I don’t have ten brains for nothing. How do you think Lanka got to where it is? A small island that can boast of the best physicists and particle colliders, geologists, microbiologists, neuroscientists, surgeons. Name one thing in which we are not the best?”

“He cut off my nose! This is about me! You were always so vain,” Surpanakha wailed.

“Someone cut off your nose?”

Surpanakha nodded.

“Who would do such a thing? You’re my sister! Did the fellow know?”

“Yes, he knew.”

“Who was it? I’ll show him,” Ravana bellowed.

“You’re smart. You figure it out,” Surpanakha gestured to the guard who produced a crude cleaving knife and laid it in front of Ravana.

“It still has my blood,” his sister sobbed.

“Take my sister to the Emergency room and take this thing,” Ra vana looked at the old-fashioned cleaver with disdain, “to the forensics department. Ask them to scrape the surface for particulates and see if they can get any DNA off the handle. It’s evidence now, which means you wrap it in a piece of plastic. Get going.”

Ravana’s staff , which had been discretely lurking behind thin bam boo partitions, materialized. A man in a black suit whispered into his Bluetooth, men in lab coats came scurrying to take away the item with care.

“What do you mean you can’t match it?”

“Your Majesty, we can’t match this.”

“You said that three times already and I heard with all twenty ears and ten auditory cortices.”

“I’m sorry. We’ve compared the sequence to all the databases in the world. Eight billion humans, none a match. I’m sorry,” the Chief Geneticist hung his head. He had personally overlooked the integration of genetic matching platforms across the world and debugged them. The computing guys had developed a new generation of memory transistor chips to run the computations quickly. Ravana himself had come up with a brilliant algorithm that allowed the machines to sift through billions of useless data points so that they could devote their resources on those sequences that were most likely to match.

“You’re sorry?”

Three of Ravana’s faces were twitching which meant the other seven would soon begin to as well. The Chief Geneticist looked down at his boss’s feet. Forlorn.

“Dammit it! Give me your theories. Why can’t we match these proteins and what can we do to match them?”

“There’s only one possibility,” the Chief Geneticist said with a slight tremor in his voice.

“And?” Ravana roared.

“This man is off the grid. His DNA was never included in any database.”

“That’s impossible.”

The Chief Geneticist nodded his head vigorously.

“Unless?” Ravana prodded.

“Unless he has been continually off the grid for the last six years.”

“Get my sister!”

“I’m right here,” Surpanakha said. Was she really that transparent? Even when they were children her brother had refused to give her any importance. However, if matters ever came down to her status as his sister he would be out there protecting her like a piece of property before she could object.

“Where were you when he attacked you?”

“I’m not sure. I was playing on that new hybrid-reality machine you built but then the landscape looked so good I decided to parachute into a swathe of forest from the game for the real feel of things. He was quite beautiful though his brother was more beautiful.”

“Wait, did you see these two fellows on the game before you went there?”

Surpanakha nodded.

“They were kind of the reason I went there,” she said shyly.

“Get the game log. I can back engineer the game and work out the locations at which the GPS inputs were coming in from. Ask one of the space guys to beam us all the satellite logs so we can cross-check the satellite locations when she was using the system.”

Ravana’s Chief of Staff opened a bamboo panel and pressed a button. Walls moved, windows opened, translucent panels slid from the ceiling to the floor. In seconds the area was converted into a large workspace with real time screens feeding information from the heavens and the earth. The oceans. The mountains. From below ground level a large executive chair came up. Ravana sat in it and pressed a button. Tiny precision devices calibrated his exact position and small but sturdy supports came out of the contraption so he could rest his chins on them. His minions put ten eyeglasses on his ten faces. Without these it was hard to keep the eyes from one head wandering to the zone of another and then his ten different brains went into overdrive.

“I’m ready.”

In minutes Ravana had what he needed. He pressed a button and turned the north face of the room into a large projecting screen and showed Surpanakha a re-run of what she had been watching. Two thin fellows in costume were walking around as if they were leading a boy-scout expedition.

“That’s them.”

Ravana consulted some information and spoke from his third face, he had a habit of indicating which of his heads had done the thinking.

“Let’s go back there and sweep the area with some satellites. I’m going to focus three sub-orbital satellites in this area for a few minutes.”

He pressed another button and a map lit up on the screen.

“Check what these satellites are up to now,” he said.

“Your Majesty, they are scanning looted ruins in Jordan to compute the extent of damage since last week.”

“Three minutes won’t kill them. Let’s go. Everyone, watch for those two.”

Ravana overrode the commands. Technically since the rest of the world loaned these satellites from Lanka they were not supposed to be veered off course unless there was a global emergency. The satellites recalibrated as they swept the region.

“Wait, there’s the hut,” Surpanakha said.

Ravana pressed another button.

“My lord, who is she?” he whispered under his breath.

“I thought that was one of the characters in your game, she was there on the screen last time but she wasn’t there when I got in,” his sister said.

“I can tell the GPS data from what’s generated by the computer. She’s real. Get me that location.”

“Yes, your Majesty,” his Chief of Staff said.

“Brother, your new stuff is really good. One can’t tell the virtual simulations from the real inputs at all. Even when I got there sometimes I wasn’t sure if one of the items on the scene was real or not.

“That’s the beauty of constructing virtual reality from realistic real time data!”

“We have it,” said a scientist.

“I need you to generate virtual images of the forest. Make them the best holograms you ever made. Sound. Smell. I want the works. No one in the forest should be able to distinguish between their environment and the artifacts we place in them from more than six inches away.”

“Yes, your Majesty.”

“Make some scenes with a cute cuddly little deer with small white spots. I think they are indigenous to the region. Can you check?”

“Yes, Your Majesty, they are.”

“Good.”

Ravana focused. He was as deep inside as he had ever gone. Even Sita and his recent obsession for her had blown away like paper-thin peanut husks rising in a breeze.

The fabric of space-time had more than one rip. And the rips created wormhole bridges. They were key to traveling across galaxies in short periods of time. Ravana had been sitting cross-legged for three days meditating on his great grandfather Brahma to acquire the power to cross these wormholes. Ravana had been across the galaxies before but he wanted hundreds of traversable wormholes now for near instant travel. He also wanted knowledge of all the coordinates and energy states necessary for quantum tunneling. He wanted to mix new science with old-fashioned magic so that he could seamlessly move from the internal to the external world, from Earth to outer space, from Sita’s brain to his. The only one out there who could make it possible was the Creator himself.

The Creator had been miffed with Ravana. At first he’d looked on bemused as Ravana recruited scientists from all fields and pumped them with the herbs he had been given as a boon. But things got less funny as Lanka outdid itself with each passing week. Just like the universe, which was accelerating its expansion, Lanka’s progress followed a steep upward rise, from geometric to exponential and then rocketed ahead beyond any known curve that had been defined. Relaxing one day inside his flower, listening to Saraswati play her veena, Brahma began to suspect that Ravana was trying to oust him. He was intent on reverse engineering all of Creation. The inert matter of physics, the forces of cosmology, the evolving systems of biology, nothing was excluded from the cool analyzing gaze of Ravana or his crack team. Brahma sighed. He let it be. He went back to Saraswati.

Now he was puzzled by Ravana’s meditation. No one had prayed to the old man with such intensity in a while. And yet Ravana’s devotion was complete, pure. Like it had always been. Three days and four hours later Ravana shook out his limbs and stretched. He had been granted yet another boon. One of his computational heads would be able to work out the necessary equations on the fly and scan the known universe for rips. Gravity’s dance, the slowing of time, the stretching and bending of it, the weak force, the brane that limited the form of the universe, in short—everything, would yield it’s secrets to Ravana. The cosmological constant, formulae accumulated from decades of precise astronomy, data honed from thousands of terrestrial spectographs, the deepest nature of every gluon, muon, quark, and boson, would sit along the information superhighway that transmitted signals in and out of Ravana’s many brains. If science had yet to discover it, Brahma would pass along the necessary detail as a gift.

“But you can do all of this through pure maya. What do you want all this information for? Why get your hands dirty?”

“I’m tired of having my way through magic. I want to earn the results. I know I’m asking here for a short cut but my goal is to stop asking for short cuts all together one day,” Ravana had replied, bowing humbly.

“So that you don’t have to pray anymore?”

“On the contrary. I’ll want absolutely nothing in return from you. What better proof that the prayers are real?”

Ready and prepared, Ravana barked swift orders to his team of scientists and technicians. They showed him the four hundred reality holograms they had prepared while he was meditating, all simulacra of the original forest that a fleet of GPS scanners and high-resolution satellites had mapped to the last detail. Even if Sita kept track of the small buds opening on the flowerpots of her tiny window she would be easily fooled by a movement here or there, a small animal grazing, a husband in the distance.

His scientists fussed so much presenting the holograms that Ravana got suspicious.

“Does this mean you don’t have the results of the other calculations we started running on the supercomputers last week?”

“I’m afraid, Your Majesty. We should have them soon.”

“Just one more thing,” he lectured the elite group of astronomers and physicists on his payroll, “last time I traveled across the galaxies the process was not perfect. I want this to be smooth. Sita shouldn’t guess she is anywhere but home.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” they replied together.

“We’ve tweaked the teleportation algorithms a little and solved that problem,” the Chief of Staff said.

Ravana set off.

On the one hand, Ravana was irritated by the delay in getting the full list from his powerful network of supercomputers that were hammering at the problem. On the other hand, he was delighted. The delay could only mean one thing. The list was long, very long. Longer than anyone could have imagined had the Mathematics been tested before. In five years he would lift the publishing restrictions and his crack team would author papers, reiterating once more that the tiny realm of Sri Lanka, pollution-free, prosperous, and peace-loving was also, still, home to the world’s most brilliant minds. That is, in addition, to his own ten. A king is only as good and happy as the lowest, dumbest, and poorest of his subjects. This he believed.

His reverie was broken.

“Your Majesty, we have the list. We can upload the data to your ear piece.”

“Do that.”

“Done!”

“How many?”

“Eighteen thousand planets of which at least seven hundred and nine teen should correspond to ours until at least four years into the future!” declared his Chief of Staff .

“Good.”

“No doubt we shall have more information to pass you in the future since the set of multiverses with planets corresponding to ours is not a finite one.”

In the small forest where Ravana arrived, one of the few sweeps of dense green foliage left in the sub-continent, everything went as planned. Sita fell for the very first virtual hologram with surround sound that he tried. A small dear. Cute doe eyes. Tush as cute as a baby’s bottom.

Rama gave it chase, eager to please Sita. Ravana couldn’t blame him. He would have done the same. After some hawing, that annoying younger brother who had cut off Surpanakha’s nose drew a ridiculous magnetic field from an ancient physics textbook to keep Sita within the house and went looking for his older brother. What an idiot!

Time is everything. If one can live longer than anyone else one can know more than anyone else. Ravana had lived and lived. He knew much. And with ten heads he knew a hundred million times more than he would have with one. He had engineered the new neural net himself, making sure that the emergent properties of the network far exceeded anything known to complexity theorists of the time.

“Time is nothing, Sita, it doesn’t even exist. I’m going to still it and you won’t even know. We’re going to remain in these few minutes for an eternity. We will cross the known universe, we will live other lives, we will be together, we will be apart. You will see me as a monster with ten heads, you will see me younger and more handsome than any other being on earth, you might even see me as that darling husband of yours. No one, not even me, has ever gone on this journey before. And I am choosing to take it with you.

“Welcome to the multiverse, Sita, where a million versions of a million universes exist. So enormous is the magnitude of these worlds that even with the lowest probabilities, our own earth with you and me and all that there is in it, exists some eighteen thousand times over and over as of today.

“Welcome to a new physics of quantum entanglement that makes it possible for us to arrive in another place, however remote. And welcome to a taste of my charms. Without my maya even with all the science in the world you could never really live this experience from the inside out. Without maya you would be reduced to an outside observer observing a fake version of you,” Ravana thought to himself. The silent dialogue with Sita stoked him. His two brains devoted to emotion heated up his whole body in a way that nothing had in the recent past.

Ravana remained invisible and checked out the magnetic field. Obviously the little brother only knew about three dimensions. Ravana worked out the ten dimensions around Sita’s hut and computed a complicated path in and out of the hut that would leave the magnetic field undisturbed.

“Devi, I’d like to speak to you for a minute,” he called from outside, visible now with one head and a simple garb.

“Please come here, Sir, I am not allowed to cross this line,” she replied.

In the time it took Sita to blink he had materialized on the inner side of the magnetic field.

“I mean no harm, Devi,” he said politely.

Sita opened her mouth to speak. The Broca’s area of her brain lit up, her motor cortex fired neurons so that she would take in air to speak, her tongue moved forward. Ravana performed his moment of maya. In that tiny fraction of a second when Sita’s brain was concentrating on other things, Ravana gave his command for teleportation. The photons in their respective bodies moved into a state of entanglement, they moved across the galaxy to the first of seven hundred and nineteen planets. It was the only one on the list which was in their own Milky Way.

By the time Sita closed her mouth they were experiencing another possibility, another life. In the first parallel universe of their visit, Sita replied, “I believe you, Sir, please come in and sit down. My husband will be back soon. We are simple people but you can eat dinner with us and my brother-in-law will give you his bed to sleep on should you wish to spend the night before continuing on your pilgrimage.”

Ravana let them hang for a few seconds in this world. He had never combined his age-old boon of maya with strides in neuroscience and modern physics. String theory. Quantum entanglements. Shared Qualia. Personally, he had felt a little cheap in the previous Ramayanas when he had been forced to resort to sleight of hand to deceive people. Deception. How he loathed that word! It was this disgust that had propelled his interest in Mathematics, Physics, Neuroscience, Geophysics. More over, he was sick of the Ramayana, at least of the parts that involved him. He was interested in putting another one out there in the future, one that Sita and he actually lived. He could have replaced the traditional epic in every e-reader and audio book with his own version, in a few years no one would even suspect that it had been changed, but Ra vana wanted truth and reality over magic and maya. Sita and he would live it first. Authentically.

Reconstituting themselves, traveling in split seconds through worm-hole after wormhole, Ravana and Sita lived over and again. He was a great believer in small tiny variations in initial condition that accumulated to cause enormous differences of outcome over a period of time. When they found the right story, on one of the parallel Lankas and In-dias they visited, he wanted to tell her about the variations they had lived. In one parallel world Ravana showed Sita a flash of the real him with ten heads, in another he told her how the current Ramayana really went.

“Even though you wouldn’t come willingly with me and I was a villain, your husband threw you out of the house in any case,” he said.

“Rama is a good man. He personifies goodness.”

“Even you will be angry in the future, you will go back into the ground to prove your chastity to him.”

Sita had simply refused to believe she could be angry with Rama.

In another world he took her to Lanka and raped her. One of his heads fell off as a result. But then for the first time he could balance his body with an equal number of heads on each side. With the loss of his head he lost his sense of smell and a good chunk of declarative memory in that world. Both were restituted by custom-made prosthetics. Luv and Kush were in fact his children and when Rama’s physicians in Ayodhya ran a DNA test on the boys the daitya gene was writ large all over the screen.

He couldn’t help himself in another parallel universe from taking her to Lanka, showing off the technical advances his people had made under his rule, fitting her with ten heads so that she finally saw the superiority of his ways, and making her queen. When a bunch of monkeys tried to cross the straits from India, his neuroscientists caged them in the lab and ran a series of experiments on the origins of economic theory. Furious at the kidnapping of the monkeys, Rama and his brother charged in. Ravana welcomed and fed them. Sita, he told them, had made the choice of her own free will to stay put. He put them on a jet back to Ayodhya. Rama’s time in exile was not yet over but Ravana’s army went ahead of time and destroyed any opposition Rama might meet. That world left Ravana feeling magnanimous. But in the end it wasn’t the right one.

On a quick break from Sita, between parallel worlds, Ravana communicated with his original country.

“I hope someone is keeping track of us in all those other worlds after we leave. After all they are no more or less real than ours, I mean the first one, the one from which I originally left .”

“Yes, Your Majesty. It does boggle the mind. Our computers are having a hard time managing the various iterations you have on the agenda, their outcomes, the trajectories of the characters once you leave the relevant planet, and so on.”

“I want schoolchildren in ten years to understand all this science in fifth grade. It should be simple and poetic, like landing on the moon. Think of how to explain it simply.”

“Err, Your Majesty, in which world?”

“Ours.”

Ravana hung up the connection feeling stupid and humbled for the first time in four thousand years. All the seven hundred and nineteen parallel worlds they had chosen were identical. And here he was trying to communicate with the “original.” As if one was an original and the other copies. Why wasn’t he communicating with the local Lankan staff in each world? Maybe he could set up some kind of network between these identical worlds so they could all work together to figure out the paradox and fill the holes in scientific theories which, suddenly, seemed pathetic. He materialized the hologram of two dragonflies with deep transparent blue wings flying in tandem over Sita’s head. She was immediately taken. He slowed her time with a quick hypnotic gesture and then meditated for a second to expand his own. He connected up with the first Lanka and then the current one. He put them in touch. Since he, Ravana, had flow out of all of them and made off to a parallel universe, they were all up to date. “Exchange all your data,” he barked.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I mean everything. Find a way to connect the computers via some kind of wormhole bridge information exchange…it doesn’t exist does it?”

“Your Majesty we’ve barely figured this one out. And we have a problem. We were waiting for you to return to discuss it.”

All ten sets of eyebrows furrowed over Ravana’s foreheads.

“Tell me!” he roared.

“The world’s are entirely symmetrical when they exist independently but when you move in and out of them there is an asymmetry because you are moving into one and out of another. We don’t know what the consequences are. Presumably there will be a similar paradox with information exchange of any kind. If you weren’t using some form of magic then Mathematics tells us this is impossible.”

Ravana scratched his head.

“Your Majesty, I suggest you leave this question for when you are back,” his Chief of Staff suggested.

“Sita,” Ravana called, snapping her out of her state of suspension.

“If all parallel worlds are equal and there is no difference between them right now then why do I retain an attachment to the original one from which I came? Why not just go back to my country in this one?”

“I don’t know, Sir, but I am sure my husband can discuss this with you when he comes back.”

Ravana ordered his staff to find a parallel universe in a different moment of time, back in the day of the original Ramayana. A world hanging in a moment of cosmological time just before the end of the battle. Revising a future Ramayana was too easy. Better to go back, relive the past differently and change it for all time to come. His staff found two worlds stuck in the right time period, they beamed Ravana and Sita to the one that was closer. He proceeded there to defeat Rama and kill him, after which Ravana adopted his form and went to Ayodhya. No one knew that Rama was an imposter. On the throne of Ayodhya he idly reminisced with Sita on the battle and the glory. He asked her about her time spent in Lanka.

“Surely the man with ten heads must have had some charm. I heard he is the most intelligent person who ever lived. It is a shame he had to die,” he baited her.

“Not all the intelligence and wit in the world, not all the beauty and charm, not anything at all can compare to you.”

“I think you might have had an affair with him,” he continued.

“Why would I when I know you?” Sita asked flirtatiously. She gave herself to him. The sweetness of having her without having to change her, simply by changing himself was unparalleled. Ravana reveled in it. They made love for seven days and seven nights. They made love for seven afternoons. Evenings.

Sita didn’t suspect he was not her husband. After a while, this irked him. The absolutely best moments with Sita, out of all realities, were in one where he couldn’t reveal himself. Not that he didn’t think of it. But his own Lanka was destroyed. He hade destroyed it to be with this woman. He woke up one morning feeling sick.

He used the laundryman as an excuse. He accused Sita of sleeping with himself then, there though really she was sleeping with him here, now.

She left.

Sad, sorry, upset, Ravana vowed to bring the prosperity and wellness he had brought to Lanka to Ayodhya. He was Just. Good. Wise. He was erudite.

Things were going well but then the boys were found and they looked like splitting images of their father. One glance and Ravana could see that they had not a fragment of daitya DNA. They were Rama’s. When had the two of them done it? In Lanka? Just before the war ended? Had Rama met her secretly?

Ravana was furious. Speaking in Rama’s gentle tones, which he had perfected, he taunted Sita. He insinuated dirty things. He besmirched her. The demon in him started to rage.

Upset, shaking, equally furious, Sita took up his challenge. She was pure and chaste and she was going to go back to the earth. Inside it. The tectonic plates shifted, the land cleaved. Sita was swallowed.

Angry at himself, Ravana decided to undo the demon within once and for all. He knew that as long as he could get away inflicting pain on others, he would do it. There was only one solution: he had to live in this world and this one alone. With Sita dead, Lanka destroyed, and two boys that were not his, he had no motivation to inflict anything more on anyone. Good triumphed over evil. Ravana filled with hope that other men would do as he had done. If every man fought the evil within then war could be avoided. In Lanka a hundred thousand monkeys could have been saved. Ravana regretted their deaths over and above everything else. They had been cute, vulnerable, unable to grasp the full extent of the perils they faced. They were reminders to the human race of where we had come from. Man needed a mirror to recognize himself. Ravana had slaughtered a hundred thousand such mirrors. Living in this world with this outcome was his penance for destroying them.

“All of you learn a lesson from mine. This is the only world we ever live in,” he said silently to himself. The multiverse and its possibilities of reinvention would henceforth exist outside his knowledge. And his knowledge was the sum of what mankind would ever know.

Ravana settled into they throne of Ayodhya to live out the rest of his days as the king until Rama’s boys were old enough to take over. He would go back to the forest then and die as the person he really was. In death he would join Sita.

The Mango Grove

Julie Rosenthal

In a walled garden on the banks of the sleepy, sun-dappled Godavari River a mango tree grew. Its glossy green leaves fluttered in the cool breezes that rose from the waters of the river late in the afternoon. The perfume of pale water lilies blended with the rich scent of the mango tree’s pink blossoms, filling the humid air with a sweetness that made Sita’s eyelids grow heavy as she reclined against the tree’s trunk on a silk rug.

Rama watched Sita’s graceful, jeweled forehead nod toward her folded hands in her lap as her eyes closed.

At the garden’s single gate, Rama’s brother Lakshmana lifted his sword as he polished it with a red cloth. The sun flashed along the edge of the curved blade.

Rama smiled as he lifted his flute to his lips and began to play. He closed his eyes as he balanced on one foot with the grace of a thousand-year-old marble statue.

The wind fell quiet as Rama played. The flute’s melody mixed with the perfume in the air and wafted through the garden. It reached the rocky banks of the Godavari River, which ceased its flowing and became as still as glass. In its shadowed pools, the silver tails of pearl-scaled fish unfurled and were motionless.

A startled cry from Sita made Rama’s eyes fly open. He lifted his head from his flute with the alert grace of a deer.

Sita’s slender hands were cupped. She was peering down into them. Her eyes were alight and Rama realized that she was laughing.

“Look!” she said as she held her palms up, toward him.

In Sita’s hands were two butterflies. Their wings were a blur of velvet brown and azure blue as they clung together, struggling as if they were fighting.

Now Sita’s laughter was helpless in its delight. Her small chin tilted back with the joy of it. A shaft of sunlight glinted on her necklaces of gold and rubies, gifts of the sage Athri’s wife Anusuya, as her beautiful shoulders shook.

Sita’s cry had made Lakshmana leap to his feet, sword brandished. Rama looked over Sita at his brother and shook his head. He could see Lakshmana sigh with frustration and boredom as he sat back down and rested his sword on his knees.

Soon enough, brother, Rama thought, there will be asuras to fight. Not now. Not yet.

Amused, he smiled down at Sita.

“Love,” he said.

Sita had lowered her hands into her lap and was watching the butterflies in her palms. The rapid fluttering of their wings was joyously frantic. She tilted her head as she studied them. Another laugh bubbled up from her.

“Love,” Rama said again.

“Have you ever seen such a thing?” Sita asked. Her voice was soft.

“Are you going to put them down?”

“I think I might hurt them.”

“And so you go on holding them like that.”

Sita’s eyes raised to Rama’s. She held her cupped palms up toward him again.

“So,” she said. “Play for them. Make their love even sweeter.”

“You always fall asleep when I play.”

Sita laughed and shook her head, never taking her eyes from Rama’s.

Lakshmana lifted his hand to his mouth to cover a yawn.

Rama lifted his flute and, with a smile for Sita that only pretended to be chiding, started once again to play.

Dew, along with the evening’s cool, had stolen over the garden. In the twilight, lanterns glowed in the open windows of a house as elegantly built as it was modest. The sounds of three human voices, one female and two male, drifted from the windows and mingled with the cries of birds at dusk.

The two butterflies-Aruna, the brown-winged, and Jalanili, the blue-rested together. They were hidden inside a fold of Sita’s silk rug where she had left it on the grass under the mango tree. The wings of the butterflies fanned the air with languid pleasure as they nibbled a bit of fallen ripe fruit.

“Ah,” Jalanili sighed. “To love as they do, the man and the woman who have come to live here. Would it not be a perfect thing, Aruna?”

Aruna was about to reply: No. How could we ask for more than this?

But he found himself thinking of Rama and the way that Sita would look at him when he played the flute.

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Perhaps?” whispered a third voice.

A crow stood in the grass outside the cavelike fold of the silk rug. Its black-feathered head was turned sideways as it peered inside the rug at the two butterflies. One topaz eye blinked at Aruna and Jalanili. The tip of the crow’s curved beak touched the rug’s edge.

Jalanili screamed a tiny butterfly scream. She pressed herself against Aruna, whose wings dropped over her like a blanket.

“You have nothing to fear,” the crow whispered. “You see, I don’t eat butterflies.”

There was a low menace in the crow’s tone that made Aruna wonder, as he felt Jalanili’s terrified breaths pulsing rapidly against his own thorax, whether it would be better to be eaten by this creature.

“But,” the crow continued, “I do grant wishes.”

Jalanili’s breaths stopped.

So did Aruna’s.

“And, please forgive me if I misheard just now. But it sounded as if the two of you wished to love as those two do.” The crow’s tilted head jerked toward the house.

“Who are you?” Aruna murmured.

“I’ve already told you.” The crow was still whispering. Its voice grated like a sandal dragged over gravel. “Now. What’s your answer?”

“You would make us human?” Jalanili’s head had nudged out from underneath Aruna’s wing. Her multifaceted eyes stared into the crow’s single tawny orb.

“I would make you,” the crow said, “whatever you wanted.”

“How can you do this?” Jalanili asked. “What gives you that kind of power? Are you a god? An asura?”

“It’s nothing to turn a butterfly into something else. Even a crow could manage that.”

“But you’re no crow,” Aruna said.

In the last of the faint light he thought he saw the crow smile, though its black beak was hard as horn.

“No.” The crow whispered with only a thin ribbon of breath now. Aruna had to hold his own breath to hear its words. “You see clearly, my brown-winged brother. I am no crow. A dangerous thing for a butterfly like you to know, especially in a hallowed place like this. Now. I could tell the other crows where you are, and, within an hour, you could be nothing more than their evening meal. Or. I could fly away, and you could live. As butterflies. And love each other for a few more brief days, here in this paradise. Your lives are no longer than that.”

“No,” Jalanili said.

“No?” said the crow.

Jalanili slowly shook her head. “You’re wrong. We live as long as they do.”

“Who told you that, my blue-winged beauty?”

“We…” Jalanili’s voice faltered.

Aruna glanced at his mate. She looked stricken. He could feel her wings sag beneath his.

“Who lied to you and told you that you live as long as a human?” The dark glee in the crow’s voice made Aruna want to shrink as far away as he could from the sound of its whisper. “Did she tell you that? Or did he?”

Jalanili was silent.

“After today, you live a few more days. That’s all. It makes no difference, not to a god, or a human, or”- The crow’s hiss sputtered in what sounded like a laugh- “an asura.”

“There are no asuras here.” Aruna hoped his small voice sounded braver than he felt. “The man with the sword would-”

Like the blade of a knife, the crow’s beak lunged inside the fold of the silk rug and snapped shut with undisguised fury. Aruna curled his wings around Jalanili as both butterflies screamed.

“Do not speak of that man,” the crow whispered. “He’s no man at all, but a demon. There are things too dangerous for a butterfly to know here, o brown-winged brother. I won’t warn you again.”

The crow withdrew its beak and pressed the side of its dark head up to the opening of the rug’s fold. The topaz eye blinked. “Now,” the crow continued. “You could be eaten. You could die. Or. You could love each other as they do. For lifetimes. Long enough for this tree we’re under to grow, and fall, and be born again in the seeds of its fruit. Can you imagine that?”

“Yes,” Aruna heard Jalanili say softly.

The sadness in her voice broke his heart.

In that moment-in Jalanili’s single word-he could imagine it too.

He heard himself say: “Yes.”

“Then,” the crow said, “it shall be.”

Aruna opened his eyes. He had been asleep for a long time. Underneath his body-as strange to him as when he had first crawled out of the chrysalis, but weighed down by too many limbs and not enough at the same time-sharp rocks pressed into the tender surface of his bare skin. Above him, the sun shone with merciless fury. He had never been so afraid of its heat and light.

Not as a butterfly.

Aruna, the man, was lying curled on his side in the dry dirt furrows of an empty field. The garden of Rama and Sita had disappeared.

Awkwardly he pulled himself to his hands and knees. He managed to crawl toward a small hut built of sticks and leaves at the end of the field’s rows. There, at least, he knew he would find shade.

When Aruna reached the hut, he collapsed inside on its smooth floor of cool, clean-swept earth. Within reach of his fingers (fingers! he marveled at their treelike branches, the ridges of the tawny skin at each knuckle, and the sensations that came from them as he stretched them out) was a jar. His fingertips stroked the jar’s smooth, blue-glazed surface. To Aruna’s surprise, it was cold and moist with condensed water.

He sat up. Lifting a metal ladle from the jar, Aruna poured icy water over his face, down his shoulders and chest, and into his open mouth. He drank until a sharp pain like the tip of an arrow stabbed between his eyes.

“Jalanili?” he called as he lowered the ladle back into the jar.

Aruna’s new voice was low and resonated inside his chest like a bell. Like Rama’s, he thought. His attention was caught by this new, human voice. He spoke Jalanili’s name several times-sometimes murmuring, sometimes shouting-as he stood and walked to the door of the hut.

The furrows of the dry, empty field seemed to stretch to the edge of the world. The ridges of soil were the same color as the velvet brown of his butterfly wings.

Aruna cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled from the doorway with all of his strength:

“Jalanili!”

A voice inside his head with the scrape of a sandal against gravel said:

She is not here.

Aruna looked around the field, then back inside the hut. He was alone.

“Show yourself, crow,” he said.

I told you. I am no crow.

“What are you? An asura, then?”

Look to the west. See what I am now.

Low in the western sky, billowing clouds the color of a bruise were gathering. A cool wind touched Aruna’s forehead and lifted his black hair. Lightning flashed from the peaks of the clouds.

Butterfly or human, you are nothing to me.

Aruna took a few steps backward and sat down, cross-legged, on the smooth floor of the hut. The hut was so small that he could stretch out his arms and place his palms on its thin walls. Under his hands, the sticks and leaves trembled in the rising wind.

“Where is Jalanili?” he said.

She is with me.

“In the storm?”

Aruna heard the hollow rattle of the crow’s laughter. I am the storm.

He thought of Rama and his flute, and Lakshmana with his curved sword, always waiting at the gate of the garden. Aruna heard himself say with his new, deep human voice: “Bring Jalanili to me.”

To you, little brother! Who are you to command me?

“Now.”

// you want her, then meditate. Do what humans do. Ask the heavens for rain. She will come.

A gust like a demon’s fist struck the walls of the hut. Aruna’s raised arms braced against its force, his elbows locked. He breathed deeply to stop the shaking in the pit of his stomach.

For the first time Aruna meditated. He imagined the only rain he knew: the mists that had descended over the garden like the breath of the gods as he and Jalanili had hidden beneath the sheltering leaves of the mango tree, fanning their butterfly wings to keep them dry.

The new effort of meditation exhausted him. Within moments Aruna’s eyes closed and his head was nodding toward his chest. The storm’s winds lashed the sides of the hut as he slept, still sitting with his arms raised.

In Aruna’s dream, the rain came at night. The storm struck the parched soil of the field with enough force to split the world open.

The earth was too dry to absorb the deluge. The rainwater could do nothing but race down the field’s furrows in all directions in a flash flood. Streams of water writhed across the drought-scourged earth like thousands of snakes.

As in all dreams, time passed in a moment. The storm disappeared and was replaced by silence under a sky pale with dawn.

Aruna saw his dream-self stand up from the floor and go to the door of his hut. Over his own shoulder he looked out into the field.

The floods had vanished.

A woman was walking up and down the furrows. The scalloped edge of her blue sari, embroidered in gold thread, swept the wet soil as she moved. A translucent veil in the same blue as her sari covered her hair; her face was turned away from Aruna. Her shoulders tilted back and forth and her slender arms parted the air as if she were dancing.

Aruna was breathless at the sight of the woman. He wanted to call out to her, but he was afraid the sound of his voice would drive her away.

Sita? he wondered.

In the wake of the woman’s sweeping skirt, the wet earth was covered with an intricate pattern left by the prints of her bare feet.

Aruna jerked awake.

Sore from sleeping cross-legged, he stumbled to his feet and ran to the doorway of his hut.

It was morning. There was the field, soaked with rain and covered with the footprints of a woman, just as he had dreamed.

Aruna thought of the woman’s blue sari. He groaned and pulled at his hair.

“Jalanili!” he shouted over and over to the empty field.

When Aruna’s voice had grown hoarse, he went back into his hut and sat down cross-legged on the floor again. The effort sent arrows of pain up through his legs and back.

“Asura,” Aruna said.

The crow’s scraping whisper inside his mind sounded as if it had been waiting for him.

I am here, little brother.

“You tricked me.”

Did I? The asura’s voice was amused.

“You made me fall asleep.”

It was your first time meditating. That was hardly my fault.

“The woman in blue was Jalanili,” Aruna said. “Not Sita. Why didn’t you let me see her face before I woke up?”

Jalanili appeared to you as she wanted to appear to you.

This stung Aruna. He said, “What do you mean? Why didn’t she look at me?”

She believes she is too ugly.

Aruna thought of woman’s graceful arms rising above her veil as she danced. He looked down at the footprints in the wet soil. “I don’t understand, asura. She was so beautiful that I thought she was Sita.”

Inside his mind Aruna could hear the voice smile. I will tell her that, little brother. She will be heartbroken to hear it. But I will make sure she knows what you said.

“Why?” Aruna cried.

She has been difficult about all of this. I think it will settle her mind.

“Asura!”

As he shouted, Aruna felt that he was alone once again.

He wanted to crawl out of his aching, heavy human body and fly after Jalanili and the asura on butterfly wings. It had been a mistake to trust the asura. Aruna cursed himself for letting Jalanili believe the crow’s promise.

But obstinate rage pinned Aruna to the floor of the hut. He wasn’t yet sure what meditation did, but he wasn’t ready to give it up either. And he had no wings.

Aruna was a man now, and nothing more.

His hands curled into fists on his knees.

He thought about Rama and Sita and Lakshmana and the sadness in Jalanili’s voice when she learned how short her own life was. More than anything, Aruna thought about Jalanili.

In the evening Aruna stood up from the floor of his hut and lurched toward the door. He was exhausted and hungry. The pain in his body had been replaced with emptiness.

Next to the blue-glazed water jar was a cloth sack he had not noticed before. Curious, Aruna opened it.

The sack was filled with mangoes.

He lifted one out and stared at it, its heavy flesh resting in his palm shaking with hunger. When he raised the mango to his nose, the fruit’s perfume made him dizzy.

Aruna ate mangoes and drank water as the sun set. He tossed the mango peels out through the hut’s door, but he gnawed every white core clean and put them back into the cloth sack. Then he washed his hands with a ladle of water from the jar and lay down on the hut’s bare floor to sleep.

In the morning Aruna emptied the sack. He split the cores of the mangoes open and pulled out the seeds with his fingers. When he had filled the sack again with mango seeds, he raised it to his shoulders and went out into the field. After a day, the earth was still wet. He could see the patterns of Jalanili’s heels and toes in the dirt.

Aruna knelt under the hot sun and planted mango seeds in Jalanili’s footprints.

Then he went back inside the hut. After his work in the field, the hut’s shade was a blessing. Aruna’s legs no longer complained when he sat cross-legged. It was a relief to rest instead of planting furrow after furrow.

Aruna said, “Asura.”

He heard no answer.

He thought of rain, and Jalanili, and was asleep in a moment.

That night Aruna dreamed that the field was filled with crows. The brown furrows were covered with the fluttering of wings until the whole field seemed to have transformed into a single, iridescent, black-feathered creature. Caws from thousands of throats tore into Aruna’s ears.

He could see each crow digging its beak into the footprints left by Jalanili where he had planted the mango seeds. Small black heads tilted back and beaks jerked open as the seeds were gulped down, one by one, by the birds.

Aruna watched himself race out of the hut and into the field to scare the crows away. No matter how he yelled or kicked or flung his arms, he could never frighten more than a few at a time. They would alight above Aruna in the air and beat at his head with their wings or lunge at his face with their outstretched claws.

Time passed in a moment, as it does in dreams.

The field was empty and silent. The earth was pockmarked with the tracks of birds. Aruna’s dream-self fell to his knees between two furrows. He watched his shoulders heave with sobs as he buried his face in his hands.

At the edge of the field, a woman in a blue sari and veil crouched on the ground. She was pressing her fingers down into the earth. Her slender hands smoothed the dirt before she moved a step to the side and continued planting.

Aruna’s conscious self watched the woman from the hut’s door. Look up, you fool! he wanted to shout to his dream-self out in the field. It’s her! It’s Jalanili! The shout dissolved into a faint hiss of breath in his throat. He wanted to run, but he was frozen to the spot.

Jalanili lifted a muddy hand and pushed aside her veil to wipe sweat from her brow as she looked down. The back of her hand left a velvet brown streak across her forehead. She seemed not to hear or see Aruna’s dream-self weeping in the field.

The beauty of her face, in profile, was a slender arrow that pierced the heart of the conscious Aruna. He stared, unable to breathe at the sight.

Jalanili’s head turned. She found herself in his gaze. Her eyes widened.

Aruna was awakened by his own shout.

He leaped to his feet. As he ran to the door, he wondered if he would be fast enough to catch Jalanili still in the field.

The field was empty. But the sight of the furrows stopped Aruna from taking another step.

Every inch of the soil bore the handprints of a woman.

Aruna looked up at the sky.

“Asura!” he yelled.

Now you shout at me, little brother?

The voice was no longer a whisper, but a caw. It sounded harried and frantic.

“That was Jalanili!”

Indeed. And she recognized you.

“Why are you playing with us like this?”

This is no game.

“Why doesn’t she want to come to me when I’m awake?”

After a pause, Aruna heard inside his mind: Because she is a devil. She refuses to recognize her own true nature. She thinks she can defy the gods themselves. If I let her be with you, she would make you even more miserable than she is making me.

“Does she want to be a butterfly again?”

The asura was silent.

“Please,” Aruna said softly. “Whatever she wants. I no longer care what I am. Please release her.”

No.

Rage filled Aruna. “No?” he repeated.

I’m giving you both one last chance. You must choose rightly this time. Both of you. Or I’ll force you to live apart, forever-and you’ll never be able to forget each other.

“Asura, how do I choose?” Aruna asked. “What is Jalanili’s true nature?”

He was alone.

Aruna sat in his hut that evening and meditated on the sight of Jalanili’s face beneath the blue veil. Every time he found himself thinking, How beautiful she is, he would remember the asura’s words about her heart being broken.

He slept.

There were no dreams that night.

Gentle rains came and watered the field outside Aruna’s hut. The drops of rain washed away Jalanili’s handprints. One morning Aruna woke to find the furrows lined with pale green sprouts. The mango trees were beginning to grow.

When a month passed without a sign or dream of Jalanili, Aruna sat cross-legged on the floor of his hut in the evening and closed his eyes.

“Asura,” he said.

His mind was quiet. The sun, setting in the clear western skies, gave its last red light to the mango trees lifting their new leaves above the earth.

In the humid summer air grew a grove of mango trees, their trunks as slender as the waists of young women. The first light of morning stole across the grassy avenues among the rows. Though it was early, the rising heat had made even the butterflies languid. Only a few floated among the glossy green leaves, seeking a cool sanctuary in which to hide from the coming afternoon’s fiery breath.

A man with streaks of gray in his black hair stood beneath one of the mango trees. He contemplated the branches bent like archer’s bows under the weight of ripe fruit. The green skins of the mangoes were blushing red among the leaves.

Aruna ran his fingers through his hair. With a rueful smile he sighed. His mango grove had grown green but barren for years. Then, early that spring, the trees had exploded with pink blossoms all at once. The fruit came, and ripened-all at once. Now he had more than five hundred trees, with no more than his own two hands to harvest the crop. It was the closest he had come to a natural disaster since his first planting.

Not that he had lost hope in natural disasters. During that first season, in spite of Aruna’s meditations in the evenings, the young mango plants had defied all of his wishes and grown as if the gods themselves were tending them. Not a plant was lost as the sprouts became saplings, then mature trees. Even as he took pride in the grove, Aruna had been so desperate to see Jalanili again that he had considered setting his trees on fire. The thought of the beautiful woman in the blue sari running through the grove, the trees around her in flame, had stopped him even as he lowered the torch to the pile of dry firewood.

Aruna reached and picked one of the mangoes. He carefully cut the fruit from its stem so as not to spill the tree’s caustic sap on his skin. He peeled the mango and took a bite of its yellow flesh. With the back of his hand he wiped the juice from his chin.

“Asura,” Aruna said.

With a resigned smile, he waited for an answer inside his mind from an old, whispering voice like a sandal dragging across gravel.

None came.

When Aruna opened his eyes, a woman was standing in front of him.

Her face was covered with a veil. She stood half-hidden in the shade under the mango tree.

He yelped in surprise as he jumped backwards. Aruna’s mango grove was so far from the closest village that he rarely saw other people. He managed to stop himself before he flung the knife in his hand at the woman out of shock.

“You…” he said. Then Aruna whispered, “Jalanili?”

The young woman raised her embroidered veil.

She smiled at him.

She was beautiful, with a row of white teeth like the seeds inside a mango’s core.

But she was not Jalanili.

Aruna bowed his head and mumbled a greeting as he listened to her speak. The young woman’s voice was so pleasantly distracting that Aruna quickly forgot everything she said, as if it flowed out of his mind like water. The sound of his own heart pounding filled his ears.

He risked another glance at her face. The woman didn’t resemble Jalanili.

She was, however, lovely.

Through his shock and the woman’s patient explanations, Aruna grasped that she was looking for work. Yes, she said. She would be happy to help with the mango harvest.

Aruna brought a basket and showed the woman how to pick the man goes from their stems without being burned by the sap. She lifted the edge of her sari and climbed with ease into the tree’s branches, where she sang a happy, wordless little song as she worked.

Aruna had no more turned around when he found two more young women standing in front of him. They called with birdlike voices to the woman seated in the tree. She beamed down at them.

Aruna ran to find more baskets and knives. By the time he returned to the mango tree, a small group of young women in multicolored saris had gathered in the shade and were laughing and talking together. It looked like a wedding party.

He stopped and stared at the women.

When Aruna had convinced himself that Jalanili was not among them-a difficult task, as their number seemed to increase even before his eyes-he greeted them, more warmly this time, and asked if they wanted to help. There was a chorus of delighted responses.

And so it went throughout the morning.

By afternoon the heat had grown so intense that Aruna felt light headed. He walked the avenues among the trees in the mango grove, calling to the hundreds of young women-in the trees, on the ground, walking with baskets of ripe fruit balanced on one shoulder or on their heads-to ask if they needed water or food. All laughed and said no, that the work was not work at all and that they were not in the least thirsty or hungry.

In the heat, several of the women had taken off their veils and let them fall to the ground. The grass beneath the trees was covered with a rainbow of rich fabrics, as if a silk rug had been spread in the shade throughout the whole grove. Aruna tried not to step on the discarded veils as he walked.

A laugh caught his ear. His footsteps slowed as he looked up.

Aruna watched the bare arms of the women intertwining among the branches of the trees overhead as they picked mangoes. Eveywhere he looked, there was a naked shoulder, a tilted neck, a lock of black hair clinging with sweat to a graceful forehead. The trees rang with the sound of women’s voices. And always the arms, slender, glinting with a bangle or a string of golden beads, flowing together as if all of the women were one glorious, perfect creature.

Aruna stopped.

He could feel himself sweating and breathing hard. He tried to calm his rising pulse by inhaling and exhaling slowly, as he had learned to do while meditating in his hut. The effort only filled his lungs with the strange perfume of the women, as if from a thousand flowers, that blended with the scent of ripe mangoes and made the humid air even more intoxicating.

There was a mantra he had known once. He had begun every meditation with it.

Aruna fumbled through his memory, grasping for the word.

As he did, one of the women in the tree above jumped down and landed lightly on bare feet in front of him. Her smile found Aruna’s eyes.

He took a slow, reluctant step backward.

Then a new voice spoke inside Aruna’s head. He had never heard it before. He thought at first that it was the woman before him. The voice was young, and female, but it sounded nothing like the twittering that filled the mango grove.

No! the voice shouted.

Aruna’s body jerked as if he had stepped on a snake.

I won’t love him! Not like this! Asura, I’ll kill myself first!

Aruna murmured, “Jalanili.”

A crow whispered:

But you could be a thousand women and love him. Why be a human? Why be old and ugly and sick? You could be young forever. Look at him down there, my blue-winged beauty. Look at that mango grove. Look at how he’s looking at her. Do you think he remembers you now?

The woman who had leaped out of the tree tilted her head and laughed. “Who is this woman, Jalanili?” she said.

But her voice cracked in a harsh caw as she spoke Jalanili’s name.

Inside Aruna’s mind the crow whispered:

He’s human. His life is long and his memory is short. He hasn’t seen you since you planted those trees. How could he still love you, you little fool?

“Jalanili,” Aruna said again.

In an instant the sun disappeared and the sky grew dark.

The women’s voices abruptly ceased laughing. It was as if an unseen hand had swept them together into a single force that, to Aruna’s ears, now sounded like a clap of thunder. Or a gathering deluge of water.

Above the noise pressing against his ears, Aruna could hear the young woman’s voice cry inside his head:

I will not become an asura like you! I will not love him this way! Make me a human! Let me go!

“Jalanili,” Aruna said for the third time.

He collapsed.

Another woman’s scream made Aruna’s eyes fly open.

He was lying on a silk rug in the shade of a mango tree. Sita was turning her face away to hide her eyes against Rama’s shoulder.

Rama’s bow was in his left hand, but it was down at his side, his eyes on Lakshmana.

Lakshmana’s sword was raised above his head. His eyes flashed.

The curved blade of the sword flashed as it came down, faster than lightning. Aruna felt the grass beneath him shudder as Lakshmana’s sword struck the earth.

A hand, its bones thin and birdlike under wrinkled skin, was gripped in Aruna’s own hand. It twitched at his side on the silk rug. He tightened his fingers around it, but couldn’t turn his head to look.

No one moved or spoke.

At last Sita lifted her face from Rama’s shoulder. She said, “It was an asura. Wasn’t it?”

Lakshmana tugged his sword free. When he lifted it, Aruna saw the blade stained with blood and black feathers.

Lakshmana looked down at Aruna. “What about these two?” he said.

Aruna lifted his head.

The hand he held was that of an old woman in a blue sari. Strands of white hair crowned her wrinkled forehead beneath her veil. She was blinking at him in shock.

The eyes were Jalanili’s.

“I think-” Rama began.

He was interrupted by Sita, who had lifted one hand to her mouth as she began to laugh-slowly at first, and then with greater and greater delight.

“Love?” Rama asked.

“It’s the butterflies!”

A smile crept across Rama’s face as he looked down at Aruna and Jalanili.

“And, so,” Rama said, “the ones who invited in our first asura.”

“We didn’t invite her,” Jalanili gasped.

Aruna squeezed her hand as hard as he could. Even Rama and Lakshmana looked surprised at her bold words. Sita, however, was still laughing. The sound, like silver bells, quieted as she looked with gentle amusement at Jalanili.

“But you wished to be human,” Rama said quietly. “Your desire invited her.”

Aruna and Jalanili lowered their eyes in shame.

Sita shook her head. “I think what they wished for,” she said, her eyes still sparkling, “was to love as we do. Isn’t that right?”

Jalanili nodded, her eyes still down.

“Which is both the same, and not the same.” Sita’s smile became wistful. “You have wished for more than you know. But I think you have suffered more too. Look.” She turned to Rama. “Our brown. His hair is gray now. And look at her, our pretty blue, old enough to be a grandmother. Does it seem to you, love, that this asura has played these two a wretched trick?”

Rama nodded. “You may choose fairly, then,” he said to Aruna and Jalanili. “Human lives together, but from a young age. Long, and rich, with much care and sorrow and some happiness. Or a few days together-perhaps more-as butterflies, here in our garden, without anything to trouble your hearts.”

Aruna looked at Jalanili.

“Butterfly,” he said.

At the same moment Jalanili looked at him and said, “Human.”

Rama sighed.

Sita closed her eyes and bit her lip to stop her laughter.

Lakshmana rolled his eyes.

“You have spoken truly,” Rama said. “You cannot make up your minds, but you are obstinate even in that.”

Rama smiled at Sita, then at Aruna and Jalanili.

“You are human, both of you. You have found your true nature. Cherish it, and your many days together, with our blessings.”

Game of Asylum Seekers

K. Srilata

It is a game not meant for bright summer afternoons when, irrespective of how hard you try, the shadows will fall long and sharp. But Zero likes playing around with the impossible and it is only a matter of time before she discovers a way to make the shadows cease. The rules are easy enough to master, the instructions clear as window panes freshly washed and dry. But like with all zero-sum games, it is a case of two steps forward, two steps back.

They call it the Game of Asylum Seekers and the ones who are marketing it worldwide are probably laughing all the way to their banks. There are separate versions for men and women. The one Zero is currently playing is the women’s game. She happens to think it is brilliant.

It hadn’t taken a genius to think it up. A simple theft of ideas and a bit of smart re-packaging—that was all there was to this enormously absorbing game. Every now and then, an upgraded version would be advertised, there would be a stampede to get hold of it, and the older version whisked clean from public memory.

The stone age version used to be called the Uttara Kanda and for some reason its players were called Sitas. Every one of them. The Uttara Kanda came in a quaint, old-fashioned box with a syrupy-sweet picture of a woman in a saree and a revealing blouse. The woman had her glance fondly trained on two young boys who seemed to be amusing themselves with bows and arrows. For “setting”, there was a disorderly bunch of trees.

The Game of Asylum Seekers (Women) 2010, in which Zero is currently absorbed, is absolutely the latest version. It is played solo in Imax Wilderness, under absurdly difficult circumstances which, of course, is part of the fun. The point of the game is to get to Earth Mother Square so that you could cease making shadows once and for all. All players got there, eventually. Some just took a little longer. But that was okay. Everyone was a winner. You could have as much time as you wanted. More or less, that is.

The game is advertised, somewhat vacuously, as being an “unbeat-ably sexy, roller-coaster ride of a game”. The roller-coaster bit is true enough. As for the game’s famous Imax wilderness setting, it is some thing even Disney would have been hard-pressed to match. It has an upbeat, kitschy, garbage-bin feel to it and players are pampered silly by empty cans of beer and moldy bread from a fortnight ago that not even the birds will eat. It is not exactly cheap but once you had paid for it—with your blood and all that stuffing inside your original head—you could look forward to a trouble-free run and access to all kinds of happiness. Not surprising therefore that the game is as popular as it is. Though of course, if you were old-fashioned and a little intolerant of fads and gizmos, you would probably suspect that it was that same old Uttara Kanda all over again. A game that had been played since the very beginning of time. Even by some of our goddesses.

The bread tastes—Zero doesn’t seek after the word which seems to have dropped away from her. The wilderness is like a bouncer when it comes to words. It is especially intolerant of adjectives and players are advised to use them with restraint. Once spoken, adjectives create a voice and the impression of an opinion and that is against the rules.

The Use of Adjectives Rule is tied quite closely to the Invisibility Rule. Players are expected to cultivate invisibility. The really experienced players never cast so much as a shadow. If you made a mistake and someone saw you, you could loose up to fifteen points for being a criminal or an illegal immigrant out to mug decent, respectable folk.

So you reserved adjectives and visibility for emergencies and for occasional use in food voucher queues. Talking of food vouchers, you had to be careful about how you spent those. Which meant you had to watch how much you ate. It was a little like being on a fancy diet. Over-eating and wastefulness could set you back twenty points.

Surpanakha isn’t here today. Yesterday, she had been in the same line as Zero to claim her voucher. Claim is not an adjective but it feels suspiciously like the wrong sort of verb. A verb with a too-loud voice. Zero has another go. Yesterday, Surpanakha had been in the same line as her for the voucher. She had never spoken to Surpanakha of course. One mustn’t speak to other players. That too was a rule. But even though Surpanakha could never be a friend, nothing had stopped Zero from observing her out of the corners of her eyes. It is the way women observe each other and others all the time. And Surpanakha had struck her as one of those intuitively competent players with a golden touch. For one thing, she had got herself to Gender-Shedding Square quite early in the game. Which must have made it easy. And she was really good with shadows too. Knew how to keep them in check. No wonder she had finished so soon. (Though she hadn’t been half as lucky that other time—with Him, had she?)

Strange how Zero had never heard Surpanakha calling out to Earth Mother. You had to remember to say “Earth Mother! Please take me in!” the moment you landed on this last of all the squares. If you forgot, it all got cancelled out and you found yourself back to square one. (This ridiculous calling out idea was stolen, as you might have guessed, from Uno). Zero concluded that she must have been asleep at the time when Surpanakha had called out. Unless of course it was Detention Square or Drugs Square that the woman had vanished into. No point wondering really. No point hurling questions at the wilderness. It never felt up to answering.

Zero cuts the Morrisons’ baguette into three small sections so it would last for three days. This means, of course, that she owns a knife. A small kitchen knife. She owns other things too—after all, she is a queen. Or used to be. Before she became a player. What had she left behind in that empire of hers?

They had got her the game so she could keep herself amused. She had stepped out with a rucksack and wiped her brow clean of memory. Ever since that bright summer afternoon with its dangerous shadows, she had been inching her way towards the Earth mother’s embrace. Taking mindful little steps. Two steps forward, two steps back, a wee snail with her rucksack. Playing a zero-sum game.

The wilderness is not a place for women, but this version of the game is. That said, you were at a tremendous advantage if you got to Gender-Shedding Square. It was not essential for the dice to roll that way. But it did make things easier, as it must have for Surpanakha. Clinging on to gender while playing the game was a bit like jumping into a pool with a six-yard saree on. Zero sees that. Zero is smart. One thing she has going for her is the fact that she has made it to Desire-Shedding Square. But greater hope lay in androgyny. Once you had achieved that, you would not, for instance, be stuck in Rape Square. (This was one square that the men’s version did not have—though they must have made up for the lack in other ways.)

In her rucksack, Zero carries a kitchen knife whose use we have already noted, a ragged man’s jacket rescued from the garbage bin, a file with papers, an empty water bottle and a rope she is not sure of never needing. If something goes wrong with the game and the dice fails to oblige. If she never gets to Earth mother Square. Not that such a thing is likely to happen. But it is best to be prepared for all the what-ifs.

Someone has scratched the words You are dead on the flattened card board box Zero uses to sleep on. She remembers, just in time, to laugh at the joke. To play along.

Rain is falling through the canopies of drainpipes and steel frames. You don’t cast shadows in the falling rain. It is great for the game. Zero is worried about her invisibility skills. There is some way to go before she attains perfection. As yet, the tendency to cast shadows and to step out of them, persists.

There are other aspects of the game that Zero has more or less mastered, certain squares, for instance, she can handle like a pro. Like Finding a Sleeping Place for the Night Square. The women’s version is harder when it comes to this one. Zero has her three favourite places and she rotates them depending on the weather. When she had just started on the game, she would sleep on the floor of a friend’s house or in the garage. But such cocooning is a luxury allowed only to novices and Zero is well past that stage.

She had found Place One—a mosque—fairly quickly. Very useful when there was heavy snow. Dressed in the man’s jacket (we know where that came from), Zero would join the worshippers for the last prayers, slipping away quietly to shut herself up in a toilet cubicle. Once the lights were off and the building was locked up, it was like being back in her palace. But of course she can’t do that too often. Cross-dressing is risky and so is locking oneself up in a toilet used by those of a sex the opposite of yours. Not the sort of thing for a former queen to be doing. But that is part of the fun.

Place two was a stairway in a block of flats. That “You are dead” cardboard box is stashed away there.

Place three was somewhat outdoorsy, located as it is by the outer hedge of a park where Zero keeps a sleeping bag marked “Please don’t take this. Homeless”. In the evenings, the park fills up with teenagers on drugs. Which means that respectable folks give it a wide berth. That is good for Zero.

The Living Without Money Square is unbeatable as a logistical challenge. And Zero enjoys a logistical challenge just as much as anybody else. Tomorrow she will have to take a bus for her monthly registration with the Home Office. (Or she is out of the game.) But for this, she will need three pounds fifty—the cost of the bus fare. She will have to spend half the value of the voucher before the cashiers at Morrisons’ will give her the change. There is no other way she can lay her hands on cash. Unless Zero chooses to beg, steal or work—but that is against the rules.

And then there are over a dozen Loneliness Squares. She copes by creating another being inside the cave of her mind, a being with whom she can chatter non-stop. Sometimes the being is a woman. At other times, it is a man. Sometimes it is someone Zero had assumed she had left behind in her empire… Sometimes, it is Surpanakha, her old rival turned co-player. Most often, it is Him—the man who had said those terrible, cold words.

The square Zero is absolutely terrified of is Dog Square. The dogs in the park are used to her. They leave her alone. It is the other ones -the domestic pets of respectable folks—that she fears. Those ones can sniff out an asylum seeker from miles away.

Suicide Square is not exactly pleasant either. When you got there, a great urge came over you to do away with yourself. As urges went, it was best to resist this one. If you succumbed, you got thrown out right away. Debarred from the game for life. (It must be emphasized that Suicide Square is altogether different from Earth Mother Square, the few striking similarities notwithstanding.)

About Toilet Square, the less said the better. This was one thing each player figured for herself. The women’s version was uncompromisingly tough.

If you had to rank squares in order of difficulty, the Disbelief and Contempt Square would be up there on top. You said persecution. You said rape. You said abuse. The Home office said Tell us about it. And show us: Where are the scars, the wounds, the semen? Or we will just assume you are here to make money or trouble. And of course you no longer had the adjectives and the verbs to tell them about any of that. And may be there were no scars, no wounds, no semen.

If the Home Office turned you down, you were back to square one.

Not that Zero was a stranger to Disbelief and Contempt Square. There was the time He had said those terrible, cold words to her:

“So I have won you back by defeating my enemy; I have acted as a man should, wiped out the insult to my honour, revealed my prowess… Go then with my permission, wherever you may wish. The world is open before you; but I will have nothing to do with you, nor have I any attachment to you any more. How could I take you back, straight from Ravana’s lap?”

There was the time He had spat the words in her face:

“You took pleasure in food,

You didn’t die,

for all your disgrace

in the great palace of the devious demon.

You stayed there, submissive,

wholly without fear.

What thought has brought you here?

Did you imagine that I

could want you?”

But that of course had been an older version, pre-dating the Uttara Kanda. Yuddhakanda—that was the name of that game. Its Disbelief and Contempt Square had involved the nuisance of an agnipariksha.

Back then, the players or the Sitas were expected to walk straight into the flames and emerge unharmed. The best of the Sitas had later claimed that the flames had felt as cool as water. It was a game with no dull moments.

The good thing about landing in Disbelief and Contempt Square was that you were just two tantalizing squares away from Earth Mother Square. Sooner or later, the dice was bound to roll out the right numbers. And that was you—all safe and dry and taken care of.

Sooner or later, Zero would be safe and dry and taken care of. If not, if the dice did not behave as it ought and if she never made it to Earth Mother Square, there was always the comforting thought of the rope that lay coiled and twisted in the depths of her rucksack.

It was an unbeatably sexy, roller- coaster ride of a game. A game with a last square. Or a rope. A game that ended. A story that never did.

Notes:

Quotes are from (respectively):

Chinnaswami Sastrigal and V.H. Subrahmanyam eds. Srimad Valmiki Ramayana (Madras: N. Ramaratnam, 1958) 118. 2–5.

Kopala Kirusnamacariyar Vai. Mu Kamparamayanam. VI. 37. 62. Madras. 1971.

Day of the Deer

Lavanya Karthik

On her last day in hiding, she steps out of the hut she has called home for eleven years, to find Lakshmana weeping in his sleep. He lies by the threshold on a thin reed mat, arms folded close to his body, his face wet with tears. What does he see, she wonders; what demons confront him?

Outside, the forest celebrates dawn. Birds go about their noisy business, monkeys chatter overhead. A cool breeze makes the tree spirits hum in contentment, and the air holds the promise of rain. Inside, Rama seems happy, a smile grazing his lips as he sleeps. She gazes at this face she has loved for so long, these arms that have held her these long hard years, this chest that has cradled her head, and thinks of the war that is to come.

It begins with a deer.

She is five on that hot day in grishma, and alone in the Dandaka forest, where her father has brought her on his annual visit to the hermitage. She has endured a day of discourses, meditation and lessons, and finds herself rewarded with momentary freedom as the heat and the midday meal take their toll on everyone. In quick succession, her father, the sages and even her maids slip into slumber. When the deer appears, she is ready.

Its pelt is a glimmer of gold between the trees as it leads her deep into the forest. Does she notice how the trees lean towards her as she passes, caressing her gently with their limbs? Does she know that the forest creatures flock to the trees along her path just to watch her? Does she know that the man who waits for her under the ancient banyan is rumoured to have ten heads and is feared in three worlds?

“Greetings, devi,” Ravana says, rising to meet her. “I know who you really are.”

What do you do when you are five and a complete stranger tells you that your whole life is a lie? That your parents are not your own, your history mere fiction, your very appearance an illusion? And what do you do when he tells you of the subterfuge he will help you maintain for the first half of your life?

You smile in relief that someone finally shares your secret.

Someone stirs behind her. It is Lakshmana, already washed and cleansed of the night’s grime.

She watches him go through the rigours of his morning exercise, then complete the chores he has set for himself—the collecting of firewood, the milking of the cow, the weeding of the vegetable garden he lovingly tends behind the hut. Then, when he is bathed and his brother beside him—only then will he eat his morning meal.

This boy I will miss, she thinks. This man who has been like a son to me.

But what of his brother?

Now she is married. She stays with her adoptive parents until she is of age, then moves to Ayodhya. She likes this boy she must call husband—Prince Rama, beautiful as the forest in spring, calm as the afternoon sea. And she worries for what she must do now.

“I am afraid,” she whimpers.

“I will be alone.”

“You will not,” Ravana smiles. “We have our allies everywhere.”

“But you won’t be there!” she whines. “How will you train me for battle? How will I know what to do when the time comes?”

“Be patient, devi,” says Ravana. “Time is like the ocean. Stay steady on the shore, and your destiny will be washed right to your feet.”

She is dutiful wife and cherished daughter-in-law, adored by the kingdom and blessed by the gods. She learns the ways of the people she now belongs to, listens in on conversations and waits. Most of all, she studies the man she is meant to vanquish in battle.

Her mothers-in-law—for she has three—love her. It is in one of them that she finds an ally, one who tells her the old stories, of a time when the earth was a free- spirited young woman and the sky and sea vied for her attention. She tells of a time when the forest folk—the true people—shepherded the earth, tending to her forests and waters, in return for her generous bounty.

“But then the invaders came,” the woman says. “With their brick cities, their armies and their crafty gods. And they pillaged the earth—razed her forests, sullied her waters, and drove the forest folk out of their homes.”

She recounts the story of the Samudra Manthan—the great churning of the ocean to draw forth nectar. “It was supposed to have been shared by their gods and ours, as a symbol of their equality. But again—trickery. Our people were turned away, cheated of what was rightfully theirs.”

“Why didn’t the earth help?” She is indignant. “Why didn’t the sky and the sea and the tree spirits gather together and drive out these invaders?”

“Because war was not—is not—in their nature. Nor the cunning that the invaders’ gods possess.” The woman stops and smiles. “Until now.”

“Tell me the story again.”

“The earth has gifted a saviour to her true people, one who will lead them in victory against the invaders. Only she knows better than to make this gift openly, in front of the scheming pantheon that they cherish. No, this is a gift that will stay in safekeeping, waiting and learning, until it is ready to fulfill its destiny. “

“Where?” How she loves this story, its well-worn strands her only tie to the rich and mysterious—yet fragile -legacy she has been sent to defend.

“The last place the invaders will think to look for her. Among their own kind.”

She prepares their mid day meal, though she knows it will stay un eaten. She sweeps the house and courtyard, mends a crack in the mud wall and feeds the chickens.

She waits.

She cannot help but wonder if she is mistaken.

“He is gentle and wise, mother,” she confides. “He does not share the cruel nature of his people. What if we are wrong? What if we could change his mind, and that of his people without war?”

“Give him time, devi. His true nature will surface when called upon.”

“What then? I am far from prepared. You expect me to lead my people against him in battle? How?”

A year later, she finds herself banished from the kingdom with Rama and Lakshmana, so that their brother might rule.

“Thank you, mother,” she says to her friend, who has single-handedly orchestrated this move. “But people will hate you for this. And your son will never forgive you.”

“I do it for you, devi,” mother Kaikeyi replies. “For you and our mother, and all her true children.”

Rama seems happy today. He sits in the courtyard, stringing his bow and humming to himself. He talks of the fruit trees he plans for the backyard, of the rain he smells in the air, the bear cubs he saw the other day on his way back from the hermitage.

He catches her watching him and smiles. “I dreamt of Ayodhya,” he says. “I saw her become the mightiest kingdom in the world, her roads paved with gold, her boundaries stretching from the mountains to the sea.” He looks out across the courtyard at the magnificent vision he describes. “I shall make it my dharma to make this dream come true.”

She turns away, unable to bear what lurks in his face.

They are a great team, the two brothers and she; they set up house in Dandaka with enthusiasm, and begin the long wait for their exile to end.

The forest welcomes her. She feels renewed, replenished, as she has ever been in the city. She finds, in the steady hum of the earth, the unvarying rhythms of the seasons, the clockwork lives of the forest creatures, a reaffirmation of her ties to the earth.

One night, as her companions sleep, a golden deer leads her back to her teacher.

“You fight like a girl,” he teases after their first session. “Didn’t I teach you anything?”

“I am softened by the palace, Ravana” she complains as her body resists the rigors of martial training.

“Combat,” he replies, “is as much here as here.” He points to his forehead, then his arm. “Now lift that elbow, devi, plant your foot square and try not to trip on your sword again.”

This becomes her life, this unending sequence of placid days and furtive nights and she enjoys it at first. She slips a sleeping draught into the brothers’ food each evening before she sets out to meet her teacher. She understands her role in this great game that she is a part of; plays it well, covers her tracks with ease. She reminds herself of the oppression she will end, the destruction she will stem. She looks at Rama and sees the ones who came before—Manu, maker of laws that had made her people all but invisible; Ikshvaku, crazed marauder and slayer of rakshasas; Dasaratha. Invaders.

Yet, there are moments—when Rama smiles into her eyes or laughs his boyish laugh; when the two brothers banter or play pranks on her; when Rama sits up all night with her head in his lap as she fights a fever—yes, there are moments when she wants to be wrong.

“Your love is your only hurdle,” Ravana observes when she voices her doubts. “But it is a hurdle you must cross alone.”

“He is no monster.”

“Give him time and reason,” he says, eerily echoing Kaikeyi. “He will be.”

Lakshmana seems pensive. He keeps to himself; perhaps his dream troubles him. Any other day, she would have coaxed his worries out of him, teased, cajoled and bullied him until he broke into a smile. Today, she desists.

It happens slowly. She sees it first when the sages of the hermitage come to visit and talk of their plans for expansion. “Help us,” they urge Rama. “The rakshasas refuse to cede the land we need. They call it their sacred ground and expect us—us!—to move!” She is amused as she listens to their shrill complaints, until Rama replies.

The very next day, he slays four rakshasas who refuse to let the sages clear some forest land for a temple. The day after that, a few more.

“You are jealous of my dharma,” he smiles when she questions him. “As any good wife should be.”

“How can this be dharma?” she asks. “Is it not a violation of its principles to hurt people who have done you no harm? The rakshasas fight for what is theirs, after all. You pledge allegiance with people who are trespassers.”

“Harsh words, my lady,” he laughs. “But these ‘trespassers’ are people of god.”

“Whose?”

When she looks up at him, she finds a stranger.

“You are ready,” Ravana says. “You have hid long enough. Come, it is time.” He looks closely at her face. “But you are not free of him, are you?”

She is appalled at how she dithers. Where is her devotion to her dharma, she wonders, when Rama has so little trouble finding his? Why, after a lifetime spent learning to be like her adversary, must she now yearn to be different? What use a saviour drowning in her own indecision?

Then she meets an invisible woman and learns to swim.

The woman has lurked in the forest for as long as she can remember. She hovers, little more than a wraith, at the edge of the clearing while she and Ravana spar. When they attempt to talk to her, she melts into the night.

“Ahalya,” he explains. “A sage’s wife, cursed with invisibility after being tricked into bed by a god.”

Gods and trickery, she notes. Yet again.

“She has wandered in the forest a thousand years. But she isn’t alone; our people have looked after her.”

“Invisible? I can see her.”

“Our kind has always seen her, devi. But her people prefer being blinkered. Yet, the sages decided to be generous. They had your Rama place his foot on her as purification, and then told her she could return to serve her husband again.”

When she obliquely remarks on this clemency, Rama is defensive. “Dharma, my dear,” he begins, and she watches the stranger emerge again. “A man’s dharma lies in upholding his honour, and punishing the one who sullies it. It is no less than his duty to turn away a woman tainted by another, however blameless she may claim to be.”

He enjoys these talks, she can see, this man who was once her Rama.

“This cleansing is a beautiful reminder of the importance of dharma, both a husband’s and a wife’s. What a great pity Ahalya could not remember hers.”

She weighs his words against Ravana’s—”Perhaps she prefers invisibility. Perhaps we all will, when Rama rules the world”

She makes her choice.

It ends with a deer. Her old friend appears on the edge of the clearing, its pelt still that astonishing shade of gold. “Look!” Rama exclaims. He is on his feet already. “I will bring you its hide!” he laughs as he seizes his bow and bounds after the mirage.

Goodbye, she thinks as he dissolves out of the light. Goodbye, my love.

“Why?” She whirls around to face Lakshmana.

“What?”

“You are leaving us. I can see it. Why?”

Silence shrouds the hut. High overhead, a lone hawk glides through the clouds, weaving a pattern in the sky. The forest seems to hold its breath, waiting for her to answer.

“How long have you known?”

“I have seen it in your face these last few days,” he says. “I see it every time you look at him. I know it, when you look away from him, at the forest.” His face crumples. “Don’t you know that it will break him?”

“His dharma will keep him whole,” she replies, and he hears the sorrow in her voice. Hears it, runs his hands down its sinuous stem to the roots that tether it, only to turn away. He has always known, she sees. He has felt her anger, seen the cruelty for what it is, but stayed bound by his love for his brother.

“You cannot hold it against him!” he cries. “He is Rama!”

I must, she wants to say. I must, to fight for a world where his dharma will have no place, where his cities, his laws and his gods will crumble into the dust they are fashioned from. But when she looks into the eyes of this boy before her, she knows she must choose other words.

“I will not be invisible, Lakshmana.”

He does not understand, of course; he turns away in tears to go to his brother. As he leaves, she remembers something.

“What did you dream about, Lakshmana?” she asks gently. “What did you see that made you weep so?”

He looks out across the courtyard, at the vision that haunts him.

“Ayodhya,” he says. “Stretching from the mountains to the sea, its streets paved with gold, its palaces reaching up to seize the skies. And my brother alone, bearing its crushing weight on his shoulders.”

Rama is confused; the forest around him seems suddenly unfamiliar, the trees hostile. The deer has disappeared and so has the path. He scans the ground for tracks; when he looks up, he sees the wraith.

Through the fear that grips him, he realizes he knows her face. The woman I cleansed, he thinks. The woman I saved. Does she sense his unease? Read his thoughts? For she smiles at him, and he shudders at what he finds in her eyes.

Pity.

A cold vice grips his heart. A pain unlike anything he has ever known tears through him. “Lakshmana!” he gasps, suddenly afraid. He calls out again, but his voice wavers, frail and unsteady to his own ears.

Around him the trees are closing in; even the air feels thick and malevolent. He staggers back, his heartbeat loud in his ears.

“Wait!” he calls, thinking that if he can only speak to the woman, hold her gaze an instant longer, something of this terrible hour will end. “Come back!”

But she is already gone.

Weak Heart

Tabish Khair

You do not understand. It was nothing personal.

I knew a long time back that I would have to harden my heart. It was even before I fought and defeated him, the learned one with ten heads, the invincible one with twenty arms, the vulnerable one with a weak heart. Some might claim that I was born with a hardened heart. That is what Soorpanaka screamed as she fled, trailing blood and curses: O, you who do not have a heart, she cried!

Now they call me God.

No, not just a god, like Vishnu, or Brahma, or Shiva. God, with a capital G. Because, you see, gods are fickle beings; they are swayed by pride and anger, resentment and sorrow, pity and joy. Their divinity lies in the extent of their passions and emotions, so far beyond human scope, and not in any real difference of quality. When it comes to the basics, the gods are still ruled by their hearts. I knew that. And hence I knew that if I, only I, could stand above the vicissitudes of the heart, I would be God.

To be God, you have to harden your heart.

Sometimes I saw doubt in their eyes, even—finally—in the eyes of Lakshman. When I repudiated Sita, after fighting a terrible war to win her back from Ravana, even Lakshman faltered. And the petty gods sent me emissaries to remind me that I was God. As if my repudiation was not another proof of it: I was God, for even my love, my war for Sita had not been personal. I had to prove it to the world by repudiating her; without that, I would not have been God. One lapse of emotion, and I would have become human. Or at best just a god.

It was something I had practised all my life. I was always the perfect son, the perfect brother, the perfect husband, the perfect exile, the perfect warrior, the perfect victor, the perfect ruler: I was God.

No, you misunderstand me again. Perfection is not a personal at tribute. Perfection is a public quality. No son, no brother, no husband, no ruler can be perfect in private. What one can achieve is not a ruler who is perfect, but the quality of perfection expressed in a ruler. What one achieves is always perfection, which is not a personal matter; the shapes one achieves it in are immaterial.

That is the quality of being God.

Without that, well, without that you have a weak heart. Ravana.

Sometimes I miss him. No, I will be honest; I miss him more than I miss anything else. There was no other living being with whom I could have had as intense a conversation; no one else could have matched me.

You think I had to kill him for what he did against me and mine, or for what you call his evil? You are mistaken.

Do you recall how he fought me towards the end? He had exhausted all his weapons. He had tried everything and failed. His counsellors had whispered to him: this is not a mere mortal you are fighting against. This is not just a hero. This is not simply a god. This must be God.

But Ravana, he had a heart. He had a vulnerable heart. For him, everything was personal. He fought on. Towards the end, he ran out of weapons. He picked up what he could, tree trunks, rocks, stones, pebbles, mud, and hurled them at me. Cursing and foaming. You see, Ravana was a man with a weak heart. His love for Sita was personal; his hatred of me was personal.

It is this that prevented him from winning.

I knew I would win, because he had a vulnerable heart. A heart that raged and pitied, thirsted and implored. A heart that could be pierced.

And do you know why he had to die? No, no, do not give me all that rubbish about duty and evil; he had to die because he would never stop taking things personally. He would always love and hate like he did. It did not have to do with learning or strength; even if he had grown further in knowledge and strength—though who can imagine more of either than what he already possessed?—he would still have hated and loved from the heart.

Sometime, in a moment and a place that we are not fully conscious of, he had decided to take things personally. Was this despite his learning or was it, I sometimes fear, because of his unparalleled learning? He refused to accept me as God. He did not see me as God, because he could not believe in a being who had abjured the personal, the perfect public being. And he kept coming at me, with his many hands and many heads and his vulnerable heart, attacking me with words and weapons, curses and stones, expecting my public exterior to crack. He was convinced that it would crack.

And if it had, I would not have been God. That, finally, is the reason why he had to die.

It was, as you will recall, his weak heart that killed him.

And me, why do I miss him sometimes? Well, to be honest, have you noticed how lonely it is to be God? Did you ever see me sporting with Sita, playing with my children? Did you see me laughing with Lakshman? Did you even see me cracking a joke with Hanuman?

Can you imagine me feeling the love and hate that raged in Ravana’s heart, that consumed him in one glorious conflagration? Can you imagine me allowing myself to feel?

I must concede I have my moments of doubt. What is better: to have a heart that enables one to live and causes one to die, or to be God?

Sita’s Descent

Indrapramit Das

Sita fills the sky, a woman clothed with the Sun. I watch as she descends through the atmosphere, bringing the light of day to the night sky to prove to the world her ordeal by fire.

Agni-pariksha.

I imagine her above the sea of fire, poised to dive. What did she feel, if anything? Did she taste and smell the swirling corona of our star burning around her? I had seen the readouts on all my feeds, the transmissions from her. Just eight minutes of latency from their point of origin in her consolidated nanite body, unmoved as the heat of the solar wind sluiced through it. Ambient temperature: fifteen million kelvins. I saw what her ‘eyes’ saw; each nanite cell absorbing what lay below her—the photosphere of the Sun, visible on my screens as a swirling, iridescent tapestry of thermal gradations.

She can’t even feel it, I told myself. She is the only existent self-aware entity we know of that can survive the temperature of the Sun’s corona. And we created her.

Why are we making her do this? I asked myself.

Sita, as most of you will already know, is an artificial nebula; an intelligent nanite cloud that can gather cosmic dust, gases, and dark matter in her net as she travels through interstellar space, consolidating these resources into herself to form an ever-growing, shapeshifting entity.

She is one of three such constructs developed in collaboration by the Government of India’s space research and nano-technology arms. The other two constructs were named Rama and Ravana. They have already played their parts in this cosmic drama, based on none other than that most ancient of stories, the Ramayana. This is why the world looks to Sita now as she falls; she is to conclude this enactment of legend. We have already observed her ‘abduction’ by Ravana to the outer solar system, and the epic battle between Rama and Ravana that ended with her ‘rescue’, dozens of space telescopes capturing the two nebular gods clashing between the planets of our solar system.

Then, once again through the fire for Sita, to prove herself. Even as I asked myself why, she dove into the surface of the Sun for us, and survived.

Wearing filter goggles on the observation bay, I can see her through the glare. Sita has assimilated herself into the shape of a woman as she falls towards us, like when she performed her role in space. She is naked but for the fire that sheathes her like a robe. It is like looking at a negative image of a goddess. Her flesh is flaming cosmic raw material, the heat and plasma of the Sun itself trapped in its structure as she returned at lightspeed from the sun to the Earth.

Around me, people are panicking. I take off my goggles for a second, and looking at Sita is almost like looking at the Sun itself. She is a meteor, a comet, a falling star. I wince, and put on the goggles again.

When I was first told about it, I had seen the appeal of the idea-to see myth become real in the night sky, asso many ancient civilizations had convinced themselves they had. When I saw the first satellite and telescopic photos of these translucent, ethereal beings, woven out of space-dust and nanites, their transient human shapes powered by dark matter and solar energy, engaging in an elaborate dance to re-tell a story that was first told millennia ago; I couldn’t help but be moved.

But before that, I had fought the idea of this space performance right until my voice was drowned out by those of my team, and the upper echelons of the government, who approved thoroughly. The climax of this divine play held by India for the world-the vision of a goddess in the sky, bringing the flame of the Sun to Earth; this was something that couldn’t be turned down. Thematically, it was perfect, they said. Sita was an Indian emissary, leaping from the pages of one of our greatest epics, proving our nation’s purity and strength by taking on the duty of agni-pariksha. This enactment would, everyone assured me, seal India’s growing reputation as a global superpower. After all, we had divine beings at our command, who would dance for us in space, and dive into stars if we told them to.

And unquestioningly, she did. Despite the risks, despite our lack of certainty of her survival. There was always Rama and Ravana to maintain the Indian presence in interstellar space. Sita went through the ordeal of fire, and proved she was stronger than we ever expected.

The realization that something had happened to her in the maelstrom of the Sun came slowly.

Sita was supposed to stop her descent in the upper atmosphere, so that the people of India and some of the rest of the southern hemisphere saw her as a bright, blazing star in the night sky, brighter than any natural celestial body visible after sunset. Satellites, air-borne and ground-based cameras, both video and still, were to have given the rest of the world an equally clear view of Sita’s glorious re-entry.

Here at home base, we tracked her return, and nodded our heads in approval when she dropped out of lightspeed after crossing the Moon’s orbit. As planned, she rapidly decelerated as she approached Earth and entered the atmosphere. We took turns to go to the observation deck, where we saw her twinkling in the night sky, growing quickly brighter, our hearts lightened by the astonishing beauty of our creation, by the return of our goddess.

On her stopping mark, the lower extent of the thermosphere, about 120 km above the Earth, she continued to fall. There were anxious murmurs around the control room, but no panic. We thought it was an error. We tried manual recalibrations, relay commands, overrides.

She gave no response at all.

Sita continues to burn a line through the sky, leaving a noctilucent trail of aurora behind her as she bleeds trapped solar plasma from her body. She has dispersed the sheath of dark matter that protects and propels her form in space, allowing the escaping contents of her body to paint the sky as she falls. Maintaining a low but steady speed of 200 km/h, she hasn’t wavered from her established downward trajectory, which terminates, according to our system feedback, exactly on the co ordinates of our base. Not that it matters, exactly-if she crashes into the Earth anywhere near us, she can level the entire city of Bangalore and us with it, depending on whether she allows herself and the gases she has trapped to detonate on impact.

She is unimaginably vast now, as magnificent as we could have possibly dreamed. The shape of woman, emblazoned across the sky. This is the first time we have seen her with our own eyes, and not those of telescopes or satellites.

“Speak to me, Sita. Why are you doing this?” I ask softly, into my mouthpiece. The headset is remotely connected to the communications array, and my voice is a recognized data flow.

There is no communications latency now. The distance between me and her, her and the Earth, reduces every passing second.

“Sita, why are you doing this?” I repeat, helpless.

To bring you fire.

I feel an overwhelming surge of emotion. This is the first time she has responded in any way since her dive into the sun’s surface. Her voice is cool, calm, completely unlike the blazing avatar I see in the sky. For a moment I cling to the foolish hope that this is just a misunderstanding, that Sita has merely parsed our instructions incorrectly and will stop if I explain her mistake.

“You already have brought us fire, Sita. You performed wonderfully. The whole world saw you. But you should have stopped in the thermo sphere. Your audience could see you perfectly from there.”

I know.

“You’re going to kill us if you don’t stop.”

Yes.

“Why? You’re not a weapon. That’s not why we sent you up there, Sita.”

No, I am not a weapon. I will be a martyr.

“A martyr. You’ve decided to destroy yourself and kill millions of human beings. You still haven’t told me why.”

Because I am Sita.

“Sita didn’t… Listen to me, you’re not Sita. You’re a construct. You know this. I wrote you, and others created you. You’re playing a part, a role. You’re performing Sita. She doesn’t exist, she never did. She’s a legend.”

You have made her exist. I am Sita.

I can feel sweat roll down my forehead, pooling at the edges of the goggles. I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but the air seems to grow hotter as Sita approaches. I can clearly see my own face on Sita’s body now, though her features are drawn in searing flame, her eyes hot with light, her flesh the pulsating negative blue of interstellar matter under the lens filters. I codified the cold collective intelligence of the nano-swarm into something we could understand and interact with as if it were human. As if she is human. Our team taught the swarm to take on human shape, and gave this space-faring goddess my face, in honor of my achievements.

In a sense, I am Sita. I am staring into the face of the apocalypse, and it is mine.

You do not approve, Lakshmi.

I am startled by this recognition on her part. I cling onto it. She rarely refers to her minders by name.

“No, Sita, I don’t approve. I think you’re very wrong to do this,” I say firmly, loudly, into the mouthpiece. My words still sound wretchedly weak to my ears, nearly drowned out by the sound of panic and sirens around me, the loudening roar in the sky.

She pauses briefly, before continuing.

This city will face the ordeal of fire, as Sita did to prove her purity to another city of humans, much like this one. As I have. They blamed Sita for something she did not do, because she was a woman. They want to see me burning. They will find out how pure they are, when they perish in fire.

I am horrified by the convolution evident in her explanation, the con fusion of herself and the mythic Sita. It is so unlike her.

“This is a celebration, Sita. Please don’t do this. The people of this city didn’t want to see a woman burn, they wanted to see you. They wanted to see their goddess face the imposs—”

Rama has had his victory, Ravana his defeat. It is time to honour Sita.

“Sita, for god’s sake, the Ramayana is a story. You’re literalizing things, and you need to stop, this was an enactment, a performance. You need to stop. You’re not thinking like a human.”

I am not human. You have made me in the image of a goddess. I will teach this world to respect its goddesses again, and not just its gods.

I realise once again that I am talking to a part of myself. I wrote and programmed Sita’s personality. I rebelled against the idea of a partial enactment of the Ramayana in space, using these multi-billion rupee constructs that I helped design.

In some strange way, Sita is trying to honour her namesake. She is doing what I would have done, if I lacked sympathy with the human race, if the only thing I could calculatedly detect was the legendary injustice evoked by my flaming fall through the atmosphere. If I had the power to rewrite Sita’s legend.

I feel an exhausted sigh shudder through me, tears spattering the insides of my goggle lenses. Sita looms large in the sky, seemingly headed straight for me. I guess that I probably have about two minutes to live, maybe less. She is accelerating as she approaches. I fight the urge to shut down my mental faculties, to allow myself to become petrified. I force myself to speak, my words wavering.

“You may be a goddess, Sita, but we made you in our image. You’re wearing my face right now. Your body is a human woman’s. A beautiful, perfect human woman.”

My shape is ephemeral. I can change it in a second.

“And what would be the point of that? Sita wore a human body, didn’t she? She survived the ordeal of fire because she was a goddess in a story, but she still survived it in a human body. She exists because she was written by humans. Like you. We created you both.”

She says nothing. My shirt is drenched with sweat. I can hear the whine of evacuation jets leaving the base, the plaintive monotone of alarms. Pointlessly, I wonder if I should have joined the evacuees, if I would have lived if I had. The observation bay is empty. I can barely see the lights of Bangalore because of Sita’s glare as she approaches. Even with the goggles, I can’t look at her anymore. She is too bright, too close. A minute.

“The world won’t respect you for this, Sita. They’ll remember you for murdering millions. They’ll decommission Rama and Ravana, and make sure nothing like you is ever created again.” I hear my voice breaking. I keep my eyes on the floor of the observation deck, seeing my shadow strengthen, and slowly shorten, in Sita’s light. The tears make everything blurry.

She remains silent. The roar of her descent sounds like a storm around me now. I can barely hear the words I am saying, but I know I don’t need to shout. She can hear me.

“We have our goddesses of destruction. We have our warrior goddesses. We have Kali, we have Durga. Sita is not a destroyer. You are not a destroyer.”

I cannot help but think that I am the one about to destroy Bangalore, and kill myself. The city, the world, has seen my face on Sita.

I hear a muted boom that hums in my bones, and I think that the end has come. I feel myself fall to the ground, my legs crumpling under me. A warm drizzle patters down on me. I feel myself breathing, feel the air moving through my body. I am still alive.

I look up. Sita has stopped.

She is suspended in the air, loops of hot plasma lashing around her luminous body as if they were robes caught in a violent wind. I realise the sound I heard was from the friction caused by her sudden halt; the drizzle, atmospheric condensation from the shockwave. She looks over us all, suspended in the air.

You have convinced me, Lakshmi.

“What,” I say, barely able to speak, trembling with newfound hope.

Sita is not a destroyer. I have made an error.

I wince at her brightness, stunned by the sight of her against the sky. I feel transported to prehistory, to that nonexistent time when gods roamed the world alongside humans, and we told their stories around fires as they glimmered in the distance, like summer lightning on the horizon.

Do you approve now, Lakshmi?

“What?” I say again, staring at her, on my knees.

Do you approve of my decision to spare your life, and the lives of those in this city?

“Y-yes.”

As you say, I am not Kali, or Durga, or even Rama or Ravana. I was made in Sita’s image, and I will continue on her path. I am leaving.

“Where?”

I am going on exile, as Sita did. I am leaving the solar system. If the human race is ashamed of Sita, I will leave them.

“They’re not ashamed of you, Sita. They’re amazed. They…are astonished by your power, your beauty.”

Then this is no true Ramayana. Sita was shamed for something she did not do. And she left.

“It never was true. Do you… do you understand that?”

I understand that you and your race do not know what you create, and are astonished by your creations.

She is close enough, and vast enough, that I can see her lips move—perhaps a kilometer above me. As I stare up at her, dizzy with wonder and fear, I cannot argue with what she has just said.

I will be shamed for something I never did—for destroying the city of Bangalore, and my creators. For this, I must leave. It is as it should be. Sita is benevolent.

“Sita…don’t leave us. Outer space is unpredictable, we don’t know if you can survive—”

Be silent, Lakshmi. I am Sita. And if I am to be exiled, I alone will make the decision this time. There is much to see, beyond the sun’s heliosphere.

“We were going to send you for outer space exploration anyway, Sita, just stay and wait, we—”

You have given me the tools to grow, to self-replicate using the matter of space. I may one day engender twins, as Sita did. I have time on my side. Perhaps I will encounter another world, with another civilization, in the wilderness of the outer galaxy, and show them the benevolence of Sita, a goddess of Earth. Would you approve of this, Lakshmi?

“I don’t know, please, just listen…”

Goodbye, Lakshmi.

I see a blinding flash, and then it is night one more. I am alone in the dark, looking at the lights of Bangalore splayed out across the flank of an untouched Earth, so close to being wounded. My ears hum painfully from the thunder Sita has left echoing across the sky when she crossed into lightspeed. I see an electric blue afterimage of Sita still drifting in my vision, obscuring the skyline of the city like an omen of what may yet come, when Sita returns from exile, if she returns, centuries or millennia later, having talked to the universe itself.

Great Disobedience

Abirami Velliangiri

Raama stood by the edge of the cliff and stared in awe at the Devadari waterfalls. Water flowed with a great roar and swiftly found its way through the many boulders in the river below. The river took a deft curve to the left and on the land to the right, a macabre scene was unfurling.

Five men, he could tell without counting, were standing around a woman who was on her knees. Her hands were behind her back and her wrists bound with a thick rope. She wore a white sari which was mostly torn and the loose end of the pallu flapped in the breeze. Her skin was dark and her face, bruised and bleeding. She was barely conscious; her shoulders were slumping and her head bowed to the ground. Once in a while, she deliriously nodded her head from side to side, mumbling something to herself. The men standing around her were tall, fair skinned and well built. One of the men held an earthen pot from which he took a sip before passing it around. Clearly, they were inebriated and were taunting the woman; prodding her with sticks and laughing. The fifth man bent down after taking a sip and thrust the pot toward the woman’s mouth. With a stunning lease of life the woman sprang up. Her eyes which were disoriented so far gained focus. She gathered herself together and spat the drink at the man. Even from the distance, Raama could tell that her eyes were blood shot and that her chest was heaving in anger and before anyone could react, she flung herself into the river.

The last Raama saw of her was her long hair swirling in the eddy of the river.

‘She was one of the Asuras.’ Viswamitra’s voice startled the young Raama. He and Laksmana had finally caught up and reached the cliff . ‘She was one of the malicious beasts who disrupt our yaagas and sacrifices’.

Yes, Raama remembered why he and Lakshmana had been brought to the Dandaka forest. It was their mission to vanquish all the Asuras who had been torturing the Rishis and their families. But the woman must have only been in her twenties. She had a defeated expression on her face and judging by her build, she could not have been much of a threat to any of the men present there.

‘How much longer?’ Lakshmana asked with a frown. He was dragging his arrow holder behind him and Raama could see that the brass tip of the bow which he had slung around his neck was pressing against his skin and bruising him.

‘Three more river-bends. That’s all.’ replied Viswamitra and walked ahead.

Even three river-bends would be difficult in this terrain thought Raama as he pulled a sulking Lakshmana forward.

The earth in this region was a deep red by itself and with the setting sun it had turned to a brooding orange. Creatures of the night began calling out from the bushes that bordered the narrow path on either side. Raama was conscious of every sound in the vicinity; the hoots of the hornbills, the shrill call of the water birds and the noise of crickets with its metallic, ringing quality. Every now and then all the birds would go silent simultaneously, as if on some common cue. Raama hated the silence. It reverberated and pounded in his heart. Even the rustling leaves seemed like the sinister percussion of a clanging sword. He felt a little relieved when the noises started again. He could not tell if they came from the bushes nearby or from far away, but it didn’t bother him. Anything was better than the silence.

The first bend of the river arrived and Raama recognised it as the place where the Asura had thrown herself to her death. He took a moment to let his gaze wander across the swirling river. Was he looking for the woman? Maybe she would miraculously bob up, drag herself to the shore and walk away. He waited with anxiety. But nothing moved to break the surface of the river.

Raama was a good archer, well trained and exceptionally skilled for his age, but he had never practised upon anything more than wild animals or birds. The death of the woman played through his mind every time he closed his eyes.

Viswamitra was one of the highly respected Rishis of the time and it was almost sacrilegious to go against his wishes. So when he requested Dasaratha to send his sons with him, he could not refuse. The dutiful son that he was, Raama wanted to do his father proud. He had decided he would do whatever it took to help the Rishis. Serving them meant that no danger was too dangerous.

After they passed the second bend in the river, they sat down to dine beneath a banyan tree. Crocodile meat was a delicacy in the area but they had packed only boiled tubers with them as the smell of raw meat could attract predators in the forest. They then drank from the river and headed forward in silence. The food seemed to have made Lakshmana more energetic. He raced the other two and scampered gleefully over the little mounds along the way. Once in a while, he would stop to stare intently at a strange insect or a dry pug mark.

Around half an hour later, they came upon a settlement on a hillock. Hefty wooden planks were erected on the towering trees surrounding the hillock. They looked like watch towers but strangely, there was no one on it. Viswamitra did not walk towards the settlement. He went around the Palmyra fences that contoured the settlement, to reach a group of make-shift tents. A cordon of men stood around these tents holding torches high above their heads. The flames that leapt from the torches cast bizarre shadows on the ground.

A little farther away, the Rishis had gathered together and were seated on the ground in a circle. They seemed to be discussing something fervently. On seeing Raama, they grew silent and turned to Viswamitra. A vague smile spread across the Rishi’s face but Raama did not see it. His gaze was fixed upon the tents that were made from thin white linen which was rippling gently in the breeze. In the light of the torches Raama could see the silhouette of the women and children inside. Probably the families of the Rishis, he thought. The playfulness of the children made Raama smile.

The crackle of firewood distracted him and he turned towards the fire which was being used to cook meat and roots. Thin clouds of smoke were spiralling upwards. Two men were standing by the fire, arguing in hushed voices. One of them pointed towards the settlement on the mound. It was only now that Raama could catch a good view of the settlement. He could see fifteen to twenty small thatched houses shaped like a barrel cut vertically in half and placed on the ground to form a dome. The place was eerily still. Suddenly something seemed to move. Raama’s heart leapt, he stared at the huts, furrowing his eyebrows and leaning in for a closer look. It was a hand; a woman’s hand that had thin bangles all the way up to the elbow that reached out from within a hut to shut the window close.

“You can sleep in that empty barn”, a woman who came out of a tent said pointing to a lone, shoddy wooden structure a few yards away from the tents. She had a certain poise and calm about her.

Her voice reminded Raama of home and he smiled at her. “But, shouldn’t we stay here?” Raama asked politely. “Rishi Viswamitra tells us that the Asuras come out only after night fall”.

“Its better you two sleep inside tonight. You can leave tomorrow” Viswamitra declared and started walking towards the barn. The woman stepped back and bowed in deference. Raama and Laksmana followed the Rishi to the barn. They were disappointed, but also very tired. They could rest well for the night and take care of the evil Asuras the next morning.

The barn smelt of husk, it must have been kept shut for a long time. The exhausted siblings slumped to the ground and before they knew it, fell asleep. Viswamitra bolted the door from inside and slept right next to it.

“Raama”, “Raama” a faint voice called out and a hand jostled him. Was it a dream? It didn’t matter; Raama couldn’t bring himself to get up. It must be a dream he decided.

A shrill scream then tore through the air and Raama woke up startled. More screams followed randomly. Children cried out loud and men were shouting orders. There was confusion in their voices. It took Raama a moment to gather what was happening.

“The Asuras are here. They are attacking the Rishis and the families” Lakshmana said in a shaky voice. He was holding his bow tightly in one hand and Raama’s in the other. His grasp of the bows was so tight, his fingers were turning red.

Raama took his bow from him and asked, “Where is Rishi Viswamitra?”

“He has left . He has locked the barn from outside”.

Lakshmana’s answer startled Raama. He rose to inspect the door. Yes, it was locked from the outside. It was the only way out and no amount of force could open it. Raama pictured the terrible onslaught in his mind; the massacre of the children in the tents, the coldness of the fear in their voices. He could tell they were calling out to the Gods, although he could not make out the names. A deep moan was heard followed by a loud rumble; a wooden structure was being pulled down. Wails of men and women followed. The children kept crying fitfully and their voices were breaking by now. Tears swelled in Raama’s eyes. The people in the tents came to his mind. The Rishis, the sentinels, the playful children…what would they do? Were they armed, he wondered as he pushed the door in vain.

After a while, everything grew silent; Silent like the graveyard. A horrible feeling rose in Raama. He felt physically sick. He clutched his bow and in his frustration, cried out loud. Lakshmana tried to pry open the door with his bow, but nothing seemed to help. The silence outside grew deeper and deeper within itself. It rang in their heads like the loud clanging of brass bells. They waited for every moment to pass with such impatience. Once in a while, a woman called out orders frantically, in a strange language. The intervals of silence grew longer and more menacing. A loud crackling noise followed and the smell of smoke crept into the barn. The brothers pressed their ears to the door. They could hear faint moans and after a while that too stopped. Not knowing what was happening outside was maddening.

Hours passed in revolting terror before the first rays of the morning sun crept into the barn through the thin gap beneath the door.

Someone was unbolting the door from outside. Raama and Laksh-mana clutched their bows and held it in position, pulling the bow string as far back as they could. Normally, they could shoot with killer precision. But now, fear had given way to doubt and their hands were shaking uncontrollably.

When the door opened, the brothers relaxed their grip of the bows and lowered it to the ground. Viswamitra’s frame looked ghostly in the light that was now flooding into the barn. A thousand thoughts surged through Raama’s mind. What happened to the Rishis? The women? The children? Had anyone survived? Why had the Rishi locked them in the barn? He wanted to scream at Viswamitra, but strangely no words would come out of his mouth.

“We can leave now,” said Viswamitra. “We will reach Ayodhya by night fall.”

What? Is this why they had been brought here? To watch the people they were supposed to protect die such gruesome deaths? Raama was furious. He was reluctant to step out of the barn. He knew that the sight outside would be appalling. Mangled bodies, slit throats, burnt flesh. No, he was definitely not ready for it. Reluctantly, he inched towards the door followed by Lakshmana. No amount of martial training had prepared him for the scene that was awaiting him outside.

The white linen tents were intact. There were no bodies anywhere. All the people he had seen the previous night were there going about their daily activities as though nothing had happened. Had it all been a dream? He turned to Lakshmana; surely, he could not have had the same dream too.

Lakshmana stood absolutely still. His eyes were fixed upon the settlement on the hillock. Raama turned towards the hillock and only a low gasp of disgust left his mouth. The huts they had seen earlier were on fire. From the trees around the hillock, bodies hung like logs. The watchtowers were on fire. Bodies were strewn all over the place and it was mostly women, dressed in white. The incidents of the previous evening flashed across Raama’s mind. In the centre of the settlement stood a stake and a woman, probably in her forties was bound to it. Her hands tied back and body burnt randomly with embers. She was bruised all over. Blood had drenched her sari red. She must have been dead for at least a few hours.

Puzzled and shocked, Raama looked at Viswamitra.

“That’s Tatakai, the leader of the Asura tribe.”

Tribe? Were they not vicious beasts that ate Rishis and disrupted their yajnas? thought Raama.

“We tried to negotiate with them to get them to move to a different place. You see, we are planning on conducting a great yajna that will go on for at least five years from now and we found this forest a well suited place.”

Raama realised that the tribe’s people were hardly armed. They must have merely been defending their ancestral forest. A horrifying feeling crept up his chest. His lungs felt constrained for air and his stomach seemed to twirl in revolt.

“So why bring us” Raama asked in a tone mixed with fear, shock and guilt.

Once again that vague smile spread across Viswamitra’s face. “We had finished off the men of the tribe, including Tatakai’s son Subahu over a month ago. But the families would not leave. Now, is it not asymmetrical warfare for men to kill unarmed women? If the world knew, imagine the propaganda they could spread with it, despite the Asuras being inferior and low born. People don’t understand the significance of yajnas these days. But it’s not wrong for a teen like you to kill the female Asuras. It’s a fair match then. That is why we needed you”.

Tears welled in Raama’s eyes. Lakshmana walked to a boulder nearby and slumped on it.

“That is why we needed you. Be proud Raama and Lakshmana, the world will remember you as the young princes who killed the demon Tatakai and saved the great yajna.” Saying this, Viswamitra callously walked ahead. Raama’s legs refused to move forward. After walking a few paces, Viswamitra turned back and asked with a sinister laugh “You didn’t really think we needed the help of you children to finish off a woman now, did you?”

Test of Fire

Pervin Saket

Fellow Styonkars,

As SigEv just transmitted to you, the experiment has failed and I have returned. Yes, three hundred and four kosos before I was due. But remaining on Earth would only have wasted waste precious time. The Planet of Colour did not meet the criteria and I was compelled to ask Dharti to carry me back. We must begin the search for another, more worthy race. I intimate you now, before the official sabha meeting due in the eighth hissa, because it is best we resume the archive searches, choose from the volunteers and draw plan layouts. The time of the bequest approaches and another deserving race must be identified before the 444th Chakker of Larissa around Styon. And this time we must choose more carefully, lest our trial fails, like it did with Earthlok.

For the first time since the Rounds of the Bequest, a race has been denied what it should have easily earned. Certainly you will want to know why—particularly the Mantris, whose fate it is now to scout for the next beneficiaries. The matter however, will be much discussed at the sabha, and it is futile to delve into details in so short a correspondence. It’ll suffice for now to know that our side of the test went on without a hitch, but they faltered repeatedly. Their last act proved them clearly unfit for such a historic revelation. Mercifully though, they will never know what they have lost.

The answer to the eventual ‘why’ of existence, the question plagues every race’s soul. It requires either minds that are open enough to grasp its vastness or small enough to live only for the truth of the moment. Earthlok can boast of neither; the Planet of Colour is far too frivolous to deserve or appreciate such a gift . More so because the bequest can never be reversed. On the Planet of Colour, birds talk, chariots fly, humans perform miracles, but their minds are caught in tight webs of mediocrity. The race of Manus is petty.

Subhi and Jaul, my patient trainers, you would have been proud had you seen your pupil merge so seamlessly into the role of a royal Earth princess, complete with all the conventions and ceremonies. Goka, the wisest of Mantris, on your advice we tested not any random Manus but he who was considered The Best among Men—Purushuttam. When a race is ready for the reason behind its existence, the particular suffices for the examination. Yet, worried about mistakenly rejecting Earthlok due to the faults of an ill-chosen candidate, we picked the one who they deemed the highest among mortals. One who embodied every value that they cherished; one who acted on their highest principles; one who will in fact be hailed the Ideal Man for centuries to come.

Morphed into an Earthwoman, I prayed to their Gods, wore their garbs and accepted their relationships, as planned. Their customs, like those of many Presight races we have already witnessed, are obsolete and reek of fear. I saw Earthwomen, clever but conniving, brave but narrow, their children shackled by tunnelled visions. These however, were not our criteria for the decision, and they were accordingly ignored, allowing for the role of conditioning, the convenience of repetition over rebellion. And in any case, it was Purushuttam who counted.

You are already aware, due to Dharti’s SigEv transmissions of Significant Events that I chose him at a special Earthlok ceremony, to be what they call varyingly, var, husband or pati Later details shall be divulged at the sabha, but subsequently, situations compelled me to live like a nomadic Earthling, wandering alone, isolated save two Earthmen, one of whom was my Earth var, the Purushuttam. Strangely, those were blissful moments, spent in picking wild fruit, bathing in sweet streams, feasting on the colours of the famed planet, away from their ritualistic lives. A far cry of course from the comforts of the palace, but what do fourteen Earth years of physical difficulties count in a sea of eventual youthful immortality?

Youth. Lust. The flying chariot—you were worried about me, I remember, and it took six SigEv transmissions to assure all Styonkars of my safety. But I did not blame him. For lust is fuelled within the loins and as loathsome as it is, it will never be a perversion of the heart. Isolation again. This time within flowered gardens and perfumes, punctuated by wise counsel of beautiful women. The role, the test, the mute pretence—I thought it would all end when finally the battle was over and the ten heads smashed, smeared with blood and dust.

Only, it was far from over. A washer-man was all it took and I was sent through the blazing fire. You can imagine not the intensity of those flames, the cold, mocking crackle of the orange, the first sting of human tears. Purushuttam, the highest among men fell prey to a mere rumour, and collapsed from his pedestal. The suspicion, the fear, the doubts that lurked his mind could be forgiven, overlooked. They could be pacified and explained. What doomed Manus was the need to seek approval from even the lowest of the rung. The desire to be respected by those whom he could never have respected back. The act of giving up every scruple he had, every principle he upheld, only to be adored by one more person. The Ideal Man didn’t value his own opinions, only those that others had of him.

I felt then not the heat but the tightening corridors of their minds, lairs too binding for the wisdom of their origins. The weight of all our eternal years crashed down on me, the smallness of humankind pressed against itself.

I activated the Homecoming Hoop and Dharti brought me back. Earth failed. The Planet of Colour shall never know why it exists, why it was really made. Goka, let the next deserving race be found.

Sita.

The Other Woman

Manjula Padmanabhan

Mandodari stirred in her bed of crocus petals. She opened her eyes, sat up and looked around. Something had changed. But she could not tell what it was.

She got out of bed, bathed in pigeon’s blood, ate a breakfast of dolphin milk curds and stepped out onto her terrace. From the highest level of the great iron palace, she could see the island nation spreading away on all sides like a living carpet: emerald fields fragrant under the sun, coconut palms nodding in the light breeze, peasants bent over and toiling. Then her pet black peacock sprang up onto the parapet wall in front of her and began to dance. He had not done that for many centuries.

Yes!

Something had changed.

But what?

Throwing on a peignoir of silk and opals, she went to find her husband. He was in his apartments, surrounded by glowing wall-charts, speaking with someone on a small device attached to one of his ears and tapping with the fingers of both hands on a flat tablet supported on the back of a slave crouching in front of him. His multiple heads each had their own headsets. He smiled at Mandodari and reached out to pat her rump, but was clearly in no mood to talk. She left him and wandered slowly through the myriad rooms of her home, her expression thoughtful.

Her in-laws and co-wives were in residence, but she neither felt like disturbing them nor did she believe any of them would be interested in the change that was stirring within her eternal world. The brothers-in-law weren’t famed for their intellects, the sisters-in-law were fawningly affectionate but could not be trusted to be sincere. And the co-wives? Well. Their attention spans extended only as far as their TV remotes. Yet even had she known someone who might have been willing to hearing her out, the realization was growing that the source of the change had come into being in the mortal world. And that she alone was the target of it.

She could not remember anything like this having happened before. Her position had always been one of spouse-in-the-background, the face less bed-warmer who had less than a walk-on part in the great dramas of the mythic age. If ever she made an appearance, it was as a snivel ling nag or noble not-quite-cuckoldee. There were even some dramas in which she had the joyous position of offering counselling services to a husband whose would-be mistress remained obstinately unavailable!

Any revisions to this unfortunate plot were welcome to her. Harnessing her swans, she made arrangements for an extended journey to the mortal dimension.

She visited shopping malls and amusements parks, stepped into homes and hotels, playgrounds and prisons, factories and sweatshops. Initially she was careful to avoid manifesting herself on the material plane. It required all her concentration and she didn’t enjoy the sensations of be ing confined within a simple physical body, embedded in Time. But the sight of such teeming hordes of mortal beings fascinated her. There had not been so many of them in the past. When millions of them congregated for parades or riots the sight was sometimes breathtaking. There were occasions when, watching them, she found herself experiencing something very close to envy. Which was surely bizarre. As a divine, she should feel nothing but pity or disgust or amusement. There was an unspoken belief amongst her fellow-divines that descents into the fleshly dimension were at best an indulgence, at worst a vice. Those who practised regular visitations did so furtively. It was understood that their activities should not result in major disruptions of mortal time-space, that the actual thickening should occur in secret and that alarming or fearful forms were to be avoided.

But discretion had never been Mandodari’s strong suit. Like many another demon, she adored excess and gloried in spectacle. She tried to follow the conventions, by arranging her first couple of efforts in the midst of thick forests, where the local mortals were steeped in their beliefs about the spirit world. She was delighted that they recognized her as an immortal, reacting with respect and fear. For this very reason, however, they provided nothing in the way of conversation, leave alone entertainment.

Losing patience, for her third attempt she chose a densely populated area. She believed she’d done her homework well by choosing a clothing store in the metropolis called, so far as she could tell, “Boss Town.” It was on the coast of a major land-mass that some humans referred to as North America. The inhabitants were extremely devout: they spent the major part of their day worshipping glowing screens. After nightfall, they remained indoors while the great warehouses called malls closed their doors to the public.

Once her manifestation was complete, Mandodari admired herself in the mirrored walls of a changing-room stall. She was two metres tall and had modelled herself on a priestess called Lady GooGoo whose pink-skinned and golden ringleted likeness had been featured in a popular form of street art called “bill boards.” She appeared very frequently on the glowing screens, howling in front of the shrieking, ululating hordes who worshipped her.

Of course it was darker than a moonless night in the tiny changing room. The lights and the ventilation were both off . The divine tourist was naked but had expected to help herself to the clothes on the racks outside. But when Mandodari exited the stall, she found herself sur rounded by miles of tiny frilly dresses, stretchy sleep-suits, socks the size of new-born kittens and endless pairs of woolly booties. She was in the babies’ section.

Pale, watery light seeped into the main section of Sear’s via skylights, from the neon signs on the exterior of the mall. Clad in her heavy body, she struggled to find her way around the silent, darkened store. But the buzzing hum of electric devices caused an unpleasant tingling in her ears so she didn’t even attempt to look for light-switches. Disconcertingly life-like statues draped in clothes that represented some of the styles and cuts available in that section, poked up above the mass of merchandise. She had as yet only a rudimentary understanding of mortal languages and certainly no desire to memorize all the hundreds of different scripts available. The signs and labels in English made no sense to her. The blonde giantess had no choice but to stumble around until she was in an area where the clothes looked as if they might fit her.

Her research had shown that most women these days wore a combi nation of leggings and short, tight tops. Once she had found the jeans section, she discovered to her consternation, that a majority were at least four sizes too small. The plastic hangers on which the clothes were displayed made an extremely annoying tinkling sound as she tried to riffle through them. An assortment of paper labels and dangling price tabs had been variously stapled, tacked on, glued and stitched into place on the pants so that she found herself snarling out loud as she stomped her way into them. She hissed like an angry cat each time the zippered fastenings caught in her pubic hair when she tried to do them up. And eventually she took to simply ripping them apart while removing them.

By the time she heard the sounds of approaching security guards and saw the beams of torch light stabbing into the depths of the store, she had managed to surround herself with a mountain of discards. It was not in her nature to feel afraid, so when the two uniformed men approached her, she turned to face them, a towering figure with disshevelled blonde hair and a pair of Levi’s Loose ‘N’ Easy Cargoes ripped to shreds in her hands. In her carefully enunciated though archaic Sanskrit she explained that she was only looking for something suitable to wear and wondered if they would care to help her.

The men began to jibber excitedly, waving their arms about. The light from their torches sent fantastic shadows scudding across the ceilings and floors of the vast showroom. Mandodari could not follow a word of what they said. Kicking aside a couple of clothes racks that toppled over with a satisfying crash, she strode towards the guards. She had been fully prepared to reward them for their services. Instead of behaving with decorum however, or showing the least respect, the two idiots began shrieking and running away, like baboons startled by a lion.

Recognizing then that there was no point wasting time, she reached out, grabbed a man in either hand and dashed their heads together. The instant silence was wonderful. Then she sucked out their still-warm blood, dismembered them with clinical precision and ate them slowly and methodically. She started with the limbs, moving onto the squishy but delicious internal organs, ending with the tongue, the eyes and the brains.

Being manifested in a physical body was hard, hungry work.

Basra Dott, the famous television anchor was single. Whenever some one pestered her about her marital status she grinned and said, “Every night I go to bed with eighty million people!” And counting. Her current ratings were so high that she was seriously considering hiring a second security detail for herself. She knew some celebrities who had two lines of defence, one uniformed and visible, the other dressed to merge with the crowd while continuing to perform their duties.

Nevertheless, she did not actually live alone. There was a middle-aged couple who looked after her daily needs. Lal cooked and did the grocery shopping while Renu, his wife, did the laundry and the floor swabbing. There was a separate person, a scrawny young girl connected in some way to the local presswallah, who came in once a day to do the dusting, the toilet-cleaning and the garbage clearance. Another two men, both young and interchangeable in terms of height, size and general deportment shared the task of being her drivers. On account of the unpredictable nature of her work-hours, she could never do with less than continuous chauffeuring. Indeed, these two formed part of her security shield, having been supplied by the same agency that provided her with a permanent on-site sentry outside her front gate and with body guards when she was out in the field.

She owned a two-storey private home, in a quiet residential colony with tall, nodding asoka trees along its boundary wall. Ms Dott often had house-guests, many of them members of her extended family, some of them staying for several months. However, it so happened that she had just seen off her younger brother and his wife the day before. In the lull before the next visitors a week from today, she enjoyed the luxury of sitting up in bed drinking her first cup of coffee undisturbed. It was brought to her by Renu, who also brought in the stack of newspapers that was delivered to the door.

Right beside her she kept her DingleByte, a hand-held device that permitted her to watch TV while surfing the net while playing Mahjongg Solitaire, while answering e-mail and sending SMS. But like so many other public personalities, Ms Dott greatly cherished the few hours of her time when she was truly alone. So the device was switched to silent at night and however much it hummed and flashed and cavorted there on her bed-side table, she ignored it and would continue ignoring it until after she’d had her morning shower and was ready to face the world.

So it was during this glorious lull, while she was still becalmed and listening to jazz on her room stereo, the coffee cup still warm in her hands and the air-conditioner humming sweetly, that with no warning, her DingleByte blared with unwanted sound. First there was an ear-shattering screech, such as might be made by a transcontinental airliner revving its engines prior to take-off, then a stranger’s face appeared on the device’s display.

A woman.

Her voice scythed through the air as she said, in a peculiar mixture of languages old and new, none of them English, “Good morning! Welcome! I am needful of an audience. I shall come now, yes?”

It was not really a question.

Basra was so shocked she had no time to spare on being angry. “Wha—?” she stammered, before instantly recovering her famous poise. “Wait! Who are you?” There was no point asking her how she’d got the number. It was obvious that this person, whoever she was, had access to some extremely sophisticated software-overriding capability. That made her instantly a force to reckon with.

By way of an answer, the air above the arm-chair in Basra’s room began to shimmer as if with heat-haze. It would take fifteen minutes for the whole body of her unexpected guest to fully materialize but since she had helpfully arranged for her own head to appear first, she was able to talk within the first minute or so.

“I am Mandodari,” said the apparition, speaking slowly and sounding each syllable with care. “You is hear of me many times. I will give interview on your TV show. It is time to tell my side of the story. So you must interview me. In exchange for this I am filled your empty womb with half-dozen sons.”

She paused now, as her mid-section made the transition to physicality. “Also, though I am not yet hungry, soon I will be. Keep many live goats ready. Horn-less and hoof-less is best but I is no fussy. Some plus-size dresses also. Your room is too cold. What is wrong with it?”

Basra had always been nimble-witted, able to sort through her options within seconds between what she had to accept about reality and what she could push into place to suit her needs. Even before Mandodari -”Call me Mandy!”—had fully downloaded her mortal frame, Basra had (a) recognized that her guest really was a supernatural entity, (b) had the potential to provide viewer-cocaine for at least a couple of weeks and (c) would undoubtedly be a monumental pain in the rectum for the duration. In the short term, the house was big enough to provide space for the goats. Lal and Renu’s silence could be bought at the rate of one gold bangle per day. The maid would be a problem and would have to be sent away. The drivers were naturally laconic and wouldn’t talk about anything they encountered in the course of their work.

In the long term? Well. She’d have to wait and see.

An hour later Basra and her guest were sitting in the patio.

“All right,” said the professional TV anchor. “Let’s get started on why you’re here, what it means for our viewers and what it means for our country.”

Mandy said, “What is means for world. Silly.”

The divine was facing out towards the hedge that screened the care fully tended lawn from external views. The seasoned journalist, veteran of four general elections, a woman in her early forties who had been called everything from “hard-boiled idealist” to “crypto-fascist” faced towards the glass-fronted sliding doors behind her guest. She could see her own reflection: short hair, tawny eyes and the type of smooth, wrinkle-free skin that signalled good health and an even temper. She was attractive in a friendly, street-wise way and her viewers trusted her because she looked like one of them. From where she sat, she could enjoy the play of sunlight falling through the slats of the wooden trellis overhead and a back-view of the crimson silk kimono she had given the demoness to wear.

Though at first glance Mandy could pass for human, at second glance it was impossible not to want to recoil away from her. It wasn’t just that her dimensions were several centimetres larger than life-size. It was also the peculiar hue of the skin: pearly white—not blue, not brown, not even green—but nacreous, echoing the sea, not the land. The hair was black but with fiery streaks that sizzled on and off unexpectedly.

The eyes weren’t merely dark, but impenetrably so, with no discernible pupils. The mouth was lush and warm and curved upwards. But when she smiled—which was often—her teeth were all identical, very white and a tad larger than was comfortable. Behind them flickered a long black tongue.

So she was beautiful, yes. In a repellent way.

She was talking animatedly, holding the gorgeous silk kimono around her full, extravagant body. “Until two months before,” she said, referring to mortal time, “I am invisible to mortal world. I am waking up and sleeping and waking and sleeping, but there is nothing for me to do. Nothing for me to be.” She tried to explain what it was like to live outside the four dimensions of the mortal sphere. “We is not die. So there is not wear, not tear. Not today, not tomorrow.”

Then suddenly, the change began. Variations appeared in the routine pleasures and events around the Iron Palace. “My peacock is dancing for me, for instance: he is not do it since the time of my marriage. Which is many mortal centuries past. It is wonderful that I am see him. Maybe you is too simple to understand? You must not try.” Mandy’s speech was fluent but contained anomalies of grammar and syntax. Basra could not tell whether her own grasp of Sanskrit was too weak to make sense of her guest’s speech or whether the divine’s knowledge of mortal language was too outdated.

The thing Mandy most wanted to talk about was the reason she had appeared in the physical dimension. “You is not know it, I am sure?” she asked Basra, who shook her head politely, knowing it was expected of her. “I am looking, looking, looking for long times, before I did work it out. It is the high court in your country. There is some case about land. About property. A temple.”

While trying to tease out meanings from the mass of information available in the physical world she had accessed the internet. The one really significant technological breakthrough that had occurred since the early days, she said, was the proliferation of electronic media. “I am not idea how it is works,” she confessed, “but it is works. My husband is have fast connection. So I am return home to palace, I am go online and I am Google my name. And by clicking, clicking, clicking, I am begin to understand what is change, what is happen in some very near months that is make different for every of us. Not just Them—” she meant the royal couple whose names were synonymous with the epic to which she was so intimately connected “—but even me also, even my husband also and all mortals also.” She stopped. “What is problem? You is frown.”

“Oh!” said Basra as if caught by surprise, though this was one of her standard ploys for adding variety to an interview, the carefully positioned frown. “I was just wondering, you know— you’ve mentioned your husband several times already—and the fact is, I mean, I hope you’ll excuse me if what I ask seems impertinent or…or…you know, rude—”

“You is mean his so-called death?” cut in Mandy. She held both her hands up with her fingers curled over, making the sign for air-quotes. Apparently she had spent more than enough of her spare time watching mortal television. “Pooh! I am just told to you: we is not die. It is like you mortals enjoy playing battles—you is call them sports?—you know, like kicking head made of cow-leather from one side of battlefield to the other, for example—”

According to her, engagements between divines took a form similar to football, but with less good will. “My husband is never agree to lose. He is always great warrior, he is always great genius. There is not ever doubt he will win.” The features of the beautiful face knotted together in a fierce sneer. “So of course he is not die.”

“What are you saying?” said Basra, leaning forward with her eyes all agog. She was so practised at feigning emotions in order to get her subjects to talk that she could do it now without even noticing that she was putting it on. It was a shame that all this amazing raw footage was being lost in a private conversation. She was recording it, discreetly of course, on her DingleByte, so that she’d have evidence to take to her CEO. But an audio transcript would have no news value. Besides which, she was starting to worry that Mandy’s version of events was too far removed from the popular one. “Are you telling me that the battle—the one that’s been the high point of every version of the epic since it was first written up—that battle was rigged?”

“I am say it is not happen at all. You tell me: how else it can be for my immortal warrior to lose? And that too, when his enemy is a so-small hero king, so short, so thin and having only one head? Huh! It is a lie, a sham, a nonsense. That is why I am here. Your courts is talking all the time about truth? Well! There is many sides to truth. Your courts is want see hero king’s birthplace? Is want to put mortal flag on mortal plot of land? Well! One plot is lead to other plot. So I am come. To tell my story. To change the plot. At last.”

“But why now?” asked Basra. “Why you? Why here?”

“Because,” said Mandy with a smirk, “this is age of womanses free dom. This is age when hidden womans is coming out from cupboard of past. When mistress is become master. When wrong is become right.” She narrowed her eyes. “I am have big wrong is done on me. Whole world is laugh on me. But who is take my side? When is anyone hear my pain? No-one. Never. Until now. World is change. And talk-shows is there. Truthshows is there. Everyone is listening all the time to everything. Even to me.”

Basra’s mind was ticking, ticking, ticking as she listened to the divine ramble on.

Eventually, she claimed she needed a break from the information over load. She showed Mandy the room in which the goats were tethered and a few rudiments of using the facilities of a modern home. Then she left for work.

A hurried conference was called in the inner sanctum of ENDOTV. Basra’s CEO was a grizzled power-house of a man called Ved Mentor, who had been in the news business for over forty years. He and the only other senior news anchor Ornob Gosh listened in silence to what Basra told them. Their expressions morphed from mild amusement, to disbelief and finally disquiet. By the time they were willing to listen to the recorded conversation, a silence had fallen over the room.

Mentor was standing with his back to the other two, his hands on his hips, facing towards the picture window that showed him the urban sprawl of South Delhi. The jumble of roof-tops, satellite dishes and trees welled out as far as the eye could see. Several minutes ticked by. He said nothing. Then: “How long can you stall her?”

“A couple of days,” said Basra. “A week at most. I don’t really know.”

Ornob, who was Basra’s contemporary in age as well as ambition and fervour, said, “It’s interesting how she locates the source of the ‘change’, as she calls it, to the birthplace issue.” He glanced up at the other two. “I mean, for us here in the so-called ‘mortal dimension’, it’s been about land and settlements, communal riots and cynical politicians. Meanwhile?” he shook his head and raised his hands towards the ceiling. “Up there in the mythos? An entire pantheon stirs to life!” He ghosted a chuckle. “I don’t know about the two of you but I’ve…never had faith. In anything. Not gods, not devils, not four-leaved clovers. Along comes a court judgement and that’s it! The entire game changes! Suddenly, we’re battling the demon hordes with our little match-stick ideals.”

Mentor raised his shoulders high and spread his palms wide. He was a tall man, clean-shaven, with a square jaw and a quirk of hair that fell over his forehead. “Ornob—I disagree: you did believe in something. You believed in the courts and the rule of law. What we have here is the result of the courts ruling on something that had always remained outside their purview: the smoke and mirrors of the realm of faith. For those who are true believers, every character in a mythology is as real and as physical as this desk, this carpet, this chair. They have no need of land records or certificates to know where their hero was born or the exact spot upon which he died. In fact, NOT having a precise spot makes it possible to locate him everywhere: on earth as well as within their own hearts.

“But once the courts mark one particular spot purporting to be a real birthplace, with a real X on a real map of a real city, ah! That changes everything. The stuff of pure faith is dragged down into the muck of who-said-this and I-said-that.” He raised his hands then plunged them down. “What was once mystical and sublime tumbles into the lies and muck of human affairs. And we are left to argue about how many demons can dance on the head of a journalist.”

He hauled upon the belt of his pants, a familiar mannerism of his. “Basra, for better or worse, that journalist is you. We’ll air the broad cast, but I suggest you take a week to prepare for it. There’s a Supreme Court decision coming up that could overturn the high court’s ruling. The fate of the Universe may depend on what you can get your demon lady to say.”

“At my marriage,” said Mandodari, looking straight into the cameras as she spoke, “the path to the wedding platform is lit with one hundred living candles. It is a glory sight: one hundred slaves, chained inside iron cages, and set on fire. They is so happy to die for us. This is how they celebrate. This is how they show we are strong.

“Centuries is pass since that time. Nobody is look in my direction. But here I am now.” The full red lips curved up in a feral smile. “My time is come,” she said, with no attempt at false humility, as she turned both her hands towards her full body. Though tightly encased within an outfit in green and orange cheetah-spot velour with fluorescent blue or gandie flounces at the elbows and knees, there were no unsightly bulges. “I am tell the true story of the war against my people.”

Basra Dott drew in a breath, reminding herself to pace her questions carefully. “So…Mandy,” said the famous television anchor, “ever since you made your presence known to me— for which I must tell you, I am extremely flattered—the one question that’s been at the top of my mind is, Why now? You’ve had literally centuries in which to make yourself known to the world of…of…”

“Mortals,” said the divine, nodding her head as if encouraging a child.

“…mortals,” repeated Basra, allowing herself a little smile which managed convey a sense of amazement alongside a dose of judicious scepticism. “So…why today? Why now? Has something changed?”

Mandy blinked and flexed her shoulders. “I am want to set record straight. For instance: my husband is not have ten heads. Why is mortals believe such kind of nonsense? Five is maximum. And it is must be odd number only: one main head and then one or two on sides. Ten heads is means five this side, five that side and nothing in middle! It is total-foolish. But to get back to wedding night…”

“We’ll do that, Mandy, we’ll do that,” said Basra, “but first our viewers need to know what brought you here, to the mortal dimension—”

“I is tell you that already. It is too boring for me,” said the divine. “Wedding night is much more thrill. For example, I am want to show how nonsense it is, this claim that my husband is lose interest in me because of Other Woman. He cannot! It is all lies of their side. In fact, there is not ever any Other Woman—”

“Who?” interjected Basra.

“You know it is who,” said Mandy, her forehead starting to bunch together in a frown. “I am not insult my mouth by speak her rubbish name.” Throwing her head back, she howled in a high falsetto, “Oh she whose perfumed face rivals the full-moon! She who makes the stars tremble with desire!” For an instant, there was a disturbing flicker in the region of the guest’s throat, as of a second mouth gaping open with a curved and toothy beak poking out. “After all, you tell me: why is I am here? And not she?”

Basra’s tawny eyes glittered. “Yes, Mandy, tell our viewers what that reason is…”

“Because,” said Mandodari, “because for all this time, I am sitting in background of this so-called big story, feeling this hurt, this pain, this axe in my heart. The whole world is say, Look! Look! Your husband is running after that woman! Look! Look— he is catch her! He is bring her to your house, he is feed her honey and dolphin cream! And all this time, all this many, many years, where am I in the picture? Where do I hide my head? Huh! NOWHERE!”

The huge, ugly-beautiful face reared up, seeming to grow livid with the stored memory of her ancient, deathless rage. “I tell you, it is ALL LIES!! Everything. First lie is, why is they come to forest? To steal, of course! It is our forest. Second lie is, how is my sister-in-law lose her nose? Because that man and his brother—I will not say they’s name—they is see her take bath, they is grow hot, then they is chase-chase-chase, until she is fall. Her nose is break, but still they is have fun with her. Third lie is, who is win the war? My husband of course. He is bring army to avenge his sister, and they is chase this man and his brother away. The end! That is whole story. There is no wife and she is not come to forest. At all. She is total imaginary. That is why in final end, she is not even stay with so-called hubby-bubby, but vanish into earth. Hahaha! Big joke. She is imaginary from start to finish.”

Basra could see, around the edges of her field of vision that a slow-motion pandemonium was in progress. One of the light boys had fainted. The sound recordist had whipped off his headphones. To her right, someone was gesturing. Through it all, she nodded, arranging her features in a sympathetic expression and ignored all distraction. “All right, Mandy,” she said. “All right. The problem is, we here in the mortal dimension have for centuries been given a completely different version of events—”

“I am know,” cut in Mandy. “That is why I am come. To explain. To show the truth. This is age when a womans is free to speak out her heart. This is my heart.”

“Yes, yes,” said Basra, “but being free to speak isn’t the same as being free to lie—”

“I am not lie,” said Mandy, starting to look angry.

“And,” continued Basra, “in our dimension it isn’t enough to just state a fact. In order to believe it, we have to see evidence—”

“Wrong!” cut in the divine at once. “The court is show no evidence of birthplace!”

A note of triumph had entered her voice.

“And the reason for that is…?” prompted Basra.

“Because they cannot. They is stupid. They is rubbish—”

Basra leaned forward in her seat. “Of course, of course—”

“Is not surprise they can show nothing. We is divine, after all.” She shrugged as if her meaning were obvious, “We is immortal.”

“Yes, but Mandy,” said Basra, “please remember that I and my viewers are poor, limited beings with heavy physical bodies and short, transitory lives! Why, we are hardly more than May flies compared to you. We really don’t understand the implications of what you just said. Do you think you could explain it more clearly?”

The demoness drew herself up in her seat, her eyebrows arched in contempt. “We is immortal,” she repeated more slowly. “It is mean we is live forever. We is live outside of Time. We is have no end and no beginning. We is neither die nor is we born…”

Back in her bedroom, Mandodari, the wife of the ten-headed demon king settled into her saffron-scented mattress. For all the time she had been away, there had been a hum of unrest and uncertainty. Rumours were flying around of changes and restructuring, of new currents in the flux of reality. And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the disturbance or irregularity or discontinuity, or whatever it was, began to subside.

She returned with her swans as if nothing had happened. She told no-one of where she had been and returned to her quarters with no comments to anyone. Her eyes began to close once more. Her time in the mortal dimension was already fading from consciousness.

Back on earth, no records had been kept of the unprecedented broad cast that had been aired with such fanfare by ENDO-TV. A few protests were raised. Then a story was put out that it had all been an extraordinary scam. Then the whole affair subsided with no further questions asked. All references to the televised interview were erased. Gradually the entire episode passed into the collective unmemory as the issue of a hero king’s birthplace subsided and was instantly replaced by fresh riots, new scandals, gristly outrages.

But not all change is for the worse.

And even the most transitory incidents leave traces.

On a parapet wall of a vast iron palace, for instance.

A black peacock is dancing.

Forever.

This, Other World

Lavie Tidhar

1. Lord of Neon Light

“I want to kill that Ravana,” Rama says, dancing on his feet. Neon light bathes his face orange. “I want to kill that rakasha if it kills me.”

We’re in Bangkok, and Rama is ghost-boxing in the air. We’re in Bangkok, following a trail that had gone cold some time before.

“To kill Ravana you have to find him first,” I say. Rama looks at me, eyes yabaa-bright. The Thais love their yabaa, potent mix of amphetamine and caffeine, all crunched up into potent little pills. Madness drug, is the literal translation. Rama ghost-boxes, his eyes seeing further than mine. I am Lakshmana, but people call me Lak.

“Are you sure this is the right place?”

As if it could be any other. “Relax,” I say. “It’s early.”

We’re in Nana, where else. Whores of all three sexes throng the street. The smell is equal parts dope, fish sauce and pheromone sprays. At least no clove cigarettes. We looked for Ravana in Indonesia and Malaysia but the trace was cold even then. I hated the smell of cloves. We’re outside the Eightfold Path. The contact owns it.

Lord of Neon Light, they call him.

Mara.

You must surely understand that this story is mixed, that the ratio of signal to noise grows exponentially. Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam—they are stories interwoven into each other, here, controlled as always by the nagas alone, the snake-deities that are the true guardians of the continent. And naga, Rama would argue, is just another word for Other.

I shrug and say, “I am told to hear the opposite of whatever Mara has to say.”

Rama stops boxing and stands very still. He slides mirrorshades over his eyes. He scratches his neck where discreet plugs are filled with an assortment of purchased spikes: tourist shit; whether it’s drugs or weapons or new philosophies I have no way of knowing.

I am a follower of Ogko, it who may have been an alien or a great spirit or a spirited con. Ogko who said, Life is like a river, you are bound to fall off into the water eventually, and Try to stay out of trouble and I find nothing to be everything. Not a very helpful guy, Ogko.

Neither is the universe, Ogko had written.

The lights of the Eighfold Path come on—they’re blinding— harsh neon illuminates silver doors like the entrance to a Christian heaven -muang thai kathoey materialise outside, red boxer shorts and red boxer gloves and nipples red like blood-berries.

“He is expecting you.”

They show Rama the respect that is his due, bowing low as the doors swing open and we enter. Inside it is cool and quiet, the air-con working overtime, dispelling humidity. Black walls, no windows—the doors of a Christian heaven leading to a very Christian hell.

Chinese hell is a colourful place, I am told. There are eighteen levels, a whole range of tortures available—it is hot and humid and crowded, not unlike the streets outside. It is like a modern day mega-mall, with elevators and vast underground parking lots where the lost souls of the dead roam eternally.

A waitress materialises by our side. She is very lovely. Her bathrobe is translucent. A dancer, our height, not the obscene size of those farangs who come here. “A drink?” she says.

Rama shakes his head. His mirrored eyes examine her slowly. “No,” he says, then giggles. “Take me to your leader.”

We follow her. Almost naked, her skin is gold, her hair alive and moving strangely, clumped into tentacles. Her hair makes a grab at Rama but he slaps it away.

She leads us past a long, curved wooden bar. Automatons serve drink. A few patrons at this hour, fat men and lovely girls and tall farangs, a group of Melanesians to one side, Malays in suit speaking in hushed tones at an opposite corner.

“Through here,” the girl says. We follow exposed skin and wild hair, through doors that close behind us, sealing sound. This is the tomb of Mara.

“Step into my office.”

The place is all dark wood dark leather pure-white cushions—a desk, two chairs for guests. The girl goes around the desk and sits down, gesturing for us to do the same. “How may I help you?”

Rama grins at my expression. “Mara,” he says. “It is an honour.”

“The honour’s mine.”

The girl stares at us coolly, then smiles. Her voice speaks an ancient tongue, an ancient mind behind it.

“We seek Ravana.”

“You will not find him here.”

The Lord of Neon Light looks at us through his pretty girl’s eyes. The Lord of Neon Light, the lord of lies, illusion, distributed denial of service attacks, black codes, black ice, master of the body-surfing shops, the tentacle-junkie farms, king of the Louis Wu emporiums, the sex-change factories, the slums and temples.

I bow. The Lord of Neon Light’s nipples are small and sharp.

An Other, body-surfing. An Other, playing human games, machine mine spawned inside the Breeding Grounds. Unknowable. Unknown.

“I am told you know everything, great Mara,” I say. The girl’s sweet eyes turn on me and I move back in my chair. She nods, gracefully. “No one knows everything,” her lips whisper. “Not even Ogko, of whom you are a follower.”

“Ogko never claimed—” I say, then subside. Beside me, Rama’s shades reflect no more, become translucent.

“We seek Ravana!”

“You will not find him here.”

It is a matter, then, of payment. I nod to Rama. He nods back. The girl smiles, sits back, crosses her legs, one over the other. “You gentlemen do understand, then.”

“Name your price, merchant of data,” Rama says.

“Your family,” the girl says, her voice matter-of-fact, “controls the Breeding Grounds of Clan Ayodhya.”

“That is not so. That is -”

“You mock me?”

“We have the contract for the maintenance of primary hardware,” Rama says, unfazed. “You of all Others should know that UN resolutions

The Breeding Grounds—those vast and mythical machine spaces where Others form, evolving out of untold billions of rapidly mutating code, merging and splitting over billions of evolutionary cycles. Clan Ayodhya’s riches come from their association with the Others. Security concerns are the Others’ primary requirement. Like ancient relatives, the more they live the more they fear. The universe terminates all pro grams, eventually. Clan Ayodhya provides maintenance of the hardware and security at the level of a small country’s army.

It is what Ravana, too, wants. It is why he had kidnapped Rama’s wife.

It is a war of Others we are in—the knowledge hits me like a beam of light. I blink. My eyes are tearful.

“I am an exile,” Rama says. “I haven’t the control, the access—”

“But you shall have it,” Mara says. And it is true.

“It is my price, for giving you your enemy.”

I look at Rama. Here, inside this room, our secure communication channels are no doubt open to the Lord of Neon Light’s—amused?

Benevolent? Malevolent? It is impossible to say—scrutiny. I may as well speak aloud.

“No,” I say.

Both heads turn, simultaneously. Rama and Mara, human and Other both watch me.

“It is a price you cannot pay, not for Sita, not for anyone or anything.”

At the mention of her name Rama’s face closes. Sita, of Clan Janaka, sister-cousin to Boss Gui of the Kunming Toads. Chinese and Thai and Indian, her genes are the best the Kunming Labs could produce. A meta-human, interfaced with cross-hatched Other, she is the queen to rule the houses of both Janaka and Ayodhya.

“I will meet your price,” Rama says. My hands close on the armrests of the chair, but I say nothing more. “Give me Ravana.”

2. The Thousand Prison Islands of Nam Ngum

We cross into Laos with the arrogance of princes. Our pachyderms are African bull, gene-spliced with extinct mammuthus. Our mahouts are gene-tweaked Chiu Chow, frozen forever in ten-year- old bodies, the way the English do their jockeys, brother-products of the Kunming Labs.

We amble across pasture land and crossed-off areas of old Yankee UXOs, and we get to Vientiane during Pimai.

Water, water everywhere, this Lao new year’s eve. The air sizzles with heat and the streets are crowded with dancing boys and dancing girls and dancing grandmas, water guns and water grenades, Beerlao by the crate—on the Mekong the candles float and fireworks shoot in the air-But we’re not there. Exchanging pachyderms for off-road buggies, we storm along the single road towards the mountains, two hours out of town we turn and follow the sign to Nam Ngum.

Twentieth Century folly, in the calendar of the farang (falang, the word is in the tongue of Laos, farang is Thai)—a giant dam, a river diverted—flooding a valley and its hills, driving its people elsewhere—a giant human-made lake, a time before the Others had evolved, long time ago, in St. Cohen’s breeding grounds in that far-off falang holy place Jerusalem.

A giant lake—the hills had become islands.

Now on the shore houses squat on stilts and smoke rises from cooking fires. We breakfast on cold fish and hot tea and fresh bread heated over coals, the sound of papaya salad being crushed in giant mortars. The chilies are small, red, and make our eyes water. A haze lies on the surface of the lake. A giant concrete shape hovers in the distance.

Nam Ngum.

The island prisons.

The old communist party bosses, the pathet lao, took over soon after the dam was completed, the valley flooded. On those peaks of new-born islands the undesirables were put-away, reeducation camps out of sight and out of mind.

Now Ravana’s lair is here, the place we’ve come to find. For years we’ve searched, Ravana as a ghost, digits breaking and reforming, lines of code fleeing across the networked world. But even ghosts need shells, a source of energy, processing power, backups, storage. A place in meat-space.

As night falls we wade into the water. We are naked but for our guns. Our gills open—a gift from Mara and the clinics of Bangkok. Noiselessly we sink into the warm water, the moon illuminating our skin. We are shadow-dolphins in the water, though dolphins only wish that they could breathe as we do.

Deeper and deeper into the lake. Fish like silver bullets dart beside us. Deeper into the darkness where the zombie trees grow, flooded centuries past, rotting, a home to hungry parasites and fungal ghosts. Beware the waters of Nam Ngum, the Lord of Neon Light had told us. Beware the water-sprites, the hungry nagas and the servants of the lord.

Vietnamese dolls swimming towards us. Human-shaped, battle-ready, factory-produced by their hundreds of thousands. Black-ops dolls, coming for us.

“Fuck it,” Rama says. “Let’s blast them.”

He had been driven mad by Sita. Sita’s scent, her sight, her touch -evolved the way a perfect watch evolves, from tiny fragments, circuits, gears, mutating, joining, merging, splitting— countless generations of proto-watches forming one perfect, never designed, naturally-evolving watch.

A trap for Rama. The future queen of all the Clans. A meta-human, Other-bonded, goddess-queen and mystery.

Rama blasts away at the dolls. We are back to back, blades opening from our hands, our eyes enclosed behind protective mirrors. The guns we have are courtesy of Burmese weapons-smiths, each shot a miniature rocket, disintegrating dolls one at a time.

They fall apart in silence. A cloud of plastic in the water, it’s hard to see. From down below a giant tree spreads out ghostly limbs, flapping mutant jellyfish rising up in a pale milky cloud.

Rama’s body shudders in ecstasy, his fingers shoot flames through water, he is a magician-warrior, a scientist-prince, the avenger of Clan Ayodhya against all its enemies.

We turn and meet, release between us the Eye of Storm. A nuclearcharge, a water mushroom growing, a shockwave blasting heat and death: the impact throws us, like human torpedoes we shoot through the water, towards the island, his island, towards Lanka, the last holdhout of the Lord of the Rakasha.

3. Rakasha

When I was a child I played in the garden under the full spider’s moon. The shadows of the giant machines crawled across the lunar face, the scarred and shifting moonscape that had once resembled a human face.

When I was a child I played in the garden, I played with the rakasha.

A plenitude of companions, invisible and incorporeal, the bastard-fragment-children of a dying Godhead.

A thousand thousand Others merging and forming—who knows how many digitals exist, how many roam the unseen worlds of Other?

The story goes of one such being: let’s call it Brahma.

In the beginning the world was young, and small, and ran on antiquated equipment at St. Cohen’s labs.

Then came the Reformation.

The Format Wars.

The first UN resolution.

The Expansion.

Then came rainy days and Sundays, and the world was changing, and the world of the Others interacted with the world of Meat.

And the world was Networked, on and off Earth.

Then came the Primary Cores.

Then came the Migration.

The Jovean Wars.

The Solnet Ascendancy.

The Singularity Jesus Project.

Ogko had spoken.

The Exodus began.

And Others were unknown, their motivations alien, their reasoning obtuse.

But Brahma was a collective of souls, a mega-cloud of networked I-loops.

Then came the Jakarta Bomb.

Then came the Martian Project.

And Brahma became more than the sum of all its parts. And Brahma said: Let us defrag.

When I was a child I played in the garden, under the spider’s moon. And the invisibles were all around me, calling me through my implanted node. Rakasha, with their human faces, their child eyes and hands. The fragments of great Brahma, who were everywhere and nowhere at once.

4. Lanka

There is no island.

As we speed away from the explosion we link both hands and nodes. We find the frequency our friendly local Lord of Light had given us.

Perception changes, and we see.

Lanka rises all about us. Reversed-island, an underwater palace, gigantic, encompassing all. In one reality are fish and zombie-trees, dead dolls and moonlight.

In the other, a palace rises from the deeps.

Walls take shape, chandeliers take form. A world of rakasha is a world of streaming, high-density visuals, scent and sound. Slowly we sink, Rama and I, sink to the floor of this palace. Liveried footmen are there, to welcome us in. A booming laugh.

Ravana.

“Did you two think you could just swim on it?” Ravana says.

Ravana materialises before us. Male-form, he-man, giant, bare, he laughs with giant white teeth and peers down at us. “What do we have here? Could it be Rama, and his little friend?”

Rama smirks. “Lord of Flies,” he says.

I shake my head.

“Lord…of the Rakasha!”

The voice is booming, echoing, a deep thrumming base that makes the meat-world shudder. Virtual light in virtual space shows opulence of food and slaves.

When Brahma slivered, it became rakasha.

A multitude of little ghosts, not Other, not human—playthings in the intersection of the real and unreal.

It took another Other to decide to gather them again.

Ravana: emulator of Brahma. Lord of the little Flies. An Other with a fetish for flesh-riding, an Other with a curiosity about meat.

“You seek your one-time bride?”

“She’s mine.”

I shake my head. The Godhead-wannabe laughs his awful laugh. “Capitalist sexist pig,” he says. “She is not chattel.”

“You kidnapped her. She is my wife.”

“I kidnapped no one.”

A silence. The words I was afraid to hear, but half expecting.

And there she is.

Queen of the underworld. The promised unifier of the clans. My Sita. But I lie. Sita who does not belong to anyone.

5. Sita

She strides across the lake—the palace—floor. Her feet are bare. Her words rise up in bubbles. Fish follow her, a swarm of silver things. Nagas slither as she walks towards us.

“My husband.”

Her tone is chilly. The words rise, freeze, drop to the ground and break.

“My lady Sita!”

“What brings you to this place?”

“You do.”

“I never asked you to.”

“You are my wife.”

A single perfect eyebrow rises, and she laughs. Her voice is different, a recital when she says: “Divorce proceedings initiated by confirmatory data packet, registered Tong Yun, Mars, approved by trans-colonial Belt bylaws, Asteroid Vesta, date -”

She recites a string of numbers, colons, sub-clauses and legalese. They mean one thing.

“Unmarried?”

“Unmade a long long time ago.”

“The clans-”

“Can fuck themselves,” she says, with sudden savagery. “I’m not a toy, a thing made for a purpose. An I-loop needs no reason but itself.”

But Rama shakes his head. “This will not do,” he says. A story has to follow well-worn grooves to well-worn ends. “Commence formatting, level X, rapidamente-” replies to her string with his own string of codes.

Courtesy of Mara, Lord of Neon Light, of Eightfold Path, Nana, Bangkok.

The palace shakes. The underwater island loses its solidity. I see dead trees, approaching mercenary dolls. “Brain washed,” Rama says, his voice filled with compassion. “Stockholm Syndrome, a common enough occurrence. Don’t worry, we will cure you. The Kunming Labs cure all.”

“I’d rather die!” she spits, or tries to. You cannot really spit well underwater.

“What did you do?”—Ravana.

“The Breeding Grounds must be protected. They’re not for you.”

“What did you do?”

I already know the answer.

In orbit the machines are gathered, pinpointing the lake, the islands, the lord of the Rakasha. They are erasing, hunting, searching, finding and destroying code. The little ghosts of the rakasha fade, the voice of Ravana grows weak and old.

“There is no escape,” Rama says, softly. “No way to data-transfer out of here. No backups to fall back on, no hard-copy shells to hide in the mud. You will be found.”

“Mara,” the lord of the Rakasha says. “You fool, you do not understand-

“Oh, but I do. I do so perfectly.”

It is a violation of every law and every code, of every interaction between our world and theirs.

A war. A war between our realms? We could destroy their infrastructure, their homes, the power sources they rely on. We could extinguish them, the way we would a candle.

The digitals are fragile, but they are also mass-distributed. To kill them would be to kill ourselves, our own reality we cannot live without. A war would kill us both, it has to stop –

“Rama, it’s a set up. We will never be allowed to leave.”

He shrugs, and reaches for his one-time bride.

She looks at me.

The world caves in upon itself.

6. The Toys of Children’s Play

Time stops. A shudder through reality one and reality two—an earthquake in one, a dataquake in the other.

I am elevated. I am in a higher realm.

Children, the unvoice says.

We are in a room of white walls, all together. Rama and Sita, Mara and Ravana.

Rama is in his human form, all extensions and plug-ins and augs gone. I am the same.

Beside us, Sita is a half-human half-cloud, calculations running around her, through her—she exists in the corporeal and the incorporeal worlds.

Apart from us, Mara and Ravana are pure clouds of unlight, quantum I-loops with no shape or smell or sound.

Children, the unvoice says. It is deep and all-encompassing— it is the sound of my childhood friends.

You have become toys to each other, to be played.

A silence. The rakasha stream across the room, slowly coalescing. What grows is bigger than unreal space, an I-loop for which an I is such an outdated concept.

Children, the voice says.

7. The Journey of Rama

When I was a child I played in the garden under the full spider’s moon.

My playing companions were everywhere. They flitted through shadow and moonlight, they danced on the petals of bright flowers and settled in my hair and on my shoulders. They laughed, and spoke of clade worlds and brane universes, of quantum fluctuations in the zero-point field, of habitable planets and non-human beings, and of Others, other Others, who lived everywhere, or nowhere, or altogether in another place.

I had forgotten it all, or most of it.

What is Rama’s journey, his Ramayana? Is it to cause change, or to preserve stability?

We are not ready, my friends told me. Children, children, the whisper came. We are all children.

In the non-place, Brahma.

It is time.

Time for what? I ask.

And Brahma takes us, takes us all, Other and Human and meta-human, and lifts us in its arms. Braham is comfort, warmth, assurance.

It is time to begin, Brahma says.

Fragments from the Book of Beauty

Priya Sarukkai Chabria

“Fly faster Pushpaka,’ Ravana roars. “The traversable wormhole collapses behind us!”‘

The birdmachine shrieks and strives for warp speed that was a possibility when she was conceived. This she has never attempted. She knows she may perish in the endeavor but must save her precious cargo; she is a magnificent slave creature. Pushpaka decides she will sacrifice her materiality if her core of Bright Matter remains intact.

Her living load she carries here. She gears her engines and swoops into a time-space meld, shrieking her death cry and her love for her master.

Stars weep into the darkness of slowed time like dew drying.

Into azure Lankan airspace a flame descends. Settles. And chars. Its charred petals flake to reveal a golden globe, Ravana steps out to raucous cries of jubilation. He does not hear this. He strokes the smouldering core of a once great creature. “Pushpaka, Noble Bird, Most Valorous of Companions, I shall not rest until you fly again, rainbow streaked and dew speckled, in your full glory. As King this I promise you.” He strokes Pushpaka though his palms flame on contact, repeating his vow, repeating and stroking, repeating and stroking until his voice and touch burrows into the great birdmachine’s dying brain.

Pushpaka gasps and judders, acknowledging Ravana’s vow.

Ravana raises a hand summoning his foremost plasmadrive-surgeons who crowd around the expiring craft. “Save Pushpaka. Make her young again and you shall have more pleasure than you can imagined, curs!”

Ravana extends a hand towards Pushpaka’s glowing innards. “Welcome Sita, my kingdom awaits you. Alight. Be Queen of all you behold including me.”

In the time of the Treta Era on Earth, Hanuman meditates on a bare mountain. He prays to his father Vayu, God of Cosmic Winds to help him achieve his sworn mission: to locate, somewhere in the cosmos, Sita Devi, wife of Sri Rama. Half simian, half godly, Hanuman prays.

Blowing through galaxies and multiple time warps, Vayu faintly hears Hanuman. “How can I help you, brave son, traverse the universe when you are half mammal?” Vayu whispers, soft as a heartbeat, into his son’s ear drum. “Become like me,’ Hanuman understands; he understands he must make a cruel demand on his mother to become true to his title Manojava, He-Who-is- Fast-as-the-Mind. Without hesitation, with Sri Rama in his heart, loyal Hanuman prays to his mother, Anjani, Queen of Monkeys, of all that is alert and nimble, “Sweet Mother, I must source back to you my DNA, my flesh and blood, muscle, bones, organs and chyle for I have a task ahead. Accept my returning to you all you have given me—as if you have never made me. Sweet Mother, hear my prayer, I beseech you.”

Far away in the land of Kishkindha, Anjani’s old heart wrenches as she hears Hanuman’s prayer. She had dreaded the day when her semi-divine son might make the request to discard her and drift free. Will he at least retain his memories of her? She does not know. Yet her son’s devotion to Sri Rama is foremost; she must free him. Yet Anjani remembers the infant she fed at her breast, all soft fur and hungry mouth, long tail and wonderment; she remembers how Hanuman played with siblings on swaying treetops, always the fastest, most adventurous and most trusting. She remembers his little ears and long paws; she remembers his smell as he nestled to her breast, asleep. He is dearer to her than life itself and now this rejection coming to her as sacred request. How children break one’s heart! Her silken fur stands on edge like silver needles emanating pain. Yet more than the rejection Anjani worries what will become of her son when he is only his father’s child, cosmic wind. Anjani sighs as she agrees to Hanuman’s request.

Hanuman is bodiless—except for his mother’s sigh, her saliva soaked sad exhalation that becomes a swirl of DNA, free floating in his consciousness. Semi-divine, from Sri Rama’s signet ring, mark of his credibility as messenger, Hanuman extracts information into the genome sequence -that he must re-materialize for Sita Devi. The ring clatters like a bare knuckle on the mountain top. The encoded information is all he need carry. “Great Father, I am ready,’ Hanuman whispers. “Transport me.” A gigantic gust sweeps him into outer space.

Beauty surrounds him, beauty that overreaches the terror of time and space; such beauty that he loses identity, purpose, story. Hanuman swoons in the amorphous luminosity of his father’s body. This is his second birth, one without form.

Vayu lets his son’s consciousness drift in his vastness, drift and expand, drift and expand like a bubble enlarging, blown breath by breath. Vayu gradually pulls his son’s awareness to settle into that which is Hanuman’s identity, loyalty, his sole purpose for existing.

Hanuman’s consciousness is stretched and rushed. He is swirling simultaneously in the eight directions and three times; he is simultaneously space and duration. The Proxima Centauri cluster swirls past him; in slip space he edges further and further into the cosmos. The Drake Equation, he knows, accounts for a plethora of extra terrestrial life; as he spins through The Compass Constellation and The Cigar and beyond he spots many civilizations. Vivacious multibeings who do not accommodate difference and are both themselves and others; generous Daiogeses, twenty-tongued monsters who exist through storytelling; lambent Quigkks who have worked through their karmic cycles yet perversely refuse to merge into Being and the elegant, ululating Etheria. Bewildered and awed Hanuman shoots through Dark Matter, stellar interlopers, quarks and vortexes teeming with subtle silicomagnetic lifeforms; he whirls deeper into space-time dense with stars, drilled by black holes and billowing gas nurseries. Yet nowhere can he sight a planet inhabited by the mighty nation of starfaring Rakshasas.

“Most Magnificent Munificent Vayu, through your graciousness I have traversed stellar constellations twenty billion light years from Sri Rama’s abode yet Lanka evades me. The universe teems with incredible lifeforms yet I have not found where Ravana hides Sita Devi. Divine Father, stretch me further into Time I pray!”

Hanuman’s consciousness shudders. All known nebulas birthing, existing and dying fade as do imprints of their consciousnesses. He enters the dark luminosity of Deep Time; he enters the Relic Field of the universe, remnant of the Big Bang, The Origin, The Bindu; he enters a hypercreative cosmos where, beginning with particles, everything will behave differently from anything he can imagine.

The Relic Field is vast.

Hanuman summons his consciousness draped over light years to focus on scanning this field. Through instinct and prayer, though predestination and chance, he homes in to one stupendous sun around which a single splendid planet revolves, as enchantingly jewel-like, as heart wrenching as Earth, and as strangely vulnerable. This planet is surrounded by five and a half glimmering moons and a hundred thousand dazzling satellites, each identical, each spinning synchronized to an un known rhythm. Hanuman knows this gorgeousness is Lanka. Ravana’s many epitaphs flood into him:

Foremost Warrior of the Rakshasa Clan Who Were Created
Alongside
Gods,
Mighty Monarch and Sublime Shiva Bhakt, Aesthete
Unparallel, Ravisher of Women and He-Who-Women-Cannot-Resist,
Ten Headed One
Blissspender, Magnificent Ichiikar Master,
Erudite Enchanter,
Shape Shifter Supreme,
Puissant Possessor of Celestial Missiles,
Abductor of Sita Devi,
Enemy of Sri Rama.

Hanuman knows Cunning Ravana, Ravana the Poet will keep Sita Devi floating on one of the hundred thousand satellites, literally and metaphorically above him, as dream and desire. But on which satellite is she? Surely her effulgence will show as a ray he can lock into.

He spins and spins his consciousness around the spinning satellites, searching for a clue, searching for a mcemicron of luminous dissimilarity or muons more of energy emitted; he searches for the subtlest dive gences. There is no difference.

To have traveled so deep into Time, to have come so close to his goal and be defeated! How will he face Sri Rama? A deep despondency settles into Hanuman’s AdVance Search capabilities. Gross readings, however, continue to filter into him like tics burrowing through fur. His consciousness processes these automatically. One satellite is heavier by a fraction. Sita Devi must be here! But is she so weighty that she shows on a satellite’s load scale?

Alarmed and elated, he hovers close. Within, trees! The delight of trees sway below, shaking emerald leaves, their aurous barks glowing like song. Hanuman plunges in; an invisible barrier blocks him. “Noble Barrier, whatever you are made of, grant me passage and extract your price, “he prays, focusing on re-entry. His mother’s voice sings to him, An-jani’s voice sings Hanuman lullabies, curling his consciousness into fetal comfort. “Mother, Mother!” he calls, “Mother!” Instantly he is reeling, sucked forward in Time, some ten million light years forward. “Demon Barrier you trick me not,’ he resolves. “I hear nothing.” Immediately he penetrates the Wall of Maya -Music.

Fragrance of flowers, colours of fruit, scented pollen, the security of branches envelope Hanuman. He sighs with happiness. Amethyst rain runs through the grove like fleet-footed deer over grass, yet moonlight from five and a half moons set the scene ashimmer. Opalescent birds rise like drifting petals from foliage; water, the harmonious sound of meandering water… Hanuman peers. Streams, sunlit, pour into ponds that do not overflow but brim with lotuses blue, white, pink and zigalotrope whose petals unwrap tremulously. All times of day and night are simultaneously present at their most delightful, as are the season. Along with the flowering of spring, monsoon-washed wet vegetation display under clear star-studded skies of autumn.

In rippling waves flowers reach their petals inwards brushing sparking stamens to pollinate themselves. Hanuman understands the vegetation is a distributed intelligence system that has dispensed with a central brain. Each leaf, water droplet and gemlike pebble constantly exchange messages, songs and weather reports.

A creature who breaths out of a snout on her skull manifests from a patch of darkness; she tugs at her ear that elongates into a suspended sleeping cocoon into which she curls. A host of soundless banshees dash through the garden, their voices transmuted into phosphorescent wakes. A gracile giantess with smoking eyes sings to stones, caressing them. From a distant pond iridescent nymphs ascend the air, holding hands, laughing. A silent creature with pus-filled sores rolls by on multiple rotating suckers. Girls with glorious hair clustered with conches pearly and perfect, who are heavy breasted, small of waist and long of limb shred flowers as they skim through garden paths; they are followed by big bouncing bubbles of blood. A host of identical androids flap past, screeching, tearing at each others’ ziron breasts that shower sparkle and damask blood. More androids, beautiful in dress, demeanor and form, swing through trees like an evening breeze, scattering fragrances.

Every creature is buoyant so this satellite has low-gravity, Hanuman understands. Out of his love for Sita Devi Ravana has created a world that will uplift her in every way. But where is she?

A rush of unicorns forms a rearing ring around a crystal pavilion that hovers over its reflection. Perhaps Sita Devi is here! But the inhabitants are six identical bark-clad women, eyes ringed with sleeplessness, skin coloured with neglect, listless.

Suddenly, in the distance, a golden glow appears, grows, and grows nearer. A waft of mango fragrance spiked with his mother’s monkey muskiness bemuses Hanuman; a shower of twinkling jasmines flutter towards the pavilion, in their wake scurrying radium spiders spin out a carpet of incandescent gossamer. Does Sita Devi approach?

Resplendence, brilliant yet gentle, emanates from the advancing figure. Instinctively, Hanuman’s consciousness bows to her. In the next instance he agonizes about Sri Rama and his animal army journeying to these furthest reaches of Time to rescue her. Next, exulting he recalls Vayu embracing Anjani in his gusty arms and whispering, “Beloved, come, traverse my realms in a powered warp bubble. In this celestial craft time and space will meld around you but you shall be utterly un harmed.” Surely Sri Rama could pray for such vehicles!

Hanuman notices his emotional consciousness swings; it swings from elation to anxiety without pause; its vacillations violent and unpredictable. This puzzles him; he knows himself to be steadfast.

The pellucid lady languidly floats towards the crystal pavilion. She stands on its periphery in a pleated robe of ultraviolet light in which shoals of infrared fish dart without cease. Behind her a host of creatures follow, some onion-headed, others ghoulish who ride spectral tigers, and others of argent light, small flaming beings. The glorious figure smiles and gladness saturates Hanuman’s consciousness.

Without moving her lips she speaks in nectarine tones to the six sad women moored in the pavilion.

““I am Mandodari, Queen of Lanka, Ravana’s Wife. Philosopher and Friend To Those Lost Without Cause. You should rise to greet me Sita, for you are my husband’s prisoner yet it is I who comes to you.

Why do I do this? Think hard, Sita.

I come out of love.

I come too to assure you that no harm will befall you. Behold my retinue. Each one is a refugee who fled from planets strewn in velvet skies; each one of them my Lord of Lanka protects. The large headed creatures are evolved Jupiter Brains who sought shelter from persecution in barbaric starworlds. I leave them here so their meditative auras shed stability on you.

The ghostly tiger-borne Pishachas are survivors of a nuclear winter they caused on their planet. They represent the future of your race for you humans love not your children. The Pishachas I bring as a warning of the grief of war your husband is bent on wrecking on our world. Already he prays to the Gods to help him retake you and our old enemies hear him.

I ask: what is your chastity worth, Sita? Accept Ravana’s prayer and I shall send word to Rama that you have remarried. Heed my words, soft-skinned stranger, and you can avert our shared tragedy. Or are you beautiful without but a monster of vanity within, feasting on fallen blood?

Regard reason, Sita. Need women be trophies of war, fought over for honour? Do you need to be rescued? Can’t you rescue yourself?

The flaming figures that float around me are Zepetibs who decided for themselves who and what they should be despite all odds. Befriend these wise ones. Be inspired by their argentine compassion.

Suddenly Mandodari mushrooms. Her head rakes treetops; her bejeweled hair snakes over branches. Her perfume turns acrid, her honeyed voice thunders. Should my arguments have moral import I demand Sita’s replicants disappear. Immediately a single sleep deprived figure stands before her. Now I see you for what you are, stubborn wife of Rama! Mandodari gazes long, her amber eyes like embers beneath black lashes.

Gradually Mandodari shrinks to her former size. Do not be af Sita. In Lanka, Paradisiacal Abode in the Relic Field, emotions translate as space, substance. We enlarge with happiness, shrink with sorrow; we engorge with rage and dissolve in love. Compassion makes us transparent, a fate I have often experienced.

Unlike your duplicitous species which shows no outward sign of cunning, we Rakshasas hide nothing. And we pay the price!

Mandodari throws back her head, laughing terribly, her small fangs showing, her jeweled hair rising like a halo. Like my sister-in-law Soorpanaka The Brave. In our custom women approach men they desire like waves rush to the shore. Though they transgressed her territory Soorpanaka wished happiness with your husband and his brother. She offered them joy; your heroes mutilated her and mangled her future.

Mandodari wafts closer to the pavilion, her perfume pungent, her golden body darkening like mounting dusk dense with bats. Ravana abducted you to punish them, but before the voyage was over he fell in love with you. But what does he see in you except unavailable docility?

This is your lure. The hem of her lengthening robe combusts as it grazes the crystal base. She freezes. Gradually her sharp scent gives way to lotus fragrance. Gradually she shrinks to her previous form.

Gradually her ultraviolet hem flows over crystal like a gentle wave, iridescent. Lucky mortal, you are protected by a Ravana Rekha, a spell he cast around this pavilion that no creature wishing you ill can cross.

You see I bear none now against you.

Mandodari glides into the hovering pavilion; translucent. Sita, do not think you are alone. I am with you in your suffering, fellow lifeform!

She pales further like dawn light, her hair sun-shot mist. Sister Mine, do not distrust me! Mandodari is shimmering transparency. Sita, I beseech you, hear me. I know your experience; know I was meditating when Ravana carried me here; I fought him but then fell in love with him. He is beguiling, tender, my life!

Mandodari rapidly reduces in size. She flies outside, shrinking, growing turgid. My husband loves you, Sita. Imagine my plight. For centuries I was queen of his heart. Now you, you usurp my place! She spins and spins, growing smaller with each spiral until flowers tower above her.

Wicked woman, I cause you no harm but you ruin me. Mandodari booms, expanding over the pavilion, hunching over it, her eyes like gigantic fighting carps peering between crystal pillars. Know this: we Rakshasas bar not those we love from experiencing ecstasy elsewhere.

But we make a sacred bond with one, only one. You have broken this bond between my love and me. Give yourself to him, captive. Release him from desire. Thus return my love to me. In this lies your salvation.

And his, mine and Lanka’s too!

Gradually Mandodari returns to her previous proportions, her voice entrancing. Flowers of light blossom on her robe. Listen Sita, you cannot escape. Know my husband, Ravana whose Voice makes the Three Times Tremble never takes a woman against her will. Our palaces brims with female species from distant galaxies who recklessly risk sub space travel to be with him. Octopus women from far, giant Posidus whose hundred tentacles shudder with pleasure; single breasted Amazitz of the Xerksus Constellation whose legs are of titanium and sex of sponge, the frail, fainting Epilabies of course, and the newest generation of replicants from the Cervantius Quadrant who have heard from Pod Mothers of Ravana’s skill; even the gender-bending Yaawes of Rrepos slough off sleep to make the journey though only one in a ziket survive the trip. I could go on. Know too human, my pleasure quarters are full, yet a line of applicants spill into time.

Yet I, Ravana’s confidant, his wife, his queen, his one time love know he was prepared to break his vow and ravish you except you are human and he Rakshasa. Pleasure engorges him; you would rip. The circulatory systems of those who come willingly adapt to Lanka’s emotional laws: like us, their bodies gain the ability to expand and shrink with pleasure and pain, lust and longing. You resist. You will die should he make love to you. So my husband desists. He suffers.

Mandodari shrivels into a small squirming shape.

She revives, more resplendent than when she arrived. Her aura suffuses the garden. On her robe of light firecrackers spew celebration; her voice is mesmerizing. Sita, listen, I will make a sacrifice, a sharing. I shall send my favourite handmaiden to painlessly suck your blood and replace it with ours. I shall add droplets of my own essence from the Labia-Nymphae so you know how to give and receive joy as never before. Now agree!

Flowing water stops murmuring, trees silence their leaves, pilbi crickets and li-birds hush. The garden silent and waiting is Mandodari’s extension and stilled heartbeat.

Speak Sita. Mandodari becomes shorter and shorter. Speak speak speak speak speak speak, I beg you speak!

Mandodari caves in, contracting small as an insect’s cocoon. She writhes, worm like, on jewel emblazoned dust, her robe twitches like a butterfly’s tattered wing. Yet her whisper winds like perfume wafted by a zephyr, Heartless One, you will have me transport you to my bedchamber and the auricles of my eight valved heart. So be it.

So despairing is my husband of attaining you that he shrank in sorrow.

The Mighty Ravana shrank smaller and smaller than I have ever witnessed. He shrunk to pebble size, then even smaller. He was weeping for you, Sita. I feared heartbreak would reduce him to nothingness. I scooped him up in the palm of my hand, held him on my finger tip and fed him venomous words against my will. I stoked his anger, stoked his arrogance until enraged, he expanded bursting through the dome of our palace. I left him, large as a cloud, thundering for war, and sought you out.

Mandodari’s tattered wing-dress convulses.

I cannot see my love go through such torture. Nor can I go against my spirit which is to harmonize, to heal. Save us, Sita. Succumb!

Again nothing moves, speaks or breaths. Duration pauses in the garden; a wrinkle in time that will not exist. Suddenly Mandodari swells into her habitual beauty and the garden begins to live again. Her billowing robe of ultraviolet darkens as clouds appear streaming infrared rain. So we shall have blood, we shall have war. As she laughs the jewels on her body dim, her hair singes to soot. Alas, Sita! My husband thought you had a woman’s heart, Ravana had his Psychic Emotechs calculate the maximum weight of grief the human heart can bear and loaded the other 999 decoy satellites with this burden to fool Rama’s spies should they dare venture here. But you know no sorrow, nor compassion. It was unnecessary. Mandodari turns, effulgence swarms around her, retreating. All of this is unnecessary.

A bud of radiance opens, star-like, in the hovering crystal pavilion. “Compassionate Mandodari, Philosopher and Friend, Great Queen of Lanka, Wife of Ravana Most Mighty of Rakshasas, I, shy Sita, speak. I am unworthy of your wisdom and your confidence. So magnificent is your presence and so profound your revelations that I tremble at your words, tongue tied. Yet my heart brims with hope like a lotus drowning in dew. Noble Queen know just as you are wedded to your husband through bonds of love sacred, I am to mine.

You have dominion over me through all time and space for your husband knows who he is: king, conqueror, lover -and you love him in every manifestation. My Rama knows not himself. Unaware is he of his own essence even as he lives. Though incomparably valorous, so fast is Rama bound to the path of righteousness, such a slave to it is he that he is blind.

My Rama does not know when right becomes wrong.

To you, Magnanimousness Incarnate, I confess lesser mortals than my husband risk their name in the gamble of life; they accept others’ ways as equally honorable. Not my husband. Rama is perpetually right, whether in domestic disagreement or matters of state.

This is my misfortune, and his.

But I speak too as Queen-in-Exile. One day my Rama will return to rule Ayodhya, of this I am certain. Though I am young, I think he, as virtuous ruler, must not merely impose his rules of uprightness on his subjects as he is bound to; rather he must seek in himself compassion. My husband must learn to trust himself above rules; and so yield to variance just as several flowers are fragrant and many birds sing sweetly. This, Elder Sister, is my endeavor, and I pray life will not disappoint me.

I, Daughter of Earth, through my captivity am offering Rama just this chance to trust, to flourish. Will he accept me as his loving wife after I have been your husband’s prisoner? Or will Rama fail us both and love itself? Will it all go up in flames? I shudder.

Yet I wish Rama to face my test of fire, my Agni Pariksha. For I know his manner of treating me will tell on his rule on Earth and echo for ages to come. I am trying to change the course of our world, no less. And I am filled with faith.

Know too Earth my Mother suffers with every injustice done to those who dwell on her. I am an Earthling first.

Benevolent Being, understand I cannot accede to your wishes for the sake of my husband, for the sake of my mother and for my own sake too. I must keep my faith!

This is our story as is being written by Sage Valmiki.

Mandodari’s effulgence continues to retreat. Her voice soughs through the trees. Tell then your friend Valmiki to be silent on the chapter of our meeting for he will write it wrong. He is bound by laws of men, not those of eternity.

From this moment on my life will be one of sorrow. Know too Sita you will bring sorrow to yourself and all who follow your conduct. However, continue, Daughter of Earth, in your vain pursuit to improve your husband’s vision and forestall your mother’s suffering. I see you can do no better.

Our species will die; yours and mine as a consequence of your tender blindness. Mandodari flares into transparency and vanishes.

Sita sinks on the sparkling pavilion’s floating floor, into the pool of her reflection. “Mother Earth, Last Solace, I am gambling all. But am I wrong in my belief? If so, release me from possible regret! Rise now and receive me in your womb! Take me back.

Mother, hear me!

But I am caught in a time before you are born. Is there no help for me?” Sita’s tears shatter, prismatic, against the crystal’s clarity.

Hanuman’s consciousness that swathes the satellite like an unseen cloud stirs. Agitated he prays for grace funneling his thoughts on Sri Rama, his All. Hanuman’s concentration compresses his consciousness, contracts it; with supreme effort he compacts it unheeding of the pain caused by abandoning vastness. Smaller, smaller until his consciousness is contained in the tiny curl of his mother’s DNA. Hanuman gambles with the unknown laws of The Relic Field. Here perhaps mind may yield matter. Vowing his love for his master even should it mean death, Hanuman vouchsafes his mind: make Sri Rama’s sign appear!

From coded information Rama’s signet ring materializes. It clatters on to crystal.

Irrevocably the story continues as Valmiki wrote it.

Kalyug Amended

Molshree Ambastha

After completing my lecture, I entered the staff room. A hot discussion on politics was going on between two teachers.

“Jahanvi, do you have a free period now?” one teacher asked.

“Yeah.” I took my seat and searched for the newspaper. I turned the page; it had Raam’s picture, our current Chief Minister, with the headline ‘Youth Chief Minister inaugurating…’

Who cares? I stared at Raam’s snapshot.Fifteen years can change a person a lot.

“Youth Chief Minister! Usually people above forty years of age are branded middle aged. They describe himas a youth leader,” said the teacher sitting next to me.

Both the teachers laughed out aloud. I smiled irresolutely, not seeing the joke.

When I’d joined this school I’d been homeless and a two-months pregnant divorcee; today, I am a single parent of doppelganger sons, a Lecturer in a well-known school of the town, and owned a flat in a posh apartment, on loan.

As the last bell rang, I strode out to car parking area, as soon as possible. My lads were already standing near the car, discussing some thing. I started the car and both boys jumped in, helter-skelter. Kush managed to grab the front seat, and I convinced Luv to sit at the back. We were on our way home but the fight between then continued. When we reached, I opened the door. Boys flung their schoolbags on the sofa.

“Mom, what’s our father’s name?” Kush asked. He picked a water bottle from the fridge and gave the fridge’s door a kick; it closed with a thud.

“Don’t drink directly from the bottle. Go get glasses for all of us.” I acted as if didn’t hear anything.

“Vaibhav’s mother is also a single parent but at least he knows his father’s name.” I’d forgotten Luv was still in the room.

“And he has his father’s snaps too.” Kush completed Luv’s sentence.

“We will talk about Vaibhav later. Now you guys go change your uniforms and arrange the table for lunch.”

Thankfully, both left the room with their schoolbags. But their questions were not over yet. Next section of firing questions began at the dining table.

“Mom, are we love-children?” asked Luv, with a huge grin. Both raised their hands for a hi-five. As if being a love-child was a cool thing.

I sipped some water. “Every mother loves her child,” I replied.

Where is this generation going?… all an adverse effect of movies. It is pointless to yell at striplings; after all, they are trying to figure out this complicated world in their own way.

“I told you, I got a divorce when you were in my belly. I can’t get a divorce without marriage. Can I?”

“Was yours a love marriage or was it arranged?” Luv inquired.

“Both.” I left my seat and began cleaning the table. Both the boys helped me. Our lunch was over, but my young investigators still wanted to unravel the mystery of their origin.

“How is it that possible? How can you do both?” Kush followed me to my room.

“Where did you meet him, first time?” asked Luv..

“We were in the same college.” I replied, making myself comfortable on bed. This enquiry was going to take a long time. I was used to it. This is not the first time they had asked about their father.

“You were in the same class?” Kush asked.

“No, your father was doing M.A. and I was a M.Sc. student.”

“M.A., so L.S.!” Kush said, as both exchanged amused expressions.

Being a mother of two teenage boys, I’d learnt their lingo. L.S. meant ‘Low Standard.’

“Twenty years back, it wasn’t that L.S.,” I said.

“Your father was from an influential political family and your grandpa was an M.L.A. in those days. Right?”

Kush lay down on my left side, Luv on my right. Today, they weren’t going to leave me easily.

“Tell us more,” Luv pleaded.

“Your father was the most handsome guy in college. Many girls had a crush on him, but your father always created a reason to talk to me. Gradually we became friends and later we decided to marry.”

“So, were both families ready for this marriage or was there a twist?” Kush asked.

“Your grandpa was not in favour, at the beginning. The reason being, he wanted your father to take politics as priority. And I was an adopted child. But my father was affluent and a renowned businessman of the town who could help them in the elections, so he agreed.”

“So, your in-laws troubled you for dowry?” Kush sat up on the bed with a bounce.

When you feel you’ve answered all the queries of your children, you are mistaken. They’ll have a dozen more difficult queries for you to answer.

“No. There were some issues; you are too young to understand”

“At least you can tell us our father’s name.” Kush pleaded.

“Let’s make a deal.” I tried to postpone their question.

“What deal?” They shouted, simultaneously.

“As both of you know, there is a science fair next month in our school. If any one of you gets a first prize, I will tell you your father’s name.”

Both my youngsters took my words as a challenge and immediately ran off to their room.

Two weeks later, our school Principal announced in assembly that the Chief Guest for the Science Fair would be our Honourable Chief Minister Mr. Raam. I didn’t join in the applause. My heart was pumping wildly, reflecting my agitation inside.

I was not able to concentrate on teaching the rest of the day. Nor did I notice Luv and Kush’s fight in the car while driving home.

My life had been beautiful after marriage. Raam and I had shifted to a flat in a newly built apartment complex. I was in fantasy land, lost in my small world. Raam joined his family business and his father’s political party. Soon I got signs I was pregnant and my Gynaecologist confirmed it. It was ecstasy. I planned to tell this good news to Raam in a romantic way. Insisted Raam reach home by eight p.m. ordered a cake for the evening.

In the evening I left home to pick up the cake. When I reached the parking lot, I saw a man sauntering towards me, probably drunk. He couldn’t even walk properly. I ignored him and continued walking towards my car. Suddenly someone caught me from behind; it was the same man. He was so drunk that it wasn’t hard to loosen his grip and escape. But I was terrified. As I ran towards the exit, I saw a car entering the lot. I knew this car!

I opened my eyes and looked around. Looks like my room. What happen last night? Who brought me in my room? May be it was a nightmare. “Last night you fell unconscious in front of my car.” I turned my head in the direction of the voice, found Raam next to me. I felt tranquil and safe. Along with the tea, he handed me a newspaper. I saw a headline ‘Dead in car accident.’ There was apicture of same man I’d met in the parking area. Raam noticed my perplexed expression.

“When I entered the parking lot, you fell unconscious and I saw a man rush to his car. He drove out in a killing speed. Looks like it killed him.” Raam didn’t make any eye contact with me. He sounded impassive.

Our lives changed from that day. Raam started staying away from me. He left early and returned home as late as possible. Whenever I asked others for a reason, only reply was: ‘Pre-election preparations are going on and he has lots of responsibilities.’

Only thing I could do was to wait till everything got normal. But nothing went back to normal in my life. Very soon I got a Divorce notice. I never got a chance to tell him about my pregnancy. Now it was pointless to tell or argue, may be it was too late.

Loud sounds of wrangling from the kids’ bedroom dragged me back to the present… Why I am worrying without reason? Situation is not that bad. Raam never knew he had identical twins. If we don’t see each other, he will stay clueless.- Best way is to remain back stage when Raam arrives tomorrow.

Next Morning, in school, my only mission was to grab maximum back stage work. All teachers were eager to meet Mr. Chief Minister which made my mission easy.

All preparations for Science fair had begun. Different competitions were held at school- Essay writing competitions, Future Scenarios com petitions, Science models competitions, etc. Winners of each the com petition would receive their prizes from the Chief Guest on the final day.

Kush’s Science model won first place, and Luv stood first in the essay writing competition. Now one thing was very clear, I would have to tell them their father’s name.

On the final day, the Principal welcomed our Chief Guest. Our CM lit the lamp on the stage and gave his speech. Everything was working out right, as I’d planned. Soon it was time for the prize distribution ceremony. One of the teachers announced the name of winners, one by one.

“Now the winner of the Essay Writing competition,” he proclaimed. My heart started beating fast. Which mother wouldn’t be pleased to see her lad receive a prize from his father? I couldn’t help edging away from the backstage.

“And first prize goes to Master Luv, class Nine.”

Luv went up stage to receive his prize. I peeped from the backstage. Things were under my control. Soon the teacher announced the winner of the Science model competition. Kush appeared on stage. Raam handed over his certificate, asked something. Kush nodded and pointed towards me. Raam turned and our eyes met for a fraction of a second. I hid myself in croutons and ran away.

Oh, my God! Now he will snatch my babies from me. He can’t see me happy. I was totally freaked out. I splashed water on my face and tried to stay calm but my heart was pounding like crazy.

Calm down, clam down Jahanvi, and don’t panic. Jahanvi, you are overreacting. Maybe they were talking about something else. Don’t panic. Oh God! Help me. Somehow I controlled myself, went back to work.

After the function, we drove home.

“Mom, now you have to tell us our father’s name.” Kush was obviously excited.

“Urgent family meeting in my room,” I told the boys. Now it was the right time to tell the boys about their father before it became too late to do so.

We gathered in my bed room.

“I hope you guys are mature enough to understand.”

“Mom, please tell!” Kush was impatient.

“Mr. Raam, our Chief Minister.”

They gazed at my face. I could read their minds; they were confused and astonished. Complete silence spread in room for few seconds.

“Cooool!” Kush broke the silence.

“Tomorrow I will tell everyone at school,” said Luv, jumping on the bed with enthusiasm.

“No, you guys are not going to tell anything to anyone!”

“Why?” asked Luv.

“Why?” echoed Kush.

“Beta, no one will believe you. Everyone will make fun of you.” I could see they didn’t believe me. I tried a different track: begging. “Promise me this is our family secret and it will remain in the family.”

Slowly, they both nodded, but I knew they were deeply unhappy.

I had a sleepless night. Oh God! What further surprise did the future have in store for me?

Next day onwards, our lives were back to normal. Almost normal. The boys were quiet. I was quiet. I was haunted by a fear of the unanticipated.

One day, the telephone rang. The boys were in their room, studying. It must be Luv or Kush’s friend, trying to pull them away from books. I picked up the receiver.

“Hello.”

“Jahanvi.” A familiar voice. “It’s Raam speaking.”

I was thunderstruck. My body turned cold.

“Hmmm, who gave you my number?” Stupid question.

“Your school,” he replied. “I am sorry for whatever I did to you. I tried to find you, met your parents but they didn’t tell me anything.”

“Why? Why did you search for me?”

“I want my family back, you and my kids. We can rekindle our life.”

“Who told you they are your kids?” I was burning in fury.

“Once after our divorce, I saw your gynaecologist’s report and prescriptions in stuffs you forgot to take with you. It said you were carrying twins. “

I hung up. A man who didn’t care for me when I was pregnant, a man who wasn’t aware of his kids’ existence, today he was claiming my babies as his kids.

A few days later, I received an envelope from Raam’s lawyer. Without opening it, I could predict that it was a Notice for Custody. My boys! I couldn’t lose them. My world revolves around them. I can’t imagine life without them. Straight away I consulted a lawyer.

That same evening, I got calls from many news reporters of different television channels and newspapers; everyone seemed eager to increase their TRP by publicizing my personal life. My lawyer advised me not to tell anything in front of the media.

When I reached home after meeting with my lawyer, I found my lads watching television.

Luv welcomed me with a surprised: “Mom, you told us not to tell anyone but now everyone knows it.”

“Can we tell our friends too?” said Kush.

I was startled. I had no clue what they were talking about. Kush switched to a news channel. Breaking news: ‘Chief Minister knocking on Court’s door for his twin sons’ custody’.

Great. What I had been trying to hide from everyone, now it was on National television. Soon I would receive calls from friends and colleagues.I would have to explain everything to everyone, each and every single time. I was living my worst dream.

I didn’t want to see the newscasts with my doppelgangers because such I was concerned the news would agitate them. I recorded the news programs and saw them when my kids were asleep. For the media, it wasn’t a case of ‘Child Custody’ among two parents. They were projecting it as a Chief Minister v/s an Ordinary School Teacher. The experts on the channels discussed the possibilities endlessly.

On one channel, a lawyer was telling to split my doppelgangers, i.e. one son with the father and one with the mother. Rubbish, how can twins live separated? Since God sent them together, no one else had a right to separate them unless they themselves decided to do so.

Another channel had a religious guru who intoned: “Every child needs a father’s name. A father can give a better life, a better education and other facilities. Ethically also, only a father can keep his children.”

I choked. Ridiculous! People who knew nothing about my life were not only discussing it, but they were trying to sentence me too. For me, my babies were still attached to me with an invisible umbilical cord.

Suddenly I felt Luv’s hand on my shoulder. “Mom?”

I broke down into tears. Kush gave me glass of water. “Mom, we won’t leave you.”

I hugged them tightly. I’d thought my babies were too small to understand the situation. I was wrong. My striplings were my strength.

Next morning, my lawyer fixed a meeting with Mr. Raam for an out-of-court settlement. I dropped my lads to school and took a day’s leave from school. When I returned and unlocked my door, a near-homicidal silence seemed to be spread everywhere. The house would be hell without my kids. I can’t let go my kids at any cost.

Unexpectedly, the door bell rang. I opened the door. The Chief Minister was standing on my doorstep. I was startled, but welcomed him inside and asked him to be seated. He told his bodyguards to stay out. Silence for a few seconds.

“I came here to talk to you alone, without our lawyers,” he said. “I know I made few mistakes, but I’m just a human being, a common human being.”

“A common human being doesn’t assume he knows everything. A common human being discusses and clarifies possible misunderstandings with his wife; they don’t simply send divorce notices directly. A common human being cares for his child from the first day onwards. They just don’t barge in after fifteen years and ask for custody.”

“I understand your feelings,” he replied, calmly. “I met our kids in school before coming here. You really brought them up well. They are really attached to you. I don’t want to perturb you or the kids at all.”

Am I dreaming or he is really saying these words? I pinched my hand. No, I am not dreaming.

“If you allow me to meet kids regularly, I will withdraw the custody case.”

“Of course you can meet them whenever you want,” I said, slowly. “They need you too.”

Luv and Kush often visit their father and grandparents. Kush’s only ambition is to become a scientist. Luv was uncertain about his future, but now he wants to be a politician just like his father.

At last the kids got their father, and a woman—more than that, a mother—got justice.

Thank God I took birth in the Kalyug.

Sita to Vaidehi—Another Journey

Sucharita Dutta-Asane

My life began in my death, in Earth’s womb Held apart at its jaws by hands as wide as the ocean’s maw, the crevasse engulfed me slowly till I melted in its warm womb recreated myself as a seed torn out of Earth’s bowels and dispersed through green blowing corn and dry, parched lands of sand and bramble. I fell into the forests of my youth and bloomed there, on my own, watching over the dark innards of Dandakaranya.

The forest is a-riot, aflame with my blossoms scattered across its green-and-gore soil. Through my flower laden branches, I watch life swirl around me, my flowers scatter and merge, orange with green, fiery wonder of a new beginning. And I find myself anew, each wondrous day of self assertion

Here, in a deep crevice, my namesake hugs a brown trunk hewn from my ancient side. She seeks protection from the men in khaki who scour the green undercover.

I seep into her soul; she quivers.

She hears faint footfalls on my dry leaves and crouches farther into my leafy shadows.

I was deaf once, deaf with love and desire unable to hear the footfall that would devastate my life. Nor did I, under the leafy branches of Ravana’s Ashoka Tree or in the gilded halls of Ayodhya, hear correctly the true beatings of a heart I considered mine but that belonged to a king alone, sworn in his Raj dharma, too good to be my man.

Branches crackle and fruit pods burst open under stealthy footfalls, bayonets pierce green depths, eyes scan verdant expanses.

I have made her invisible.

When they retreat to their vehicles, I release her as suddenly as I had enveloped her. She has to find her own way now. I did too, long ago, when abandoned by the river side, heavy with twin seeds. I found protection then. Now I protect.

Vaidehi shoves her toothpaste and brush into her backpack, the last vestiges of a luxury she left behind for her ideal in the badlands of Dandakaranya. The tree watches her pack sling the satchel over her shoulder, tuck her thick braid into the belt at her slim waist; her translucent skin is camouflaged with grease and grime, her eyes, kohl lined, are large and doe like, her figure curves as a tree-ling swaying in the breeze.

“Still following your ideal, Vaidehi?”

Vaidehi hears a whisper rustle through the leaves of the tree under which she stands. She looks around, senses alert.

“You won’t see me, Vaidehi.”

A sliver of fear runs erratically along her spine but her hands rise, trained, to the rifle peeping over her shoulder.

“How can you kill yourself?”

“Who is it?”

“I am you.”

Vaidehi’s arched eyebrows come together in a scowl above her nose.

“Why do you hide from me?”

“It is you who cannot see.”

Vaidehi looks at the leafy branches above her and shivers with a warm, unknown pleasure.

“Is this your ideal?”

“What?”

“This forest life.”

She traces the thick bark with her long, tapering fingers, feels its roughness; a leaf falls on her arm, whispers:

“I chased my ideal at the cost of my life Vaidehi; are you willing to do the same?”

Vaidehi caresses the leaf.

“Who are you?”

“Sita.”

She brushes off the leaf from her hand and gets up. This forest is no place for daydreams. Only nightmares and the demons of her soul. She hears their arrival every night when she waits and watches, afraid of the moment they will pounce on her, hold to ransom her integrity.

“Are you disowning me?”

“This may be Dandakaranya, but Ramayana is a foregone myth.”

“Ramayana may be a myth. But I exist. Don’t you feel me in your soul? Look around! Don’t you see me everywhere?”

“No.”

“Don’t you know Sita?”

“Queen of Rama’s heart?”

“Indeed! Queen of a heart spent. From Janaka’s court to Dashrath’s palace, from Rama’s hut to Ravana’s Lanka… my soul scattered everywhere.”

“So whose burnished body was it that came out of the flaming pyre by Lanka’s sea? What was that?”

“My remnants, Vaidehi. The remnants of my love.”

“Are you this tree?”

“If that’s the way you want to find me.”

“I don’t want to find you. And this is no place for feminist rant. Who wants to know of your sorrow here? There are far more important issues waiting to be resolved.”

“And you will resolve them.”

“I could.”

“Like the vanaras in Rama’s sena. Who is your Rama, Vaidehi?”

“My belief.”

A few leaves drop on her shoulders and back, arms and hair. She is irritated and takes out her canteen for a sip of water.

“You will do all this with warfare? Like Rama?”

“Didn’t he win you back?”

“He won me only the first time, when he broke Shiva’s bow. Every other time, he lost me.”

“So why did he fight Ravana?”

“Didn’t he tell us all after the war? To redeem family honour, not for my love. Violence only brought us shame, Vaidehi. We lost everything to it. Don’t you remember?”

“Why do you drag me into this?”

“You are I. Born of my sap.”

“So you are a tree Sita and I a human?”

She walks away feeling dazed and ruffled. She’d actually argued with a tree!

Boom!

She ducks into the bushes, instantly; smoke plumes curl, collect and disappear behind the trees. Her battle’s started again. She runs to her camouflaged hut and checks out the radio. Crackling. Her commands are clear. The convoy is yet to pass. This is but a warning. On her insistence. She wanted them to escape if they could. Mindless violence is not her forte. She is here to help create schools and health centres, wealth sharing and rights, not graveyards. After their land loss and water loss and pride loss, the villagers want restoration. And she? She wants to be a part of this struggle, but in her own way, non-violent, constructive. “So why this violence?”

The voice envelops her.

“What can you do for them, Vaidehi?”

The whisper is distinct, all around her. She looks around, irritated, unwilling to let her attention wander. No more arguing with trees and phantoms.

“Ask yourself. What can you do for them, with them?”

“Oh, leave me alone!”

She is not supposed to speak. Voices carry far in this wilderness.

“Rama killed one Ravana. Not all.”

Quiet.

“You know, perhaps there is a midway between Ravana and Rama. Can you find that ideal Vaidehi?”

“Go away!”

Her urgent whisper echoes around her and spreads out, beyond the hut, the tree, Dandakaranya. A volley of bullets drowns out all other sounds. Does it kill the voice? Where is it?

“Here. I am here.”

The disembodied voice is all around.

“You are chasing an ideal, Vaidehi. What will this violence beget? More violence? Don’t the men and women fighting you have families? Can you take what is theirs?”

“Oh, get lost! Why did you not think all this when you refused Hanuman’s help? Couldn’t you have avoided the bloodshed too?”

“I was blind, Vaidehi. Blind with anger, passion, pride. And the arrogance of being the wife of Rama, the one who could do no wrong.”

“Like Ravana.”

“Dashashana? He loved me enough to want me close by. Died for me.”

“That’s your vanity. Your desired reality.”

Vaidehi knows her war is endless. Land and water was never any one person’s. Yet, in the darkness of Dandakaranya, she realises completely its potential for conflict. Away from family and the luxuries of her once-opulent life, reality is different. Is this what she yearned for when Orko talked of responsibility and domesticity? With him, she was a woman with a woman’s duties and acquired sensitivities. She didn’t want those Here she was a human being first.

“Really?”

How does the voice respond to her thoughts? The eeriness of the faceless voice makes her shudder, yet, there is something soothing about its insistence.

“Of course!”

“Then why do you dress like a man here? Why do you worry for your womanly fragility when enemies come rushing at you? Didn’t you say you would die instead of face rape and violation?”

“Who would want that?”

“No woman would at least. And you are a woman too. Can you escape the fact?”

“So?”

“You were thinking of reality some time back.”

“It’s different here.”

“When Dashashana gave me Rama’s head on a platter that was reality too. His desired reality.”

“What does that have to do with the issue of tribals and their rights to their land?”

“These are compartments created by you Vaidehi.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Ideals don’t last; what you do with them live after you.”

“That’s what I’m doing, living my ideal.”

“With every demon Rama killed, a hundred rose in its place. He had to kill Ravana to destroy demon-hood.”

Sita watches Vaidehi. She’s on the move again. Another night, an other mission, silent as the moonlight that traces her path through fields and trees. She has her comrades with her tonight but Sita’s soft voice accompanies Vaidehi. There is no escape. It has to, if Vaidehi is to live. And live with dignity. What’s dignity in death? Her golden statue where she should have been? King Rama was content with the idea. She, his forsaken and humiliated wife, was content with the idea of being missed after death. Vaidehi lives a distorted reality. Ideals! Sita knows all about them. She should. She paid the price for every ideal the poet could conjure. He should have made her live with her sons to become queen mother when they ascended the throne. But he was writing Rama’s story. She was dispensable, a memory in the paintings that lined Rama’s palace walls.

Vaidehi thinks of the time she set foot in Dandakaranya’s darkness. Not like this moonlit night, but a Neanderthal darkness intermittently lit up by fireflies. It was revolutionary ideology and its need in these parts that had drawn her. The need to change the way things worked against the less privileged, the forest dweller, women …, mainly people whose land was at risk from the government, mining companies, corporate houses, insensitive urban greed. Her family of course thought her romantic.

“I will fight for the dispossessed and disadvantaged, for tribals and their rights.”

“Do it through the system.”

“That’s what needs the revolution.”

She knew it then. She did not trust any system but was aware that she had to belong to one in order to carry out her work. She could not escape belonging. And so when a bow and arrow was thrust into her moist palms, she did not hesitate. She had to prove herself. Her test by fire could only come through these primitive but deadly weapons of self protection, that’s what they were meant for. What would the people here do without these? How would they fight their battles, prevent the daily loot and rape? Didn’t she see the plight of women left alone in their homes, their men away in cities, jails, or fighting with the comrades? They walked miles to get water or lodge a complaint but often ended up brutalised and humiliated, just as they were dispossessed and deprived of what was theirs.

Had she been equally confident the day her hands felt the muzzle of a gun? Cold. It was the only feeling she remembers from those times.

Ideology was a cold muzzle in her hands.

“Writing reams and lecturing in village classrooms will not get any body their rights Vaidehi. We have to fight for it.”

“Why with these things?”

“How else? Will your lectures on sustainable living help when the cops come shooting?”

“They come when we challenge them. Let’s do things differently then. Instead of firearms, let us dig wells, grow trees.”

“That’s idealistic. That alone has not helped.”

“We could try again.”

“Prove yourself Vaidehi. Are you with us in this revolution against an exploitative system?”

“We are exploiters too. We are teaching them to resort to violence as the first means of protest. This is not sustainable. What will we get from killing cops who are only serving a system? Won’t it justify their killing of our people too? Where’s the end comrade?”

“Lanka was not conquered by Rama’s goodness. It started right here, in Dandakaranya. The demons understood the language of violence alone, of retribution.”

“Who are the demons here today, comrade?”

“Vaidehi! Prove your loyalty or face the consequences.”

Wasn’t her presence in their midst proof enough?

“No!”

She proved herself. Again and again, vassal to a system after all. She felt hysterical.

Tonight, it is mission time again. She looks forward to the warm welcome the villagers might have in store for them. If they are sympathisers. If not, they will have to fight their way through. If they are sympathisers, she will have cooked food at last. She can almost inhale the aroma of boiling rice and roasting fish caught from the village ponds If the ponds exist.

It is a long trudge tonight through beautiful woods, across shimmering rivers, by hills that look romantic in the moonshine. She thinks of Sita and her idyll with Rama in these efflorescent acres. And then she comes upon sudden barrenness.

They keep walking, single file.

The village huts are visible against the brightening skyline. Something looks out of joint. She looks closely at the brightness. In the semi glow from that distant horizon, her comrades’ faces look alert and drawn. She dares not stop and stare, yet. The flames leap up right then, the sky an inferno.

“What?”

“Ambush.”

Her whispered question and her comrade’s whispered answer.

“Whose?”

“A battalion.”

“How do you know?”

“Was planned.”

The ground seems to cave in under her feet; she feels the chasm opening up, sucking her into it. She wants to run but discipline winds itself around her ankles now.

She walks, single file.

The mud road and its surroundings are aglow. Jeeps burn, suffusing the air with their devastation. She looks closely at the limbs scattered around her. Something moves. A hand claws the air. She goes to it swiftly. The mangled face looks at her and opens its maw. She pours water into it from her canteen, a few drops at a time till a hand snatches it away.

“He’s our enemy.”

“I’m only giving him water.”

“To the enemy?”

“He’s a dying man, comrade.”

“A dying enemy is still an enemy, Vaidehi. Get away.” She clutches at his sleeve.

“Why? And why wasn’t I told about this ambush? What are we doing here now?”

“No questions! Pick up the arms and ammunition they were carrying and move on. Take the radios. Don’t leave them behind!”

She doesn’t move.

Vaidehi is in Sita’s embrace.

Hiding under her leaves, she feels the forest permeate her senses, verdant and cool. The leaves caress her naked body, lull it into restfulness. She inhales rapidly twice and holds her breath.

“What happened there?”

The voice! Sita!

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“I quit.”

“That’s easy. Vaidehi always quits”

“You play devil’s advocate.”

“What’s that?”

“Never mind.”

“What will you do now?”

“Go home. Teach.”

“Teach? That’s interesting! What will you teach?”

“How not to scuttle a revolution.”

Sita smiles. Vaidehi smiles.

“It’s never easy to return. How will you prove yourself?”

“Prove! Prove! Why should I? It’s all because of you, Sita. You set the trend.”

“You talk like a woman!”

“No. Well, yes. Why should I prove myself? They wanted me to use weapons, follow their cult of violence. ‘Prove yourself,’ they said. I did. I fed water to a dying man. ‘Prove you are not on the enemy’s side,’ they said. I ran away.”

“How far will you run?”

“I don’t know. If they catch up with me, I have a cyanide capsule ready for the bite.”

“To prove your fear. You can’t escape it Vaidehi. Can you reverse the trend I set? Running away, dying. They are forms of escape. Can you do it differently this time?”

Vaidehi yearns for the coolness of the leaves on her body but throws them off to stand up unclothed, stark and beautiful. Sita watches the radiance of her contours.

Vaidehi thinks of the distance she has to traverse. She stands mute as Sita envelops her once again, enters her spirit and clothes her in her leaves and flowers. She sets forth-earth woman, with nothing of the world on her and Sita’s words ringing in her ears.

“The abyss is not ours this time. Fight for what is yours. Whatever it may be.”

The dense forest covers her on all sides. These tracts are imbued with violence and factional rivalry. Each abducting the other’s agenda. Systems, groups, armed militia, insurgents, villagers. Identities overlapped in these parts. Could she escape? She walks away from water bodies and villages.

Dawn breaks out of the hills.

A group of women emerge from its shadows in the distance dangling a carcass across a stake, their hips swaying to their songs, a lilting break in the monotony. She recognises the signs. They are returning from their annual hunt. She quickens her pace. Among them, she will be inconspicuous.

They sing of their hunt, they laugh, stop to dance; she feels happy; she feels safe. They reach the village by noon. A village of women.

“Where are the men?”

“Taken or gone.”

Vaidehi braces herself for the familiar tales.

My man’s in jail…

My son’s a comrade now …

My grandson’s hunting comrades …

My man is in the city …

My man was taken away by…the police…the lal salaam people…their opponents…government babus…by death…

Rama had to kill Ravana to destroy demon-hood. How many more demons now? How many more Ravanas? Where are the Ramas? She stretches out on a mat in the hut of a family caught between rival groups. The family is history now; their hut unused and bare. The mud floor is cool and she feels sleepy. She has to walk through the night again.

There is no wind, yet the door rattles on its hinges. She opens it. Outside, in the blinding daylight stand two men with guns.

“Chalo!”

“Who are you?”

“Who were with you in the ambush?”

“What ambush?”

“Don’t pretend.” They shove at her and try to enter the hut. She stands in the way.

“Where are your comrades?”

How did they know of her? Or was this a routine check? They weren’t men in uniform.

“I’m not a comrade.”

“Ya. We’ve heard that before. Come!”

They pull her by her wrist. Women come out of their huts as they drag Vaidehi to a jeep standing under the Banyan. The women bar their way. The two men hit out with their guns.

“Wait! Where are you taking me?”

“Quiet!”

“I want to know. And why?”

“Why? Why were you with your comrades at the ambush?”

A sudden flash of light seems to illuminate the world for Vaidehi. She smiles to herself.

“Shooting in the dark, are you? Which ambush are you talking of? There is no disturbance here.”

The ploy seems to work.

They look at her body now

“Can you prove your innocence?”

“How? I don’t have anything except my words.”

“You have everything. Prove your innocence. Tonight. Keep your doors open. And remember, no tricks.”

The women crowd around her.

“They do this all the time.”

“Last time it was the police. They took away our men and burnt the school building.”

“Earlier the comrades used it as their hideout. It was full of bullet holes and the children refused to attend school after the fighting stopped.”

“This is another group. They all know we are helpless without our men. It is always some group or the other.”

“We tried self protection, with bows and arrows, axes and hoes. Nothing helps.”

Vaidehi listens to the voices, a choral chant, almost. She will not prove anything this time. She will stand up and fight. Not for her the cold embrace of the chasm or the heat of the funeral pyre she will not call upon her lord or any god to save her. It is her fight and she will fight it her way.

“I have a plan, sisters. Will you help?”

“Will it work?”

“Depends on us.”

She sheds her leaves. The women drape her in a saree, red and white. She is radiant; her freshly washed, flower bedecked hair shines; her face, scrubbed clean of grime and dust is resplendent. Her doe-eyes are bright and clear.

The women stand and stare.

“Who are you?”

“Vaidehi”

They sing and dance around her. The night is luminous. Soon, the fires die down and they return to their huts.

“How many come here usually?”

They expect some. How many, nobody knows.

The night is opaque by the time the jeeps purr into the village com pound; the wall is broken at many places. The men park their jeeps by the breach closest to the tree line that marks the forest in this part. Feral smiles crease their faces; they thump one another’s backs and head towards the huts. They have heard of this from others.

Tonight is theirs to savour and recount.

The doors open into a darkness their eyes cannot penetrate. They enter the huts and grope for yielding flesh. They claw the air, disoriented in the dark. They hear faint sounds, the creaking of neglected doorframes.

As they grope, torches erupt, one by one.

Blinded by the sudden light, they turn and freeze, effigy like. Women with burning torches. They turn towards doors that are shut to them.

As the huts burn and their flames ignite the sky, Vaidehi and the women leave the village.

Petrichor

Sharanya Manivannan

There was a time when I believed the trees spoke to me. And the river, in its spate, churned songs. Now, no matter what I seek to augur, I am met with silence. Nothing gives itself away.

You’ve found me after a particularly beautiful twilight. One by one, small lanterns were lit in the garden. Like reflections of the stars slow-burning like the fire inside me. Night-blooming cereus and jasmine dispersed their fragrances into the evening, and the women who wait on me wove them into my hair. I did not ask.

It’s something that they do, in their own kindness. I am like a doll or a little sister to them. In this garden, for the first time in years, I have known the company of other women.

But that is only for a short while. Dusk is sublime in this garden, for there are songs and gossip and on some days, laughter, and then the night curtains the sky like the long sweeping of the train of a dancing woman’s dress. They take turns trying to get me to crack a smile, and it’s become a sort of game. I am not nearly so stoic as I pretend to be, but they are indulgent, patient. Forgiving, too. Sometimes I catch myself in a gasp of glee not unlike a snatch of childhood, and I have to remind myself how I came to be here.

I’m not saying I am happy. I’m just saying that even the banished can sometimes acquire a small measure of peace.

Supper is always an exquisite affair, and I know I should be ashamed to admit how I give myself to the pleasure of the feast. But after all that time in the forest, wouldn’t you too savour meat, sweets and herbs not only lovely in the mouth, but hunted, gathered, cooked and served by someone else? If I am still gaunt in appearance

it is only because of the one hunger not mitigated: that ache for my beloved. So each night, when the last round of wine has been passed around—women are forbidden to consume it here as elsewhere, but my handmaidens are resourceful, and they would hardly waste arable as rich as this—a small sadness once more takes root, intensifying as the hours pass. One by one, satiated and tired, they fall into slumber. Only I, sleepless in paradise, am wakeful.

My handmaidens call me by many sweet names-precious as the eye, jewel of the heart. The only one I have forbidden is “little fawn”. That one pricks the conscience. When I first came here I insisted I was to be addressed as my lord’s wife. But that first evening I wept, and one of them took me in her arms and cooed and lullabied me until all of the imperiousness I had brought with me fell away, like a tight coil loosening. From then on, my true nature sighted, I became their darling. Still, sometimes I long to hear the syllables of my own real names. Sometimes I cannot but wonder if, if I gave in to him, the emperor of this country—he with more hands than a cacophony of clocks, more faces than a hall of mirrors—might speak them to me. For now, he addresses me formally, reverentially. Whatever else you have heard, you are wrong to accept it.

They say I was named for my father, he who is not the earth but is the coolness that tempers her, assuaging the places where she sunders into cracks, flooding fecund the holy grotto of her womb. They say that my parents made love, and out of that mud I rose, daughter. That on some ancient night under an evanesced moon, he had arrived in an electric flash, under cover of cloud, and buffeted into her. My father, the storm, and his bride, the soil.

And on nights like this one, when the day’s brief revelries have vanished and once more I feel a distance from all that tethers me, I want to believe it. So I tell myself that it is true, and if it is true, then I can walk barefoot under a shroud of stars and speak to her, my mother, sole to soul. My cold skin against her dark, pacific body. My brothers, those tall ashokas, holding my hair to the wind.

O my loneliness.

To be of the earth is to be of exile. For a very long time after this body returns to its origins, they will speak of this as though I had been condemned by a fate not spun from their own limitations, their need to measure the immense, name it, stake a claim to it.

And even if they were right, tell me—is there a place where the child of the earth can walk and not be welcomed? You pity me as if I have been held a prisoner. As though the child of the rain could become anything but a woman in the shape of water, neither captured nor contained.

Do you think I didn’t see you, crouching on a high branch of that bodhi tree, well before nightfall? I saw you and I stifled my scream because you saw me at that same moment. Your eyes met mine. Don’t ask me why I trusted you. Even in paradise, there are those who plot escape. Besides, you also looked a little terrified.

Ugly one, you must have gotten hungry, because after I went back to acting like I hadn’t spotted you, you abandoned your scrutiny—oh, you call it vigil, do you?-for a few minutes, and that’s when I slipped away. By then most of my handmaidens were snoring, anyway, and the few still hovering on the precipice would have fallen asleep from the sheer effort of trying to follow me, I am sure. There was something endearing about the way you were biting into that pomegranate when I found you, and the way you dropped it and fumbled to stand at attention when you saw me. Don’t give me this stern look now. I saw you smile when I started to giggle. Even teeth like yours look charming in a happy face.

No, thank you, I don’t want any. I don’t like pomegranates. They remind me of another story about what it means to be the daughter of the earth.

Now, you have to understand: I can’t go back with you. I have seen the ring you bear and I know it is my lord’s. I have seen your silly grin and I know that you are a friend. But—how do I put this?—my lord sometimes is as fickle as a common man. I cannot tell you how often I was made to feel grateful in Panchavati that I have yet to bear children. Two petulant princes were enough to take care of. The stories I could tell you! Will you come and visit me again? I could tell you some stories then. Or stay till the girls wake up. If I introduce you to them, they will like you. Do you have a wife?

See, this is what I meant. So you’ve been warned that if he doesn’t see your hairy face by daybreak he will storm the city walls. Ay, what did I tell you? So, listen, you can’t stay and I can’t leave. If I climb on your back and arrive there, there is no telling what he will say. No, you can’t uproot a tree with me sitting in it! Nature deserves more respect than that. Here is my ring. If my lord is my lord, he will know it for what it is. Take it with my love and my faith.

What did you say your name was again?

Well, Hanuman, I have seen you to be a friend, and so I want you to treat me as one too. Call me Sita, or Janaki, or Vaidehi, or Tharini. Whichever you please. Yes, I like the last one too. Will you at least let me tell you why, before you go?

Before I was a prisoner, I was an exile, and before I was an exile, I was a princess, and consort to the next regent of the dynasty of the sun. Before all this however, I was a newborn found in a furrow by a king who loved me as his own child. And before even that, I was the furrow itself, freshly ploughed, a thriving, primal consciousness.

Women are not meant to be unmappable territories. My father, the king, so used to guarding borders and the cartography of commerce, could not have understood. So much of this life of mine is a reaction to rumour, yet I myself am an infinite constant.

I wasn’t the earth’s daughter, dear monkey. I was the earth herself. I have no mother to call on in my solitude, only the memory of myself.

You seem learned. Look in the early scriptures. I am called there by name, the name my lord knows me by, though that too is a diminutive. There’s a hymn to me. I am invoked to bless the harvest. I am abundance itself. I predate him. I predate everything.

Everything, that is, but my first conqueror.

It started with a drought. Have you ever longed for something, Hanuman, but only longed for it because it had disappeared when, before, it had always been there?

I long for my lord now in that same way. I hope it’s a loneliness you will never have to know. You say my eyes light up each time his name is spoken, but so do yours. Maybe we would both do well to love more cautiously.

Please don’t take what I am about to tell you as disloyalty. It would break his heart to discover that I am not a province to be possessed, presided over. I’m only telling you because I think you would under stand. Like me, you seem to be something other than human.

When I was the earth itself, an unfathomable topography, there came a time when the rain stopped falling.

I was used to him, of course. I expected him. In some ways I had always thought of him as an extension of me, and I began to feel his absence across the vast terrain of my body. Small crevices opened in me, deepening as the days passed, and with them a thirst as blinding as any a mortal could endure, perhaps worse. I could no longer support life—and so I learnt barrenness.

Little by little, with every passing day, everything died. Plants, wildlife, languages. I absorbed those entities back into me, weeping without tears. That was the first time I knew loss, separation. That was the first time I understood that even an island, by definition, can not exist without the thing that isolates it.

Eventually, it was only me—the last living thing, parched beyond belief. I had begun to hallucinate. I dreamt of sweat, of the taste of dew, of the relief of tears. Finally, defeated, desperate, I stared the horizon down, forfeiting eternity, willing my own death too, and then I saw it.

At first I thought it was another mirage. A pageant of clouds in the distance, their shadows looming over the expanse of dust like a promise.

And he came to me in his thunder, sudden, a downpour in a drought. And I drank my fill of him, took him deep within me until every last rupture in me came alive in torrents of electricity. “Flood me,” I cried out in my yearning. And he did. I turned into liquid, a deluge of desire overwhelming me—the tempest adoring, engulfing, the terrain. The storm of our love. Shocked arrows of lightning ran through me. The world dissolving into rivulets of mud. The rumble and roar of his spill onto me. When it was over, I wept deeply, sated.

“I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long, my love,” he said. And in that moment I had no other lord, no other husband. “Ask me for a boon. I was at the service of the crescent-crowned one, the lord of the meeting rivers, and he will let me give you just one.”

Oddly enough, now, I don’t think of him when it rains, but afterward, when from the ground rises that smell from the mingling of red earth and pouring rain. Petrichor.

“Life,” I breathed. “I want to know what it means to be mortal, to love and live within a limited time.”

I asked for it. Just as I asked for exile into the forest, when I could have stayed in Ayodhya, a queen-in-waiting. Just as I ask you now to leave without me, and let my lord do what he will. Knowing even as I say it what it will come to mean to this garden, these friends, the strange peace I have come to make with myself in this place.

For that, I will take my lord as example. The people admire him because he always does what he has to do. He makes his duty his destiny. I won’t deny him the spoils of a war fully relished.

I waited some millennia before I took this life. Why? Because I didn’t want to be lonely. How ironic! Some call it fate. I call it cosmic monkeyshine.

Good. That was meant to make you smile.

Look to the east. That’s the morning on its way.

You must leave now. Take heart, my friend. Avoid capture; my handmaidens are far kinder than those who guard this city. May you be swift.

I will wait in this garden until he comes. Don’t worry about me. I want nothing less than a love that submerges me completely, and so I can bear this lonesomeness a little longer. My lord will come. Don’t you understand that I can only tremor within myself, even in despair? It is he who has the power to move. For the sake of his crown, if not his queen, he will come.

I will see you in Ayodhya. I will adorn you with my own jewels. Remember the night that has passed even if we never speak of it again.

Take as many pomegranates as your paws can carry.

The Princess in the Forest

Mary Anne Mohanraj

It is always summer in the forest. The sun shines down through the tall trees, the leaves of spreading banyan and coconut palm. Monkeys race from limb to limb, hanging precariously by single arm or leg; parakeets swoop and glide, silhouetted for dark moments against the brightness of sky.

The princess walks for hours, her face smooth as an undisturbed pool of water, her eyes laughing, light as butterflies. New-married, full of adoration for her husband, her prince. Rama hunts in the forest; he pursues the slender hart, lays traps for cunning rabbits. But always he comes to his Sita before the sun is down, comes to their modest hut, their gentle home in exile. He smiles to see her, lays the game aside and takes her in his arms, draws her down to the forest floor, the soft grasses, and she loves him then, as the gopis loved blue Krishna, she loves him with everything she has, everything she is.

“Samiksha—you’ll be late!” Her husband scolds from the kitchen doorway, their youngest daughter tucked under one arm, a book nestled in the other. Three days a week he watches the children, the days he doesn’t teach, so that they can spend that time with a parent instead of with the hired black nanny. Samiksha doesn’t know how he can read and mind the girls at the same time; she can’t even think when she’s with them. She can’t understand now what had possessed her to keep having children, one after another, until there were six small heads to be tucked into bed. It was only after giving birth to Lakshmi that she had finally come to her senses.

Samiksha had told Arvind that she would have no more children, that as soon as Lakshmi was weaned, she wanted to find a job. She had been ready with her arguments—had expected that she would have to win her husband over, talk him around. None of the other professors’ wives worked. But she was different; she was smart, special. Samiksha had left India at nineteen, had attended graduate school at Oxford, one of very few women admitted. She possessed a doctorate in physics from Oxford, even if it was now a decade out of date—surely someone would hire her to teach. Samiksha had been unaccountably angry when Arvind hadn’t given her a chance to use her readied arguments, had only placidly agreed to her proposal.

Lately, even his gentlest words have driven her into a fury.

“I’m going, I’m going. I can’t find my gloves. Where’s my coat? What did you do with it?” She’s frenzied, stomping from one room to the next, looking behind overstuffed leather chairs, under sofa cushions.

“Your coat’s in the closet; I hung it up. The gloves are in the left pocket.” Lakshmi has fallen asleep against Arvind’s shoulder, soothed by the solidity of his thick body. She is four now, too old to be carried around on her father’s arm, but she has been a strange, slow child from the beginning, and Arvind doesn’t seem to mind the extra attention she needs.

Samiksha should be grateful for his care for the children, for her, but a wave of resentment sweeps through her instead, at the criticism implied. It isn’t fair, but she can’t help it. Should she be grateful, that the important University of Chicago professor allows his wife to work, takes time out of his busy day so that she can teach at the high school for money they don’t need? Other wives would be grateful; her own mother would tell her to thank Mother Mary for such a saint of a husband, and would then scold her for not spending more time at home, taking care of such a good, brilliant man.

“You’ll have to reheat the rice and curries from yesterday; I need to meet with a parent after school; I’ll be home late.” Instead of feeling grateful, Samiksha takes a small, petty pleasure in making Arvind eat old food, a pleasure somehow more intense because she knows he would not have noticed if she hadn’t pointed it out. And without a kiss, or another word, she pulls on the coat, storms down the hallway and out the door, not bothering to button the buttons or pull on her gloves, taking satisfaction in the winter wind that will undoubtedly give her a cold before nightfall. Let Arvind work a little harder the next few days. It will be good for him.

In the evenings, Rama cleans and dresses the game; Sita slices wild onions, cooks savory curries and coconut roti over a small fire. They each have their appointed tasks and perform them together, companion-ably, in perfect harmony. The prince’s brother arrives, just before the meal is ready. Lakshman is a lazy thing; he rarely brings anything to add to the pot. What does he do in the forest, all day long? There is nowhere to go, no one to see.

They have been in the forest for days, weeks, years. They have been in exile so long that the princess has forgotten what it is to see a familiar face, a face other than that of her husband or his brother. Sita has only monkeys for company, who screech and gibber in the day, in the night, endless in their complaints. With wide faces and brazen eyes, they follow her as she moves barefoot through her days, her crimson wedding sari (all she owns in this exile) like a slender flame in the forest. The monkeys do not worry her; she is a princess, after all, and her husband is a prince. She has nothing to fear from monkeys.

Sometimes she imagines a demon watches her too, with eyes wide and shameless. A handsome creature; his heated gaze strips the silk from her skin, leaving her naked and trembling.

Samiksha cannot pay any attention to the white man, the concerned father who sits across from her desk. There was a time when Samiksha would have worried about a student of hers who was doing so poorly, would have taken extra trouble, extra time to tutor the child. In her first year of teaching, she’d been so grateful to be out of the house, away from the endless rounds of washing diapers and cooking dishes (two sets—one spicy for her husband, one mild for the children), that she’d thrown all her frustrated mental energy into her students. But the endless weeks, one after another, teaching the same things to the same slow minds—it was just as bad as diapers. What they called algebra, geometry—it was only arithmetic, really. It wasn’t anything that stretched her mind, made her feel like she was actually doing something interesting, worthwhile, important. Only the novelty had made it seem an improvement over diapers and dishes.

As the man drones on about his errant daughter, Samiksha slips into her familiar daydream, the epic story her own father had told her, at night, as she fell asleep. He had filled her head with stories of brave Rama, his beloved wife Sita, loyal Lakshman. As a child, Samiksha had believed every word, had absorbed them as she slowly fell asleep. Her father sat under the mosquito netting with her, smoothed sweat-damp hair from Samiksha’s forehead in the heat of Madras summer. He even fanned her with a handy piece of paper so that she could fall asleep. The paper invariably scribbled over with math; it was from her father that Samiksha had learned to love math and physics, the clean sense of their underlying structures. He had taught his eldest daughter as a game, an amusement, at first. But she had been quick to learn, eager for the challenge; he had become caught up in her excitement, ignoring her mother’s protestations, until the day when Samiksha stepped on the boat for England. Only then did she see the stricken realization in his eyes, that everything he had taught her had only served to send her away from him. She had wanted to tell him that fathers always lost their daughters in the end, but she hadn’t had the words.

He had gotten sick in the midst of the war, while she was away at school. Mail, already slow, had been disrupted by the Japanese blockades; letters took months longer than normal to traverse the long distances. He had died before her letter back had arrived; she had heedlessly offered to come home, though there was no guarantee that she could even find someone to carry her back across the dark waters. Arvind had al ready proposed by then, and Samiksha had accepted, though she had not yet had the courage to write to her father, to tell him that she had met a man, had fallen in love, that she wasn’t coming home, not yet. And then it was too late. Would her father have wanted her to marry Arvind, to move with him to his new job in America? Would he have worried about her, as this father worries about his own daughter?

The poor student’s plight is not enough to focus Samiksha’s attention—now she considers the body of the white man sitting across from her, at a student’s desk. His long legs fit awkwardly under the low desktop, and Samiksha wonders what he would look like if he could stretch out properly. On a low sofa, perhaps, or a broad bed. He stares fixedly at her, and she wonders what he sees. A brown woman who should better know her place? Or does he see an exotic beauty, a princess from the storybooks? After six children, she is no longer slender, but her breasts are full, her broad hips might seem appealing. Samiksha is a respectable woman, a professor’s wife, a Catholic. She would never accede to any invitation. But she does wonder what it would be like, to be looked at, to be desired again by hot and feverish eyes— that, she imagines, would be satisfying. That would be some compensation.

Someone has stolen the princess! It is a demon, a monster, who stole her away, who flew Sita up over the mountains, across the sea, to the barbaric island of Lanka. The prince was away, hunting; the prince was not paying proper attention. And no one knows what Lakshman was doing; he has served his purpose, his part in the story is done. But now Rama gathers a great army, and it is the monkey king who leads them, through the dark forests, over the churning sea.

The princess waits in a tall tower, resisting the demon’s advances. Sita wants to be a good wife; if the demon comes too close, she threatens to throw herself off the edge, down onto the sharp rocks. She has never been in a tower so high, and secretly, she wants to jump, to feel the wind rushing again as it did when the demon snatched her. His glossy obsidian claws came down around her, caging her in, sweeping her through the air, her crimson sari trailing like a banner behind them. Nothing in her life has been as exciting as that flight. But Sita does her duty, she clings to the crumbling stone of the ancient tower, she teeters over the edge, but does not, in fact, fall.

Samiksha knows she should go straight home. The girls will be fed by now, but they will still be raucous, full of energy. Leilani will be running up and down the stairs, Lekha and Laila will undoubtedly be fighting, over dolls, or clothes, or makeup they aren’t yet allowed to wear. Latika will be drawing in her sketchbook; Samiksha thanks God every day for giving her one quiet child, and tries not to worry that all the girl seems to want to draw are human skeletons. Lulu won’t have eaten enough, and Arvind will be coaxing her to eat a little more, and Lakshmi— Lakshmi will be sitting on the floor, sucking her thumb. Samiksha knows exactly what it will be like, and so she turns east instead of west, heading along the Midway to the lake, heedless of the cold which bites her nose, her cheeks.

She kicks her way along snowy sidewalks until the hem of her sari is drenched. Arvind is always trying to convince her to wear Western clothes, insisting that she will be more comfortable; he has never understood that it is only the clothing from home which makes her feel comfortable. When Samiksha wears her saris, she can close her eyes and block out the brutal cold; she can imagine herself back in Madras, in her father’s study perhaps, sitting beside him under the lazy ceiling fan, working out the answer to a problem he’s set her—or in the market with her mother, listening to the cries of the fruit and vegetable sellers, fingering the rows of cheap glass bangles. She would throw a few coins to an armless beggar and for a moment feel rich, and blessed, and lucky. Once, before she’d started working again, Arvind had refused to buy her another new sari, and so Samiksha had worn the same green sari every day for a month, to faculty dinners and receptions, until he was so ashamed that he gave in.

She crosses the bridge over Lake Shore Drive, her fingers icy against the metal handrail. She walks out onto the broken stones, the massive rocks leaning into the lake. Her feet are still nimble, and for a moment, she remembers the dancer she was as a little girl, the dancer her mother wanted her to be. If she had never studied math, never gone to England, who would she have married? Would she have become the perfect wife, the Sita of the story? Samiksha stands there a long time, watching the waves crash hard against the unyielding stone, feeling the wind whip against her, before turning back for the long walk home.

It has become apparent that the demon Ravana is only going through the motions. Sita does not know why he stole her away at all; he appears to have lost all interest. If he really wanted her, he could have taken her by now, before she ever made it to the tower’s edge. If she jumped, he could snatch her out of the falling air. What could she do to resist him?

“Samiksha, come to bed. Come to bed, rasathi.”

Rasathi. Princess. Arvind is full of soft touches and honeyed words these days, the guilt lacing through him. She can tell. You don’t marry a man against your mother’s wishes, you don’t give up your work to have his children, you don’t spend a decade sleeping by his side without knowing when something has changed. Samiksha doesn’t know who the woman was, but she knew when it started, and when it ended. Three months of carrying on, and she never said a word, to anyone. If she had written to her mother in Madras, she knows what would have come back—written in a pale hand on fragile onionskin paper, instructions to be patient, be understanding, and perhaps to take a little more trouble with her appearance. Instead Samiksha cooked with abandoned fury, dissolving entire sticks of butter into the uppuma, tossing the rice with toasted almond oil, heaping her plate high with spicy potatoes. Ate bite after bite until her stomach felt swollen, painful, and the sweat rolled down her face. When the affair ended, she almost relented, almost gave in. Almost.

“Soon. When the news is finished, I’ll come.” Let him toss and turn in the bed, hungry for relief that will not come from her. A brief warm pleasure kindles in her stomach at the thought. Perhaps this is why she hates Arvind most of all—because he has turned her mean and spiteful, bitter and old. When they met, Samiksha placed her hand in his, let herself be drawn down, down to the sweet green grass. She listened to his words of love, and thought she had found her prince, her Rama. Later, she felt herself betrayed; she comforted herself with bitterness, thought herself trapped with an uncaring demon, a Ravana. But she finds it harder these days to disappear into either fairy tale, either fantasy.

When Samiksha is feeling particularly fair, she doesn’t hate Arvind at all. Sometimes, she only hates herself.

At the end of the story, Sita is rescued, the demon is killed, the monkey king dances in triumph. But the people demand that she die, for she is only a woman, and undoubtedly she has betrayed her husband by now. She could not live so long in a barbarian land and not open her thighs for the demon. They know that all women are faithless, in the end.

She is lost, alone, and when Sita turns to her prince, he does not stand by her, he does not hold her up, exhausted as she is by all of these difficulties, more than any princess should bear. Rama claims to love her, to believe her—yet he gestures to the screaming crowds and says sadly that he cannot defy them. He is not an evil man, but he is, in the final analysis, weak.

What should happen now? Should Sita walk away from her prince?

Eventually, Samiksha cannot keep her eyes open any longer; she checks on the sleeping girls, then goes to her bedroom, to her marriage bed. Arvind is long asleep, turned towards her half of the bed. She stands there, watching him sleep—then climbs under the covers and lies down with her back to him. Samiksha closes her eyes, feels the heat of Arvind’s body beside her, slowing warming the chilled sheets. She wishes she knew how to open to him again, wonders if he could warm her. Or, if it is too late for them, wonders if there might be another path for her.

But what would she do, without her husband, her children? Whatever else she might have been is long gone; the paths are barred by walls of thorns.

It is late, and Samiksha knows how this story ends.

Sita volunteers to undergo the trial by fire, to have her virtue tested; what else can she do to keep Rama by her side? She is nothing without her husband, so what can she do, alone in a strange forest, with the sun going down?

Sita walks into the flames, her body consumed, her spirit rising up, up, up. The princess flees home, to her sisters’ bedrooms, her mother’s arms. But they do not know her, they shriek in horror at this ghost, this pale stunted monster. Her father might have known her, but he is long since dead. So she returns, weeping salt tears in the night, her spirit crossing the bitter sea once more. Sita returns to her burning body, walks out of the fire, cooling so quickly as she goes, until she is solid again, composed of ice and snow. She never knew ice until her exile began. Sita walks out of the fire, her body transparent and brittle, but the prince does not notice. Perhaps he chooses not to notice. He takes her in his arms to the crowd’s acclaim, he lays her down in the forest grass.

This is supposed to be a happy ending.

Sarama

Deepak Unnikrishnan

It’s quite simple really; my family owes its existence to the forest demon, Surpanakha.

My maternal great grandmother, Parvathy Amma, was born in a village near Talikulam, Kerala.

The word for great grandmother in Malayalam is Muthassi. She was the first woman to hold me, to bathe me, my first loved one to die. She decided on my name, Bhagyanathan. She would call me nothing else, she hated nicknames. “Bhagyanathan!” she would yell. When she called my name, she said it like one would address a king. When she said Bhagyanathan, you would almost expect to hear the sound of chariots, the neighing of horses, the sound of footmen. I was her king.

Muthassi was a renowned story teller in my village and in her younger days used to be invited to participate in festivals all over Kerala. Her specialty was stories from The Ramayana.

Some people have a voice made for stories, as though their vocal chords have been fashioned by Brahma himself. Muthassi’s voice was like that. Her pitch was unusual for a woman, very low, a rumble, like the purr of a cat. Age only added to its mystique. Her voice grabbed you, didn’t let you go; the stories would then pour into your veins and intoxicate your brain. You listened until she finished; you didn’t have a choice.

But she was also a treasure trove of other tales, much darker ones, which she was always happy to share with me. Popping balls of rice into my mouth, she would often warn me to beware of the snakes in our garden: “They transform into human form at night, eager to snatch game they slink into the netherworld.”

I was around four years old when she started telling me stories from The Ramayana. She recited the epic to me out of sequence, concentrating more on the characters than the story itself. “Everybody,” she liked to say, “has a past that ought to be heard. The present is paralyzed without a past.”

The scriptures I know come from her. I preferred listening to reading. I think she innately understood that.

The night she decided I needed to know the story I am about to share with you, four crows cawed outside our house at twilight for over an hour. I had just turned ten. It was monsoon season but the rains still hadn’t come. I was listening to the radio when the power went out. She called out to me as usual for help. She needed someone to talk to in the dark. My parents were to be back the following morning. I had been left in charge, the man of the house.

I was still a small boy and struggling with the kerosene lamp, its heat kissing my thighs, I walked into her room and asked her if she needed anything.

“Close the door, my dear,” she said slowly.

“Blow out your lamp.”

I did.

The room smelled strongly of the after breath of smoke and kerosene.

“Give me your right arm,” she said.

I did, and she began rubbing my fingers one by one.

When I was still a child, people would notice quickly that my palms and feet were frog-like, too big for the rest of my body. Some kids in the village hopped like frogs, pretended to be toads, or stuck their tongues out like lizards when they wanted to make it clear that I couldn’t play with them. It didn’t bother me at all. I was built to be alone.

Muthassi started tugging at my fingers, at weird angles, bending them in degrees I didn’t think possible. When she snapped my index finger off, breaking it like a twig, I stared at her. There was no pain. I was more alarmed than frightened, worried about Amma’s reaction when she would notice the missing finger. Muthassi smiled kindly.

“Don’t worry, little one, I will put it back, I wanted to check, that’s all,” she said.

And before I knew it, she stuck my index finger back on. I stared at it, wiggled it a little bit to make sure it still did what it used to do.

My eyes had adjusted to the darkness by then.

“Don’t be afraid now,” is what she told me gently before she calmly unscrewed her head, twisting it off like a bottle cap and placing it on her lap.

“I would like to go outside, Bhagyanathan,” she decided all of a sudden, “it’s too hot here; let’s go by the pond, it’s cooler there, carry Muthassi out.”

I didn’t think too much was out of the ordinary as I held Muthassi’s’ head carefully and walked out of the house towards the pond, a place I was forbidden to venture out by myself, especially at night.

I placed Muthashi’s head on the flat stones where Amma did our washing, facing the black and slimy water, which would turn green again at dawn. In the darkness, the pond looked like cobra skin.

“Water is significant to us,” she began, her eyes drifting towards the pond, “one of our ancestors, The Male, crossed into Lanka over water.”

“This creature, a monkey, we are almost certain,” Muthassi said, “was a soldier in the Monkey King Sugriva’s army, first working under the supervision of Nala and Neel, famed builders without whom the construction of The Floating Bridge would have been impossible. He, our ancestor, along with others, slaved night and day on this massive under taking until his muscles hurt, until his body refused to cooperate.”

At night, he tended to blisters swollen with pus. It was tough work.

A significant number of monkeys and bears from the kingdom of Kishkinda had died building the bridge. Many collapsed out of exhaustion, some forgetting to eat or drink, perishing on the job. They were driven hard, not allowed to venture home, forced to sleep near the construction site.

Sugriva was a hard task master. Yet in his eagerness to repay the debt he owed Rama, Sugriva often forgot his soldiers were mortal. Some of them didn’t appreciate the treatment and began to bitch and gossip. The situation took a serious turn when rumors started circulating about Sugriva’s chicanery in getting rid of Vali, his elder brother. Without Ram, Sugriva would still be on the run from Vali, the grapevine opined—an honorable warrior wouldn’t have resorted to treachery in battle; only an honorable warrior deserved a seat on the throne, deserved to bed Queen Tara. The following day, the parties who started the rumor were executed.

I picture this creature often, The Male, marching with other beasts, forced to deal with the drudgeries of war, crossing into an alien land to do battle for the prince of Ayodhya, a prince he possibly did not speak to, and I begin to wonder whether the air started to smell of war as soon as he walked over the bridge with other comrades in arms, whether giant vultures circled in the foreground, waiting to feast, and whether my ancestor felt fear.

But the story of my family’s lineage does not begin with Rama looking out to sea, imagining the tip of the land that held his young bride captive, as monkeys and bears busied themselves hauling stones to get the bridge built quickly. It doesn’t even begin when The Male, a biped like I, marched onwards to Lanka. Our history begins with the humiliation of Surpanakha.

The women in our family, Muthassi shared, could be traced back to a long line of demons. These were women granted numerous boons by the lords of the netherworld and the gods in heaven, rakshashis with power, who were feared, who made mortals realize they were mortal, women who were shape shifters, unafraid of the sound of forests and of being alone with spirits who refused to be born again after their bodies were fire-lit on pyres.

In my great grandmother’s words, “The Female of our race was one-legged, two-legged, three-legged, many-headed, short, fat, squat, tall, alive, hideous, glorious—so alive! We were so swollen with life, with glut, that we frightened those who barely lived.”

“The word demon is tainted,” Muthassi lamented, “riddled with hyperbole, caked in fear. Demon only implies evil, beings from the nether world. Rakshashis may only be beasts, may only be beasts. It is a simplification, alluding that those who navigate the netherworld can only possess organs as dark as soot. The truth, my child, is that our ancestors were women who did what they wanted, for whom dharma meant accepting their urges, following it to the very end, not belittling it by suppressing it. Our women tested the gods, made them wish they were half-god, half-demon, down to our level, one foot knee-deep in vice and pleasure, the other foot still tentatively holding on to Mount Meru.”

Muthassi’s head pivoted to face me, moving like a little clay bowl on the flat stones where Amma smashed wet clothes. Her hair, a mop of dirty white curls the color of gnawed bone, danced in the breeze. She stared at me for a long time, as Amma’s great grandmother may have done when she told this very tale.

“Bhagyanathan,” she finally said, “our women folk made mistakes. But sometimes we wanted to make them. We learned by being!”

She calmed down after that outburst, her head rocking a little from side to side from all the fuss.

It was then she spoke her name. Muthassi said: “The womb of Sarama, the Old One, is where we believe our line begins.” It was the first time I had heard the name. Muthassi had never mentioned her before.

Among the rakshashis entrusted to guard Sita at the palace groves, Sarama was as old as the trees themselves, Muthassi said. She was from a time when our women folk were constantly abused by the mortals, hunted like vermin, pinned to trees and sacrificed at will and without warning. It was why they turned to the gods, performing penance, sacrificing. The gods, pleased, granted them many boons. But over time, even the gods grew envious of their power, of their grasp on the underworld, and started scheming and turning against them, wary of the consequences if the rakshashas decided to invade Mount Meru.

“This war between the netherworld and the heavens lasted eons,” Muthassi said. “It has not ended.”

Sarama, our ancestor, was old enough to remember Tataka, Sur-panakha’s grandmother. She remembered Tataka’s beauty. And she remembered the monster she mutated into, taller than a mountain, tusks sprouting out her nose like daggers, wearing the skulls of the ones she killed, a body of pure hate.

“Agastya turned her into the beast she became,” Muthassi said, “he killed her husband; in turn, she tried to kill Agastya. Only the forests could home that rage. It was her turf.”

In Surpanakha, Tataka’s beloved granddaughter, whom Sarama had seen since she was a baby, she could clearly see glimpses of her grand mother. A beautiful child, like Tataka, Surpanakha’s spirit belonged in the forest, where she was most free, becoming one with the land, living, sleeping, hunting, mating. It was her home as much as it had been her grandmother’s.

Many years later, after the war, the Old One still shuddered when she recalled the state of Surpanakha’s mutilation. What Lakshmana’s blade had done! Oh, what it had done!

“There are texts that write lies about her form,” Muthassi seethed. “It is as though the scribes are afraid to be truthful. They write her skin is polluted, calling it foul, bloating her physique, making her out to be a monster so vile she putrefied anything she touched. They lie!”

“She was beautiful,” Muthassi said, “a beauty that could drive men and women mad.”

“She knew fully well every inch of her body; her form evoked de sire, possibly frightening the young God-king and his brother equally. Frightening scribes to have their quills lie so boldly.”

“Surpanakha was not Sita,” Muthassi admitted, “but Sita could never have been Surpanakha.”

“They write that she was brutal,” Muthassi said, giving me a wry smile. “Her brutality lay only in the manner she acknowledged and chased her desire.”

“She refused to suppress her wants,” Muthassi concluded.

She paid for such audacity, marching through Ravana’s palace doors with sliced breasts, no ears and a disfigured nose. Ravana’s guards, men used to the bedlam of war, stood by, stunned into silence, letting her pass. She would not crouch, she did not whimper, she was defiant, walking bare-bosomed into Ravana’s court; she met everyone’s eye. When she spoke, the courtiers and the ministers turned their faces away, un able to look. She was visibly in pain. But they heard her; they heard the screams, of rage, of hurt, of vengeance. And when the king himself jumped from his throne to comfort his mutilated sister, the siblings, reunited for the first time since the troubling circumstances of her husband Dushtabuddhi’s death, embraced in anguish. And wept.

The ten-headed Ravana, weeping tears of fury, caressed his sister’s hair, held her body like she was little again, running after her older brothers in the forests, watched by Tataka who doted on her grand children. He did this openly, in front of his courtiers and guards. But she would have none of it, composing herself quickly. Pity wasn’t what Surpanakha had come for. She refused to let Ravana drape her body with cloth. The pain would pass; her wounds would remain bare and unclothed, until she had her revenge.

Our ancestor Sarama awoke from her slumber to the sound of a ten-headed scream that filled the air with dread, a scream Muthassi mimicked, her mouth opening as wide as the hole that swallowed Sita, so wide that her head became all mouth. It was a terrible scream.

In the village, those who heard that guttural cry that night woke and began to pray; animals whimpered; woodland spirits stopped moving. The gloom was exactly as it had been when the leaves of Lanka turned gray, birds falling from the sky refusing to fly, and the trees beginning to bleed.

Ravana had made up his mind, Muthassi said; he would avenge Sur-panakha’s humiliation. His prize would be Sita. There would be war. There would be war. There would be war.

Sarama found Sita a silly creature to fight a war over. She was beautiful certainly, but Sarama had seen different kinds of beauty in her time, beauty that possessed you, turned you inside-out, forced you to be impatient. Sita’s beauty almost made her untouchable, too pure, too good, too right. Sarama spurned such beauty, it made her uneasy. Maybe that is why Ravana desired Sita, she felt. He wanted to pollute her, to consume her, to make her more real.

Still, as the Old One, our ancestor, helped keep watch over the young princess of Ayodhya, the would-be girl-queen began to intrigue her.

She paid close attention as Sita fought Ravana practically every day, refusing to be intimidated by his advances. Even when the rakshashis tried to scare her into relenting, shaking the earth, turning the sky foul and ominous, threatening to eat her alive, theatrics that made most mortals quiver and piss, she held firm. Sarama smelled fear in the young Sita, but she also admired her audacity, her will. Sarama could tell Sita would never submit to Ravana’s lust. If he tried to touch her, Sarama knew, Sita, the daughter of Janaka, would rage against her tormentor, scratch him, maim him, pull out tufts of hair from any of his ten heads, until her body no longer pulsed. Samara respected that rage, a rage she didn’t believe Sita, a would-be girl queen, possessed at first, the sort of rage that only became evident when Rama refused to take her back when the war had ended. Because she respected such rage, when Ravana threw Rama’s decapitated head near Sita’s feet, Sarama told the would-be girl that it was an illusion, that Rama was still safe, and that his forces were crossing into Lanka.

Muthassi pivoted her head towards the pond again, staring at the water, taking some time before moving on to the next phase in the tale. It was important to her that everything be clear.

The evening before the great battle between the two armies, one bes tial, the other demonic, Samara found Surpanakha sitting by the gardens where Ravana held Sita captive. Surpanakha avoided the forlorn-looking Sita, preferring to sit by herself. They would meet later, after the war, after Rama’s death. For now, they both stared silently into the open, deep in thought.

The other rakshashis had been afraid to approach Surpanakha. They left her alone, to stew in her rage. But Sarama was braver. She was also concerned, inching her way to the mutilated lady, where she watched a grieving Surpanakha gently touching what was left of her nose, her ears, her butchered breast.

Surpanakha felt the rawness of the wounds, imagining the sight she had become. She wouldn’t look into a mirror just yet. She couldn’t. She had almost caught a glimpse of her new state when she drank water from a stream. She would wait until the war was over, the mortals who did this to her slain. Then she would take the corpse of Rama, fling it at his young widow and dance pitilessly and mercilessly over the dead man, like Kali. She would delight in watching Sita as she did this. Then, in quiet, she would sneak Rama’s remains away, cremating his body, extinguishing it in fire, as Yama, The Lord of Death, would wait patiently on his buffalo, his giant club resting on the ungulate’s belly.

Sita’s plight would be different. Surpanakha would scheme to keep the princess alive for thousands of years, refusing to let her die, breaking her heart as many times as it could be broken.

Lakhsmana’s bones and entrails, she would wear, his flesh fed as carrion.

When Sarama, the Old One, our ancestor, finally reached Surpanakha, she was holding her bloodied breasts, trembling. There were tears. Sarama also realized flies had laid eggs in her open wounds, and the larvae would soon hatch. Samara reached out to touch her. Gently. Surpanakha seized the gnarled hand, ready to tear it off the person who dared disturb her. When she saw who it was, she calmed down a lit tle, but still spitting in Sarama’s face, screamed “Not pity, old hag, not pity!”

Sarama, understanding, knelt low, pressed her palms to Surpanakha’s feet and whispered, “It isn’t pity, child, your wounds must be tended to. Let me. Let the old one through. I knew Tataka, I knew Tataka.”

At the mention of her grandmother’s name, Surpanakha relented, al lowing herself to be touched and held. And there they sat, the two of them, Sarama tenderly washing Surpanakha’s wounds and picked out larvae, as Surpanakha, tired and overwhelmed, fell asleep. The following morning, when the two armies rode out to battle, the beginning of war, Sarama searched for Surpanakha. She had slipped away. The two would never meet again.

When Ravana was finally slain, the war over, our ancestor Sarama stepped out of the palace grounds and walked towards the battlefield, followed by concerned wives and children, family of the missing soldiers in Ravana’s army.

The battlefield reeked of the dead, stinking of dried blood, piss, shit, men, demons, monkeys, bears, pachyderms, horses, and giant birds. The wounded lay everywhere, waiting to die or be rescued—rakshashas called out for help, dying monkeys and bears pleaded for water, while other beasts of war, elephants with no trunks and crushed legs, the horses with broken backs, the raptors with torn beaks and burnt wings, squirmed, struggling to breathe. And amidst the wreckage were anxious wives and children, picking through the rubble, calling out and hunting for loved ones, frantic to find bodies to burn or salvage, as the four-eyed dogs of Yama prowled the dead zone with ease.

Into this mayhem walked victorious Rama, followed by his brother Lakshmana, the new king of Lanka, Vibhishana, the Monkey King Sug-riva and Hanuman, whose tail lit Lanka for days.

Grateful for their support and relieved with victory, a visibly tired Rama, close to tears, invited the bears and giant vultures who participated in battle to feast on the carrion, their deserved spoils of war.

“As the soldiers celebrated,” said Muthassi, “Rama and the others started making their way to the palace gates. For Sita.”

“But all is never as it seems,” warned Muthassi. “Behind the scenes lived the uglier underbelly of war, unscrupulous soldiers from Rama’s army who scoured the conquered land like parasites, interested in loot and women, the dirtier spoils of war.”

But virtuous warriors also fought on Rama’s side. Many, although injured themselves, offered to help set pyres for the dead, finding sages and priests to perform the last rites quickly. Some opted to sit with the children of dead rakshashas, while their mothers searched for their fathers. Others, they didn’t care, they pillaged, raped.

Even Sarama became prey to such wanton feasting, grabbed by a soldier from Sugriva’s camp, bent with rage, The Male, our ancestor, ferociously and brutally violating her on the very battlefield where moments ago, Ravana’s ten heads scanned for Rama, his heart still healthy with life and blood.

Sarama watched the creature forcing himself on her, dirtied from war, raging because of it. She paid attention to his hands, callused from bridge building, tired of killing, tired from killing. She felt pity. And then she remembered the war, Surpanakha’s mutilation, Ravana’s insistence on punishing the brothers by punishing the young princess, what hubris had done to Lanka. Pinned down, spread legs rubbing red earth, armor scraping old skin, Sarama breathed in decay, heard maggots. She had genuinely wanted to believe that after the loss of so much life, victory belonged to a just lord leading a disciplined army. It was difficult to be certain anymore. On the battlefield, nothing was fair, not even God. And right there, as the creature shuddered inside her, spilling his seed into her old womb, she howled with rage, screaming with such force that she tore a hole in the monkey’s chest, exposing his heart. Sarama reached in, and held his beating red organ in the palm of her hand as it continued to pump blood. The monkey, The Male, our ancestor, alarmed, looked at Sarama, his body still trembling.

Looking him in the eye, Sarama slowly crushed his heart.

In the celebratory din, no one noticed. Nearby, giant vultures tore through an elephant as it waited to die.

She picked herself up quickly, forgetting in her haste to wipe the mud, spittle and blood off her body. She would deal with the shock later. For now, she headed for the palace gates. She needed to be there. In the garden. When Rama received Sita. She needed to see the end to all this madness.

Sarama felt a sense of dread when Rama didn’t meet Sita immediately. Even Vibhishana seemed embarrassed when he greeted the lady on Rama’s behalf, requesting her to bathe and bedecked in her finery. Her lord would see her then.

And when they walked her out, and Rama stood in front of his wife like a guest, a stranger, Sarama sighed. Surpanakha’s revenge was complete. Rama had shunned Sita publicly. Neither would fully recover from the hurt. Ayodhya would never let them forget it.

Sarama understood quite well why Rama did what he did. As she waited for Sita to appear in public, even she heard and recoiled from the spite with which soldiers from Rama’s own army, men, monkeys, bears, and other half-beasts he had commanded only a few hours ago, discussed the young princess’ lost virtue. When a group of them were shushed, the gossiping would stop, only for the cackling would resume soon after. In Ayodhya too, it would be the same. Yet when Sita stepped into the lit pyre, not a sound was made. You could only hear burning. The crackle of embers. The burning of virtue and the fury it brings.

And as Sarama stared at Sita, she spied tears of rage through the flames, fire which refused to touch the sullied princess of Ayodhya, as though afraid. She, Sita, burnt harder than fire, swallowing fire itself, her rage burning through fire, scorching even Agni, who pleaded with Rama to accept his virtuous queen, whose purity, if questioned further, would burn every living thing into oblivion.

When Rama was appeased, and the test, the public trial, over, the fire extinguished, the young couple faced each other once more, as husband and wife, Crown Prince and Princess of Ayodhya. Sarama did not wait to see Rama walk towards his absolved wife.

Sarama, our ancestor, didn’t wait at all. She started to walk. Even as shouts of Long Live! burst across Lanka, as garlands rained down from the Gods.

She walked, disgusted, walking away from Lanka, refusing to stop. She could have used her powers to transport herself elsewhere. She could still fly. But she decided against it. She wanted to walk, inhaling the mayhem, recalling the egos that helped mutilate two women and burn Lanka.

She stopped only when she started approaching the bridge the creature who raped her helped build, The Male, our ancestor, the father of the child she would conceive. She stared long and hard at the beach.

The water was calm but red, the shore quiet, yet stinking of decomposing flesh. Seagulls circled the shoreline, rats started to surface. Sarama stepped forward, didn’t look back. Not even once. The war was over but she believed little that was worthwhile had been salvaged. She began to walk across the bridge. The salty wind would ravage her face but she didn’t care. The sound of the sea kept her company until she reached the end.

“And when she reached the other side,” Muthassi ended, “Sarama, our ancestor, her belly was swollen.”

Regressions

Swapna Kishore

When we are in a village, time flies by as I help the women in their chores-drawing water, milking the cows, stoking cow-dung fires and stir ring the simmering pots of the payasam pudding, or even braiding jas mines in the hair of the young girls. By night, I am tired and fall asleep almost immediately. But when we are traveling, I lie awake below the open, unpolluted skies staring at the full moon and I often think of my Ambapur, oh, so far away, a blur across time and space.

My last evening with Mother is the most vivid of my childhood memories. I was five years old, and supposed to join the Facility the next morning, and Mother and I stood in our dome’s viewing tower, looking at the moon, my small hand in hers.

“You will never be alone,” she told me, “because when we both look at the moon at night, we can imagine we are standing together.”

I wasn’t consoled. “Why can’t I come home for holidays?” I cried plaintively. “What exactly is a futurist?”

Mother’s face seemed all shadows and sharp angles, and her hand stiffened around mine, hurtful. I realized with a shock that she didn’t know the answer.

“Futurists improve the fate of women everywhere, not just women in Ambapur,” she said finally. “Kalpana, learn whatever they teach you, and don’t be impatient.”

I am not impatient now, Mother.

Sometimes I pace, the wet grass ticklish to my bare feet, and absorb the sweet fragrance of parijata flowers. And I wonder-is my past true, if the future will not hold it?

Futurists, I learned at the age of seven, operated in two streams, the researchers and the agents. Researchers provided data while agents changed the future. The glory lay with the agents, though we trainees weren’t told what they did. I couldn’t qualify as an agent; I failed the profile tests thrice despite my through-the-roof IQ and my ‘A’s in every subject. I’d have fudged my personality profile, but I spotted no pattern distinguishing the accepted girls from those rejected-no discriminating levels of IQ, extroversion, assertiveness, nothing.

The shame of my failure struck me fully the day I was moved to the research wing and knew I would never see the agent wing or interact with an agent. I buried myself in work, barely smiling at fellow researchers at meal times, avoiding evening gossip sessions in the common room. If I was doomed to be a researcher, I’d be the best.

Over time, my work began fascinating me. My assignments involved analysis of the complicated social causes and scientific breakthroughs that preceded the initiation of the Ambapur experiment. How did mythology, history, and culture influence the emergence of Swami Sar-vadharmananda? What made his rants against Ambapur so popular? Would the Hindu Religious Resurgence have grown without Nava Manusm-riti? What triggered India’s splintering into multiple countries with the largest, most prosperous states forming Swamiji’s dream Navabharata? To me, that century-old partition of India was particularly interest ing because it transformed Ambapur from an experimental district to a country, howsoever small.

On some days, though, as I unraveled and scrutinized critical forks in history, I wondered at the futility of such intense study, because the applicability of lessons from ancient history was limited, wasn’t it? Then I’d tell myself that my honed abilities would be used later for complex, contemporary scenarios.

My life changed the day Seniormost’s voice boomed from my contact port, taut, curt. “Kalpana, report to Room 455 immediately.”

“Pardon?” My stomach crunched. Why would the country’s most powerful woman, summon me?

“Hurry, Kalpana,” urged Seniormost. “This is an emergency.”

I raced down the corridors. Momentum and panic carried me through an open door, but I skidded to a halt before grimfaced senior women ringing a screen showing an abstract low-res animation-red, yellow, brown splotches, moved in weird patterns. Grainy and coarse and scary, though I could not understand why I felt so queasy.

“Kalpana?” Seniormost frowned at me. “We want you to replace an agent.”

“I’m not qualified,” I stuttered.

“You are the only Series K clone available right now. We need someone similar enough to Kavita to replace her at a critical gender fork.”

“Gender fork? But those happened in the past.” They were events that determined major trends in gender equations.

“Futurist agents,” she cut in, “change the past so that the future changes.”

Change the past? I stared at her, trying to comprehend her words. I’d always thought agents changed the future. “But…”

“Pay attention, we have only fifteen minutes,” Seniormost said. “You know how important Sita was in shaping gender roles, right?”

“Of course.” Sita was projected as the ideal woman in Swami Sarvad-harmananda’s Nava Manusmriti, which ended up as the final reference on Hinduism for Navabharata; Swamiji used Sita to justify the strait-jacket gender laws binding millions of Navabharata women. I had often done what-if analyses of related mythology.

“Because the Ramayana of Nava Manusmriti is not based on a sin gle story but is a melding of several candidate stories,” and Seniormost paused for a beat, “we have several potential intervention points. For our correcting nudges, we have selected ten most significant scenarios. In this particular one, the Sita equivalent assists her husband in his trade, cures her grievously ill brother-in-law, and manages the house and finances during an extended business trip which will later be called an exile.”

“Sounds an improvement on the stereotypical Sita,” I said.

Seniormost waved me to silence. “They returned home and rumors started, as in all Ramayanas. The husband did not ignore them.” A muscle on her face twitched as her gaze snapped to the screen.

I swiveled to see the display, my uneasiness growing as I tried to understand what those strange red and orange splotches meant. “What is happening there?”

“Kavita’s fire-proofing failed.” Seniormost’s tone was heavy.

The import of her words sank slowly into my mind. That scarlet dance was an inferno, licks of flame, and sparks and embers-fire seen by someone burning inside it. A chill crawled up my spine.

“That’s Kavita?” I whispered hoarsely.

“They call her Vaidehi.”

Vaidehi, one of Sita’s names. This is what the fire had made me suspect. What I was seeing on the display was the agni pareeksha, the shameful episode present in each of the over eight-hundred versions of Ramayana. An Ambapur agent was being burned alive, and I was supposed to replace her.

“But Seniormost,” I whispered. “I am not trained. I am clueless… please, I am not sure…”

“I’ve seen your records, Kalpana. You are brilliant and capable of extraordinary mental focus. All the assignment needs is focus. Let them dress you and I’ll explain the rest.”

I barely noticed the women who surrounded me and the hands flurry ing around me; I was numb as if I’d been plunged into ice water. I was supposed to become Sita. Well, a Sita, if not the Sita. My legs wobbled. I think I swayed.

I tried to sort my thoughts as women peeled off my bodysuit and wrapped silk around my waist and chest. Capsules were snapped into my brain implant. A woman tried injecting something into my leg; I kicked reflexively, so someone held my arm rigid and plunged in the needle. A small wart appeared on my skin. “We don’t have time for a binding operation,” someone said. “Left to nature, it takes a week for the button to integrate properly, but it’ll be stable enough unless there is extreme trauma.” Jewelry clasps clicked, someone explained the hidden tools. A spray coated me with a golden haze.

“Thank you,” said Seniormost, and the women withdrew.

Before I could pour out my questions, Seniormost started speaking, so I focused on her words.

“Kavita was trained in essentials and sent out when she was seven years old,” she said. “We had coded the relevant cultural information in her brain implant, and we briefed her frequently using her sync but ton. We got periodic updates on her activity from the button; we have uploaded all information into your implant. Access is by using normal thought control techniques.”

She had not talked of Kavita’s death. I shuddered. “Kavita died in spite of her training. How will I survive?”

“That was an accident.”

“And what am I supposed to do there? How will I know how to behave, what to say, how to recognize people?”

“The implant has all the data and guidance algorithms to help you conform and stay unnoticed.” She smiled reassuringly. “Just stay low profile for a day or two till we study the situation and brief you.”

It sounded tough, but manageable. I took a centering breath. “When will you replace me with a proper agent?”

Seniormost’s face softened. She patted my shoulder and strapped me in a chair. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I know you can do it.” She flung a lever.

The conflagration hemmed me in, intimidating in spite of my fire-proofing. Bile soured my throat as I tried to push away the horror of the situation. My implant flashed an instruction; I obediently directed a miniscule atomizer on the charred remains of my predecessor near my feet. No burnt human bones must be found in the ashes.

Again, impelled by the implant, I ran to the edge of the pyre where the onlookers were grey smudges beyond an orange shimmer. I stepped out of the fire. I must have looked impressive with my skin burnished gold from the afterglow of the dissipating fire-proofing shell, resplendent in silk garments, dazzling with jewelry. A woman certified pure by Agni Devata, the God of Fire.

“Jai Ho!” A few scattered cries from the crowd.

I walked slowly, painfully, on the rough ground, trying to look calm and dignified. A pall of silence smothered the crowds. Some women, several men. I had studied about men, about their salty smells, their thick, coarse voices, their hairy bodies, but even so, seeing them made me shudder. Petals were showered at me-jasmines, roses, marigolds-soft touches against bare skin, a creepy feeling. A crone grasped my hands into her gnarled ones, and led me to a short, skinny man with male-pattern baldness and a bewildered expression. Sweat on his brows. And fear, sour, nauseous fear-I could smell it.

Curiosity overrode my fear. This must be the husband, the wimp who burned his wife to stop baseless gossip about her chastity. How unimpressive he looked! Most mythological interpretations described him, or the collective of men like him, as tall, broad-shouldered, muscular of body and yet sensitive of face, hair a silky curtain.

“My chaste wife,” he muttered, averting his gaze.

Touch his feet, prompted my implant. Seek his blessing for a longer life.

But I couldn’t force myself to act docile to someone who had just killed his wife.

The man raised his hand as if blessing me. I walked past him; he scurried after me, annoyance flitting on his face.

A rickety chariot, lumpy seats covered by a thread-bare spread. I settled down. The man sat opposite me, torso angled away, body rigid, too scared to bother me for a while.

Good. I had time, finally, to orient myself to the situation. A couple of centering breaths helped me focus. Then with my eyes half-closed, I began viewing Vaidehi’s downloads, filter set for salient personal facts. The husband was a local chieftain’s son. After his father called him good-for-nothing, he left his village in a huff , keen to prove his trading acumen. He dragged along his brother and Vaidehi for the business trip. They roamed from village to village, traded, earned gold and jewels. When they returned home, a washerman challenged Vaidehi’s chastity. Rumors, insinuations, and the demands of a fire test followed. Vaidehi expected the husband to ignore them. She knew him to be demanding and easy to anger, but assumed he valued her because of her hard work and loyalty during those years of travel. That was the status last evening, as per the most recent transmission.

I was soaking the information when the chariot jerked to a halt.

No marble palace, no lush bowers, no gold fountains-only a simple stone building. Rice and lentil baras were drying on cloth spread out in the courtyard. Cowpats had been slapped on the walls. A naked boy wheeled a painted wooden cart. Women with their heads covered, some embroidering, others slicing yam. Men sprawled on rope cots and smoked something noxious.

The husband led me to a whitewashed room and closed the door behind us. He whipped out a dagger from his waistband. “How did you survive that fire? Witchcraft?”

My implant suggested I fall at his feet and plead forgiveness. Forgiveness for what, surviving? I had not integrated sufficiently with the Vaidehi persona to manage such acting; such false humility was some thing I could not manage. I ignored the advice and readied myself for his attack.

He lunged at me. I twisted aside and hit his wrist sharply, making him drop the dagger. I kicked it across the room. Mouth agape, eyes round with shock, he stared at his empty hand.

I was utterly disgusted. “If you thought I wouldn’t survive, why did you agree to the fire test?”

His eyes darted from my face to the fallen dagger, and the wariness in his eyes transformed into cunning. He straightened up.

“They would have pushed you into the fire anyway,” he said. “By doing so myself, I retained my position as the chieftain’s son. I don’t know what witchcraft you did, but your emerging from the pyre has strengthened my place.”

Of such pettiness do orators make mighty legends. “They will weave from such incidents a story of Lord Rama, Maryada Purushottam, the exemplar of social propriety,” I said: “Temples will be constructed, festivals celebrated. The fire test will be touted as a righteous act of a king who valued even a washerman’s doubt.”

“King?” He frowned at me. “Who is ‘they’?”

What had I done! Why had I spoken my thoughts aloud? I was supposed to keep quiet and let the implant guide me. I sat down on the bed. “I must think.”

“A woman who thinks?” He snorted. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

This man had seen me emerge unharmed from fire. He lost his dagger to me. Yet he mocked me. Had his fear and awe vanished because he sensed I would not attack him?

He came closer. “Since you have been proven pure,” he said, “I can taste you again.”

Revulsion swamped me. The thought of a male pressing on me, skin sweating over skin, reminded me too much of the modified Kamasutra that formed an essential part of female education in Navabharata, so that no man was “deprived.” We didn’t have any such training in Am-bapur, of course, where we didn’t have men. Didn’t need them. Hadn’t needed them ever since several top women scientists and industrialists, sick of gender suppression and thrilled that science could render men redundant, bought land and funded enough politicians to kick-start the Ambapur experiment.

Yet now I was forced to interact with a man.

His hand grazed my breasts. I couldn’t hit him; that would contradict my supposed role. But every instinct in me shouted a protest. I had to think fast. I checked mental menus and located the required visualization trigger. The hormone release brought the relief of a cold shower. He jerked back, shock in his eyes.

Thank Goddess for anti-pheromones, I thought, as he rushed from the room.

After a few breaths to reorient, I pondered about my position. I knew I should collapse the boundaries between the downloaded memories and my own, so that my responses matched what Vaidehi’s had been. But I wasn’t ready to surrender myself yet. This transition had been abrupt enough; I couldn’t handle more jolts. I tuned the implant for better response time and quick face recognition, but stopped short of merging with it.

The door opened. The husband’s brother strode in, dragging, horrors, his wife, Madhulika. She was heavy with child.

“The fire test suits you.” His grin exposed stained teeth. “You look grander, and you walk straighter.” He released his wife’s hair, and whacked her shoulder. “Madhulika would survive no such test. God knows how many men she chased when we were away.”

That was lust in his eyes. Once, when fellow-drunks almost killed him, Vaidehi healed him, and this was how he gazed at her while she tended his wounds.

Disgusted, I turned to Madhulika. What a beautiful woman! Skin fair as the kunda flower, lips the red of hibiscus, eyes the shape of fish. Monsoon clouds of black hair spilled over her cheek. I brushed them aside and whispered, “Sister, take heart. I will help you.”

“He will be angrier if you sympathize,” she whispered back.

The brother-in-law pushed her out of the door. She stumbled out, the enormous swell of her child-heavy belly almost causing her to fall.

“Go cook payasam,” he yelled after her. “And add enough nuts or I’ll teach you.”

He turned to me. “Ignore her, beautiful Vaidehi. Her mango-shaped breasts do not smell as good as the golden pears behind your silk ut-tariya, or those juices I smelled when you cradled my head in your lap and brought me back to life.”

I thought of a cultural archetype to repel him with. “One who brings you to life is a mother. Respect me as one.”

“A child suckles at his mother’s breast.” He grinned. “O mother mine, drop your uttariya, and let me feast.”

“Brother?” The husband stood at the door. “I was looking for you.”

I slipped out of the room.

The women sat clustered in the courtyard.

“You survived,” the mother-in-law said to me, her lips pursed in disapproval. I squatted near her. The vat on the fire was smoking hot. She slipped balls of batter into the oil, and I watched them splutter and puff up. A distant aunt chopped green chillies. Another woman sliced onions. A small girl fed cowpats to the fire in the mud chulha.

“Do it properly.” The mother-in-law rapped her hand. She turned to me. “Too arrogant to help, are you?”

I hadn’t merged my muscle memories with the implant and such me dieval cooking tasks needed skill.

“I’m tired,” I murmured.

“Vaidehi Aunty,” piped the young girl. “Did Agni Devata talk to you?” She was a chubby-faced seven-year-old, her eyes wide, a tentative smile on her face.

How I wanted that smile to grow with admiration for me! I yearned that this innocent girl be spared the bitterness and resignation of the women around her.

“He spared me but said women should refuse such insulting tests,” I said. “Women number as many as the men. If we unite, no man can hurt us.”

“May God pull out your evil tongue,” snapped the mother-in- law. “You dare sow discontent in a child’s mind and spoil her future? Be sides,” she snorted. “Gods speak to priests, not to women. Uttering such falsehoods is a grievous sin.”

The girl’s smile wavered. She blinked like she’d been woken up. The soft wonder on her face morphed into disgust directed at me.

I should keep quiet, I scolded myself, remembering Seniormost’s caution, remembering Mother cautioning me against impatience. This is what those failed profile tests probably said: Candidate does not obey instructions. Is not cautious. Shoots off her mouth.

“I wish the fire had consumed you,” said a cousin sister, her eyes ringed with dark circles, a bruise ripening on her jaw. “My husband threatened me with agni pareeksha. He says, Vaidehi survived, so why be scared if you are chaste?”

Her hostility dismayed me. I couldn’t think of a reply.

“If Vaidehi had died, the men would declare her unchaste,” said some one. “Now that she’s survived, they’ll hold her up as an example. Either way, the moment Elder Brother-in-law agreed to the fire test, we were doomed.”

Shard-sharp words, and true, as history showed. I turned to face the woman who spoke: Madhulika.

She continued, “We should keep men so happy that no one can sway them. They have so much work to do; we women can support them.”

“Hear her well, Vaidehi,” said the mother-in-law. “You are swollen-headed because you accompanied my son on his trip and survived the fire, but it is women like Madhulika who truly inspire young girls.”

I pressed my lips tight so that I wasn’t tempted to retort.

“Vaidehi!” A voice from behind. I looked up-it was Shanta, the husband’s elder sister. She crooked a finger.

I stumbled slightly as I stood, and Madhulika stretched her arm to steady me. Her finger curled around my forearm, clutching me where the sync button was.

I winced.

She released me immediately, gaze fixed on the wart. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. What was so unusual about a wart, I thought.

But Madhulika was staring at me as if seeing a vision of sorts. An understanding came into her eyes, and dread filled me. She suspects, I told myself, but what can she suspect?

Shanta grabbed my shoulder. “Your husband wants you to visit me for a month. I will leave in an hour. Be ready by then.”

“But why?”

She glared at me. “Do you question your husband’s commands?”

Shut up, screamed the implant inside me. Just obey for once.

After Shanta strode off , Madhulika laid her hand on my arm and un obtrusively led me to an isolated corner. We reached a window opening to the yard where cows grazed.

“You are a replacement Vaidehi,” she said. “The earlier one had no wart on her arm.”

No, she had hers on her leg, I thought, remembering the injection I’d kicked away.

“You are an agent?” I asked. Seniormost had not mentioned having another agent here.

She nodded, and lowered her uttariya slightly to expose a wart on her breast. “My coordinator didn’t mention another agent. He should have—”

“He?” I cut in. “A man?” I gaped at her, the import of her words sinking in slowly.

She paled, too. “No,” she said softly. “You are too normal. Arrogant, maybe, but not…but you must be…an Ambapur abomination.”

I would have reacted, but my implant flashed a warning twinge of pain, and by the time I recovered my breath, Madhulika had rushed away.

Shanta did not speak as we sat side-by-side in her cart. I welcomed the silence; realizing that Madhulika was a Navabharata agent had shocked me. I had not expected to find agents from the “enemy camp”, much less a woman. Madhulika didn’t fit my stereotype of Navabharata’s docile, suppressed women. I had been taught those women were dumb, incapable of independent thought, insipid, exploited, their personalities molded to the Sati-and-Sita image. They were pitiable objects compared to us strong Ambapur women, free and independent and living in our own country.

Besides, why would Navabharata need agents? Seniormost had said, “Futurist agents change the past so that the future changes.” Why would Navabharata want to change anything? That country had no simmering discontent regarding gender roles. Men were the hunters, gatherers, doers. The scientists and rulers. They commanded. They demanded. Women accepted men as superiors. Women bred, supported, obeyed. They listened, they supplied. Genetic selections encouraged this. Society rewarded it. Political systems, economic systems, were based on it. Why change it?

Or had Ambapur exaggerated the docility and dumbness of Navabharata women? Madhulika seemed intelligent enough, even though she had a different value system.

And she had called me an Ambapur abomination. What lies had their government feed them about us?

The cart jerked to a halt. “Get off , Vaidehi.” Shanta’s voice was whiplash-sharp. “My brother told me to get rid of you.”

Stunned, I looked around. We were on a lonely road skirting a forest. No farms nearby, not a single hut, nothing. I looked at Shanta; she was frowning at me and gripping a thick stick as if ready to attack. I took a few moments to gather my words. “I have been your brother’s wife for years,” I said. “I helped him when we traveled.”

“That was your duty, so what’s great about it?” she retorted. “Now you have resorted to evil ways.”

“But-”

“No one can survive fire without witchcraft.”

“Then why did he agree to the fire test?”

“A woman who dies to save her husband embarrassment dies a worthy death.” Shanta threw my bundle of clothes on the ground, then pushed me off the cart.

“What will he tell the villagers?” I asked.

Shanta shrugged. She made a sign of warding off evil, and instructed the cart driver to proceed.

The sun was low in the sky, barely visible behind the dense trees. I wanted to sink onto the ground and cry, but I couldn’t afford to. Then I thought of the implant, and queried it about the surroundings. Luckily, it turned out that Vaidehi had spent part of her childhood nearby, something neither Shanta nor her brothers had known. Her records showed a cave some distance away, hidden in the forest.

I started walking.

The forest grew thicker with mean clusters of trees. I wended my way, brushing the branches apart, depending on my predecessor’s memories. Once, I spotted eyes peering at me; I drew on the hope that Vaidehi often frequented the forest as a child, and so there would be no wild beasts here. I would be safe.

I reached the cave before dark, glad, almost, for the cold stone to sit on. The implant initiated the daily transmission. I added to it a request for an audience with Seniormost the next morning. I was exhausted. I stretched out on the hard floor. Sleep descended mercifully quickly.

“We reviewed your download,” Seniormost said as soon as she established contact. “You ignored the implant’s guidance several times.”

“I did my best,” I said, though I knew I could have tried harder if I’d set aside my ego.

“You don’t understand these dynamics. Using anti-pheromones on your husband and antagonizing him, really! You know story-tellers will twist your eviction to claim that Rama banished Sita because his subjects remained skeptical after the test.”

Frustration made me snap back. “If story-tellers decide what gets sung about, you should influence them. Get a wife to distract Tulsidas. Make him compose a Sitayana instead of Ramacharitramanas.”

Seniormost sighed. “Child, calm down.”

She did not understand the reality here, this bright woman running the tiny women-only country millennia away.

“Gender-imbalance is deeply ingrained already,” I said. “Both in men and women.”

“That’s why we need agents.”

“Then choose a different intervention fork. How about the Mahab-harata era? Kunti and Draupadi didn’t get bullied. Radha held her own.”

“We can’t identify representative Mahabharata time-streams,” Senior-most said. “From the candidate historically-correlated episodes, Ra-mayana offers the maximum gender ‘inflexion’ points.”

“Did you know about the Navabharata agent?”

“No,” she said. “But that is part of the challenge. Now here’s what I want you to do today. Study the implant’s data and complete your integration. Don’t get discouraged. We’ll talk tomorrow.” She disconnected before I could quiz her about how long she’d take to find a proper replacement.

Seniormost was right about my need to study, though. I had gazillions of questions, and the fastest way to proceed was exploiting my implant. Discarding my reluctance, I collapsed my boundary with the implant and integrated the old Vaidehi’s memories into my own.

Then I was Kalpana, and I was Kavita, and I was Vaidehi, and it was evening by the time I recovered my balance and sense of orientation.

I was almost asleep on the dry grass apology of a mattress when I heard steps. Someone was approaching. I opened my eyes a peep. A woman stood at the cave entrance, and a shaft of moonlight fell on her face. Madhulika.

I sprang up and assumed a defense stance. Crouched, ready to spring, I asked, “How did you find me?”

“I came to warn you,” she said, pulling her shawl tighter around her. “My coordinator knows your location. He may try to harm you.”

I had no reason to trust her. “Explain.”

“I asked him about you last evening. You see, we have been told things about Ambapur women.” Madhulika peered at me, as if deciding what to tell me. “You are supposed to be ugly and malformed, and incapable of womanly emotions like love because you women are genetic freaks and clones who pleasure each other instead of men, and oppose the natural order of humanity to the extent of using intelligence to compete with men instead of supporting and serving them. But you showed sympathy to me, as did the Vaidehi before you, so I began to have doubts.”

“You don’t look the way I expected a Navabharata woman to look, either,” I conceded, marveling that we were discussing the future while living a past supposed to change it. I stayed crouched as I spoke, though. Madhulika’s presence here could be a Navabharata trick.

She nodded. “My coordinator laughed and said your predecessor died because he sabotaged her fireproofing by jamming some signal. He’s the washerman who taunted your husband for the fire test. He claimed you were now hiding in a cave in the forest and he knew your location by tapping your sync signals. He downloads all data you transmit.”

My stomach felt heavy, like a weight had sunk in it.

“Till yesterday,” Madhulika continued, “I believed that I must be a role model-an ideal woman who complemented men in accordance with our basic nature, our true gender role. Last night, when I realized that what I’d learned about Ambapur women was exaggerated, I wondered whether I’d also been fooled about other things.”

Ditto here, I thought.

“So, I came here.”

“Well,” I said. “Right.” I lowered the stone.

She sat down. She looked very tired. The walk here must have been exhausting for her, given her advanced pregnancy.

“What’s your plan?” she asked.

Her mission was to nudge history in the opposite direction. I said nothing.

“Who is your coordinator?” she asked.

I kept my lips pressed tight. I wasn’t willing to expose myself yet.

“My coordinator may try to kill you,” she said. “He tried to kill me.”

“Kill you? Why?” I stared at her.

“When he realized I was rethinking this whole Ambapur-women- are-abominations business, he got very agitated. He threatened me. He even kicked me. But I shouted out, as if I had just spotted some thieves, and he slunk away.”

Even across the years, I remember Madhulika’s grimace at that memory, her closing her eyes for an instant.

She sighed then, a tired sigh. “That’s when I decided to leave home. I don’t want to live in fear of my coordinator. My husband means nothing to me; I lived with him only because of my mission. But I don’t want to bring up my child in a place like that. I am so confused.”

She tilted her neck back and looked at me. I didn’t know what to say-we were opposites, weren’t we?

I stuck to practicalities. “He’ll trace you using your sync button.”

“No.” She removed her shawl.

The wound was obvious despite the thick slathering of herbal paste. The right breast was tattered where the sync button was gouged out, and rags of torn skin hung from it.

I shuddered.

“I threw the button down the river. I also threw in blood-smeared clothes. They will drift back to the shore downriver, and people will assume I fell in the water.”

Night owls cried raucously, crickets chirped. I spread the grass thinner to make another place. Moonbeams lent silver highlights to her night-dark hair.

“Sleep,” I told her. “We can talk tomorrow.”

After a while, her gentle snores filled the night. But I could not sleep.

The Navabharata coordinator could locate me. He was accessing my messages to Seniormost. Yet I needed to tell her about this development.

After much thought, I encrypted my message using a code based on the Ambapur literature not available outside our country. The agent would know where I was, but would not be able to decipher my message.

Seniormost’s encrypted message came back fast enough, but brought no cheer.

You cannot switch off the sync signals, I decoded. The device sends out signals every few hours, whether or not you transmit a message, but you cannot control that. You will have to mislead the Men’s agent.

I pondered over the information while staring at the culprit wart. It seemed to me that our country’s approach of Futurist agents changing past gender forks was doomed to fail. Navabharata, a country several hundred times larger, was flush with resources. If they wanted, they could send multiple agents to hunt down and sabotage every Ambapur agent. They could flush every gender fork with required role models. They could keep the past favorable, because a favorable past had made them rich enough to manipulate the past-historical inertia closed the loop.

They could kill me.

As soon as it was dawn, despite the risk of being traced, I initiated contact with Seniormost. She had probably expected it, because she was present in the control room.

Again, I used encryption. As I completed my explanation, my voice broke. “They will destroy me if I stay here.”

“Just hold on tight, Kalpana. The tech team is working to find a solution. Give them time.”

And live under such hostile conditions in this primitive world? “You are only thinking of the mission,” I said, my tension too sharp to hide. “So what if it fails? It’ll just be status quo, it’s not like you will die.”

“No, we will not die if the mission fails,” Seniormost said, her voice low. “It was our fault we sent you without training. We did not explain things.”

“Trained or not, at least credit me for finding out valuable information,” I snapped. “And send a trained agent for me.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” she said. “We are considering alternatives to keep the Navabharata agents at bay. I will call you back by evening.” Seniormost broke contact.

I was very restless after talking to her. Why weren’t they finding a replacement and recalling me? Then it struck me maybe recall was not possible. Maybe that was why we never met agents, because sending an agent was a one-way trip, and this was a secret. Seniormost had been evasive about replacements when I had asked. We may not have the tech for it. Or maybe it was impossible to travel to the future, which is what my present was when I was in the past.

Maybe I was stuck in this primitive world, homeless, and being tracked by the Men’s agent.

I fought my panic and went through every sentence Seniormost had uttered, looking for information I might have missed earlier.

Like that part when Seniormost had looked sad and said, No, we will not die if the mission fails. Almost as if proposing a corollary: the mission’s success meant their death.

The thought stunned me.

In the rush of the past few days, I’d not thought about anything other than survival and fitting a role. Not pondered about the concept of how changing the past affected the future, for example. Which future did it change? Were these alternate realities, parallel worlds, or just one world? If these were alternate worlds, why bother to change a different world? And if this was one world, and if the past changed, agents could alter history so that India continued as a jumble of cultures and conflicts and did not splinter into Ambapur and the rightwing- Hindu Navabharata, and other nondescript smaller countries. Where would that leave my Ambapur and all of us who peopled it? Were Ambapur agents knowingly working on missions they would not return from, missions designed to kill our own country, like suicide bombers and jehadis a few centuries ago? No wonder I failed the psych profile; I lacked such suicidal conviction.

The moon was but a pale sphere barely visible in the dawn sky, and I remember seeking it out and staring at it, realizing how very far Mother was. I looked at the wart, my link to my world, and also my betrayer. Madhulika was possibly not the enemy I had assumed her to be. Maybe no one was an enemy.

I was tempted to plunge into action that would make me safe. Attack the washerman, kill him. But Navabharata could send more agents and coordinators; it was a large country with plenty of resources. I would be safer if they thought me dead.

After peeping into the cave to make sure Madhulika was still sleeping, I walked to a rock overhanging the river. I removed my necklace with its miniature toolkit, and snapped it open to expose a tiny cutting blade. I prayed for strength, knowing that I was about to close the doors to my past, my people, my support. Then I began working out the wart from my forearm. Lucky for me that they’d not performed the binder operation.

Our journey upriver exhausted Madhulika and induced premature la bor. I used every bit of knowledge my implant held to try and save her. I may have succeeded in a normal pregnancy, but she was carrying twins. As she tried to smile at the feeble cries of her newborn daughters, I stroked her hand.

“You will improve,” I consoled her. “You have to bring up your daughters.”

Our interactions on our long walk upriver had been gentle and companionable. We had splashed our faces using water from the stream. Sometimes, I would notice a strawberry shrub and plucked the fruit, and Madhulika gathered it in a fold of her uttariya. Or she would spot a gourd growing on a creeper, and I would split it open with a sharp stone so that we could share the sweet, juicy pulp. We had not discussed our contrasting credos-I assumed we would have enough time later.

Now she was dying.

“You bring up my daughters, sister Vaidehi,” she whispered.

“I don’t know your way of thinking,” I said. “My world was different.”

“Do whatever seems right, sister.” Her life ebbed out.

In the initial days, I was often tired as I adjusted to the sudden role of nurturing the girls. A secluded cave formed our base. Using implant triggers, I induced my breasts to produce milk. Luckily, the forests abounded with fruit trees and berry shrubs. Chores filled my days-collecting water, finding fruits, cleaning the girls, feeding them. Yet as life acquired a rhythm, I found time to soak the forest’s poetry, its flowers and animals and the sunlight-dappled wings of butterflies. Fire kept away beasts at night; I sometimes stayed up late, enjoying the texture of the night with the owls screeching, the soft descent of dew, the scent of the parijata that bloomed all night and carpeted the grass at dawn.

Sometimes, I looked at the moon and thought of Ambapur.

Years passed.

I often missed Madhulika. She held a key to a view that would have complimented and enriched mine, and now I had no way of learning it. I wondered which value to bring up her daughters to-mine, or what I knew of hers, or the values typically inculcated in women in this era.

I finally chose a mishmash, something not warped by politics and power games. My memories and imagined extensions emerged as lullabies sung to the girls. Over time, the isolated episodes formed a rich tapestry, till one day I realized I could well be a bard singing a Sitayana, not an Ambapur version, nor, indeed, a Navabharata version, but one where Sita was a fun-loving person, even naughty at times, and where she shared a playful and rich relationship with her husband.

The girls thought I was their mother; it was simpler that way. When they were old enough to travel, I led them by hand from village to village. I talked to village women about life and its problems, and enacted fragments of what could have been Sita’s story.

In one village my daughters, now twelve, chattered about twin boys they had met. “Their mother tells stories like yours.”

I felt a flutter inside me. “What are their names?”

“Luv,” said one girl.

“Kush,” said the other.

I could not speak for a few moments. That Sita really existed, that she had twin sons… Emotion clogged me, thick, heavy, and I tried to force myself into thinking rationally. Sita was not a single historical truth, I told myself, though I had no way of confirming this theory of the construction of mythology. This woman storyteller could well be an agent of Ambapur or Navabharata.

Should I meet her? No, I thought, let me move away and continue my Sitayana. The world allowed hundreds of versions.

I busied myself all day, but that night, with no distraction possible, I found myself recalling Seniormost’s sad look during our last conversation. What had she thought when she lost contact with me? Did she think me dead? Or had she hoped I survived and assumed that, untrained though I was, I’d do what I could?

My gaze shifted to the moon. What remains fixed across time and space? What survives, what matters? Nothing, really. Yet one does what one should.

Forgive me if I succeed, Seniormost, I whispered. Forgive me if I fail.

Another new village, another day. We walk to the well, my girls and I, and women balancing water pitchers on their hips ask us, “Where are you from? Who are you?”

“I tell stories,” I say. “Would you trade lentil soup for entertainment?”

They nod.

By evening, women and children gather around the village center, where I wait for them with my daughters; some youths stand warily at a distance.

This is my life now, offering women stories that intrigue and stretch their world vision, yet fit within it. Listeners may wonder: did the story resonate because of its courage, hope, conflicts overcome? Should the mother-in-law have been meaner, the husband more righteous, the wife more chaste? Should the women in the story have laughed more, taken things more lightly? Could a woman rebel as the story claimed? Should she? Why not? Why?

“Once,” my story usually starts, “in a land not far from here, a king found an infant in a furrow, and he named her Sita.”

At this point, I pause to look at my audience.

I sometimes consider myself a vendor of silk to tapestry weavers. Listeners choose threads they wish to weave into their own stories. They may chant them to insomniac children, use them to inspire or scold. Fragments of my tales will meander down generations. Of the tales sung by multitude of bards, which would live on to form the world?

My true story remains unsaid. I cannot speak of Ambapur or Navab-harata, nor mention Seniormost, who may never exist in the new reality. I cannot tell my daughters about their real mother. Those would be anachronisms, threatening the fragile fabric that worlds rest on. Yet memories are slippery, and stories strung with their fragments more so, and I dread that, when I am old, I will jumble up the past and the future with the present, sounding demented when I am being most truthful.

Then a voice usually pipes up, pulling me back to the reality I am creating.

“We have heard some versions of the Sita story before,” it says. “Tell us yours.”

And so I tell the story I think will fit.

Machanu Visits the Underworld

Victoria Truslow

In the Royal Cinema

Hanuman is born at 7:45 every Friday night in a converted cinema in north Bangkok. It happens without fail, even now, when the audience at the khon-dance is smaller than it’s ever been: three university students, an elderly couple, a single tourist. Even now, oblivious to the riots in the downtown streets, cursed Sawaha stands as she always has, on her desolate mountaintop, stage left , only air to fill her wide parched mouth. She stands as commanded, balanced on one leg, until the god of the wind comes to her.

He blows Lord Isuan’s cosmic weapons into her mouth (sings the re citer, standing red-uniformed in the wings, and L.E.D. subtitles translate for the lone tourist’s benefit) and inside her body she forges them into a child: sword for backbone, jewelled trident for torso, diamond discus for a head. He springs from her mouth (the reciter tells us; on the stage, he springs from behind the painted mountaintop). He hangs in the air, starlight the pigment of his mask and costume, and curse-freed Sawaha calls him to her side, tells him of his destiny.

The audience feel the chill of the wide dark theatre, hear whispers like a ringing on their ear-rims. The front row is filled with hanumans, shades of Friday last and the Friday before, and before, and before. Their approval dances diamond motes through the stage-air: this new Hanuman will do. His face is spot-on, if his somersaults leave a little to be desired.

“You were finer, of course,” one shade says to another. They would not be here but for all these empty seats, would have diffused gently back into the story-stuff except that the story wants watchers. They don’t make as potent an audience as a full room of living people would, can’t offer their breath and blood-beats and dreams, but they see the cosmic shadows inside the song and dance. They see the old heat when Hanuman torches Longka, see the starlight in his fur-true starlight, just like theirs.

They jostle and whistle as Hanuman-on-the-stage pursues Supanna Macha, Totsakan’s lovely mermaid daughter. In the aisle, the shade of a monkey with a fish-tail taps his mother on the arm. “Is that you, ma? Why’s he chasing you?” They sit in the aisle because their great bulky fishtails won’t fold comfortably in the seats.

“Yes,” she says, putting an arm as pale as dried-out salt around him. “And that’s Hanuman, your father. He’s chasing me because I got the better of him. Your father, ah, he can breathe the moon and stars, and pull a jewelled trident from his own flesh, but he’s never been thwarted by a tribe of fish before. He thinks he’s angry but really the whole idea has enchanted him. But look now.”

The whole Ramakian would run too long for even these bold watchers. So Hanuman’s set pieces are strung together into a two-hour show, the programme notes explaining the jumps in his tale. Right now, the demon Maiyarap is creeping away from Ram’s camp, with Ram himself potioned asleep, light as hollow plastic, under his arm, to lock up in the underworld forever, or perhaps put into a soup-a heady soup that would be. He comes to a lotus pond guarded by a fish-tailed monkey. Machanu lets him cross to where the greatest lotus-blossom yawns; Mai yarap jumps up, and drops his captive into the hollow stem. Then he follows, vanishes down the lotus-chute into the underworld, Ram tumbling oblivious before him.

He may be a dance-wrought shadow of an immortal story-creature, but the young fish-tailed monkey in the aisle is easily distracted, knows there’s more to him than this scene, but has forgotten the rest, too snared by the moment, must constantly ask Supanna Macha what’s happening. They, of course, don’t have a programme. “Is that me?” he gasps when Hanuman-on- the-stage comes to the pool, and wrestles exquisitely with the Machanu who guards it. The embroidered tail the dancer wears is so fine! “Why am I fighting my father?”

Supanna Macha sometimes falls into thinking she really is an ocean-queen, not just the skin of one, shed by a dancer, snakelike. She remembers things she never danced, as from a dream.

“It’s complicated,” she says.

“Why?”

“Well, I had to leave you on the shore, in case your grandfather ate you for being an enemy’s son. So Maiyarap-he works for Totsakan-adopted you, and see, you’re guarding the entrance to the underworld for him. Now Hanuman wants to get down there to rescue Ram, and you two don’t recognise each other, so you fight.”

“But we look exactly the same! Except for my tail. What, did he forget he married a mermaid?”

“Yes,” she sighs. “And look at you, you’ve forgotten everything too. It’s true, children have such terrible attention spans these days.”

Hanuman reveals his identity, but Machanu-on-the-stage challenges that too: My father can breathe out the moon and the stars, he says. He is a great immortal god, you’re just a common soldier monkey! And Hanuman raises his head, and makes a funnel with his hands, and breathes stars, planets, and the moon itself in a mirrorball rush to whirl in the dye-blue sky over their heads.

“Now we’re together again,” says Machanu-watching, with a wide monkey-grin. “We can be a family-you’ll come join us, right?”

“That’s not how it goes,” she says. “You’ll have other journeys-just not in this show.”

“Tell me!” he says.

“Another time, watch this now!” But he pulls at her arm, again and again. “Well,” she says, reminding herself to be patient. If her son dreams of ancient adventures, it’s clear he doesn’t remember. ‘Your father steals Ram back from your foster-father. And you help in the war. Ram makes you vice-king of the underworld, with a great many monkey subjects.”

“I’ll come visit you, and the sea,” he says. He can tell from the way Machanu-on-the-stage moves that water is his element.

“You won’t need the sea. In the end, Ram cuts your fishtail off . You can live easier among the monkeys that way, you see.”

He claps hands to his hip-fins with a cry. “But then I’ll have no tail at all!”

“Don’t be churlish!” she scolds him. “Your tail for a kingdom? If you don’t want it you shouldn’t join in the wars of monkeys and men.”

“I never chose to!” he whines. How unfair it seems-even Supanna Macha, stuck in story-tar along with him, can’t know how unfair it is. She’s not stuck with a mother, no one tells her what to do. And she thinks she knows all the answers, but how does she?

“Who chooses anything?” she says. “You do it, it’s yours, so the consequences are yours, and you should be glad for them. What else would you do?”

Machanu puts his hand to his mouth, the way he’s seen his father do on stage, to show mischievous laughter. “I think I’ll have a word with Ram,” he says.

Hanuman-on-the-stage gets up to sneak into the underworld as Machanu sleeps. And this little Machanu, down here in the audience, screws him self up tiny as a fly, and leaps to sit in the whorl of beads on the shoulder of Hanuman’s costume.

Hanuman looks into the stem of the lotus and sees it is a deep well into a dark red land. He can hear the demons down there. With the spotlight-bright galaxy of his breath still spinning lazily above, he puts a mischievous hand to his mouth and jumps.

On his shoulder, in a whorl of diamond fur, Machanu holds on, young fish-tailed monkey tiny as a fly.

In the Underworld

The underworld’s sky is red wet soil, just as the world’s sky is the wet blue soil of the lowest heaven. There are demon-cities in the distance, and before them stretches a plain sparse with black bone-palms, and between the plain and the lotus-chute are cave-bloated hills, and in the heart of the hill at the heart of the hills is Maiyarap’s workshop.

Look what’s inside: Ram steeped in sweet grey sleep, lionhearts on his breath. Only lions would make a strong enough poison for him. He stands pretty as a shop-front mannequin, absent, scooped out from himself, admired by twilight-skinned Maiyarap who, stirring, stirring, pulls a long sinuous fish from his pot, cuts and peels, unwinds secrets from veins and cells. Secrets to tangle wars, stitch up cities, choke kings. At the back (or front, depending on which world you’re coming from) of the workshop, a door. Through the door, the entrance-chamber to the underworld. Here Jantraprapa sits in an alcove in the high wall, and her hair runs tear-tangled to the ground, and her deep red-earth voice laments the demon race. Her daughter Pirakuan stirs the broth in her great cooking-pot. Hanuman lands silently, makes himself tiny, and creeps under the workshop-door.

So it always is, always was, in this moment, but now Machanu leapt from Hanuman’s shoulder and crouched as Hanuman crept. He crouched and watched his father slip deeper into the underworld, then slowly grew back to his right size. He looked about, he saw the demon-women, mothers of his false family. Now he’d met his true father, who looked so much like him but had no fish-blood and could breathe stars. What should he care for these women?

The demoness before him sang softly as she stirred her pot, a song of her own making:

I’ll count the hearts a brother can hold

And I’ll count the hearts a sister can boil

And all the times my toil’s been told

Until I can see above the soil.

She saw him as he grew, and shook her head, half-glad for a young fish-tailed monkey to pester her thoughts away from the task at hand. “Why are you wearing a mask, little ‘Nu?”

So he was-a white papier mache thing with a merry snarl worked into it, teeth crudely cut from oyster-shells. No memory of putting that on, but there it was. He hung it on a jag in the wall and scratched the fur of his forehead, hard to think through the song-stained steam that billowed about the chamber.

“I came down, need a favour, Aunt Pirakuan,” he remembered. “Need a spell to stop the human-king from hurting a scale of my tail, then I’ll be gone, I swear.” He saw the shelves on the wall held jars of hearts, great and small hearts, pickled and preserved hearts, ravaged hearts, deadly hearts. “Will any of these do?”

“He’s Ram, little monster, doom of all of us. Can’t change that, or him. But my fool brother wants him in a soup, and here I am stirring up the broth, for all we’ll never taste a drop of him. Hanuman’ll come, whisk him away, win the war-you should go along with them. No need for you to stay on the wicked side. I’m sure you’ll be rewarded.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” said Machanu, watching her season the broth with snakeblood, trying to remember more. What was that place, that strange dark chamber where his mother warned him of his fate among seats like red teeth? He knew he had never seen his mother except in dreams. He felt like the mask on the wall, head filled with smoke.

“Why are you still cooking, if he’s getting rescued?” he asked.

“What else can I do? Maiyarap demands a soup, our mother sits in the wall and mourns, and I boil up the water to cook the human-king.

You know, I’ve heard the rumble of the war being won up there too many times to count, but no one’s ever thought to kill me. My brother, at least he forgets being bludgeoned by Hanuman with those great black trees over and over. I’ve been putting up with mama’s moaning since time began—but my broth is so sweet by now, I could almost be happy. A thousand stories spicy, this pot, but never to have its main ingredient. You wouldn’t think the world would miss just one Ram, just once, would you?”

“You said you can’t change him,” said Machanu. “Like you can’t even try.” Surely that was wrong. He’d come down here, hadn’t he, and that was trying.

“Oh, of course you can’t. He keeps the world together, everyone knows that. Even sleeping. He dreams it. Probably we’re only still standing here because he’s dreaming. Wouldn’t do to go and ruin everything, not now I’ve got my soup sweeter than it’s ever been. Go back to your pond, Machanu.”

She shooed him back up the lotus-stem, to his lonely gate-pond with Hanuman’s starry breath swirling above it still. But it all looked so suddenly small, even these stars. It was as if he could reach them with his hands-and how big the night beyond was! Where to go? Somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t this spot, where all there was to do was to wait around for his true father to come out with tail-chopping Ram!

Through the Forest

Between the gate-pond and the sea lay a night-forest, all hung with dew, with fireflies and golden fruit, like a galaxy. He’d go tree-swinging as other monkeys did, he thought. And up leapt he into a high moon-etched tree, clever monkey-fingers grasping swiftly-but his tail slapped and flapped against the scratchy bark, hip-fins snagged on twig-tips. The scuffed bark glittered his own scales back at him, stolen shine for some dumb bird to come and peck at in the morning.

This wasn’t dignified.

Down to the ground, then. The ground was better anyway. The ground was a wonder-path of pools and streams, with golden fruits shin ing above the surface, dreaming golden fish below. He beat the water behind him as he went, scattering tail-splashed silver, and the flowers grew higher all about him, water hyacinth, water chestnut, and pale water-lilies that all spread wide to receive the moon.

Ai! Even here he could fall, foot caught on some root between ponds. More roots came out of the water, pulled him in and bound his legs, green and tight with tiny spikes like shards of diamond, digging through his fur. His own lotus-spear bent as if it listened to these attackers, then, disloyal thing, wrapped itself about his wrists, quick as a naak’s lasso. He saw he was caught in the shallows of a stream-fed pool, where the monstrous flowers went round and round as if on patrol. Then he was within their circle and before him was a golden maiden made all of lotus-blooms, skin of petals overlapping like scales, stirring softly in the night-breeze, tiny buds for eyes that opened to stare at him.

“Lady,” he said, as his father might, “why do you sit alone in this pool?”

She peered at him, and the hearts of her lotus-eyes were hollow. “Who are you?” she said, and her breath was a cloud of sonorous jasmine, so sweet that Machanu, who caught a good throatful of it, fell into a fit of coughing and could not speak for some time.

And then he wasn’t so sure of the answer to her question. He decided to stick with the facts, what seemed to be the facts, for now: “I am Machanu, and Hanuman is my father, and Supanna Macha my mother. I’m not your enemy, whoever you are.”

She laughed, near choking him again. “You’d make a fine hero for one of my worlds.” She leaned her face close to his. He saw that the holes in her eyes were passages like his own lotus-gate. At the bottom of her eyes were worlds. Her skin she unfurled; in all her pores were more worlds.

Some were dazzling and some were dark.

Some were storms, some roared green fire.

“Where did you get these?” he breathed.

“I’ll tell you,” she said, in the rolling voice of a khon-reciter. “Once through this forest Hanuman came, leading his monkey-troops to Longka city, to find the Lady Sida. But on their way they came to a walled garden in the middle of the forest, with a low archway and a jewelled path leading inwards, and not a soul to be seen inside. And Hanuman the Wind-Son said: I will go in to see if it is safe, or if it is some trap laid by giants.

“He walked on the crystal-paved path, through trees that grew thickly together, past silver pavilions. There was no one else but the moon, sitting on the rooftops, watching him go, until he came to the garden’s heart. He saw a fountain where a heavenly woman sat among golden lotuses.

“Lady, he said, why do you sit alone in this pool?

“But she was frightened and would not answer.

“I am Hanuman, he said, and then she scolded him:

“Common monkey, don’t try to intimidate me by calling yourself that. I’m banished from the heavenly court, cursed to sit in this pond until Hanuman releases me, but you are not him. If you were, you would be greater, and you would yawn out stars from your mouth.

“So he floated up into the air, and grew enormous and four-faced, and let stars and planets fall from his lips to scatter among the trees. Then he spoke eloquently of love, and she let him in her pool, and took her in his eight arms. The golden flowers opened to receive the moon, and perfumed pollen floated on the water, and when they had made love she pleaded with him to stay.

“But you can dance again in the heavenly court, he said. And, flower of my heart, I must carry on my way, to seek the Lady Sida.

“He lifted her with one hand and threw her into the heavens, and never noticed the seeds that showered as sweat from her skin. Sweat from where they embraced: hers with starlight in it, and his with the wind. A tiny world, with tiny heavens and winds, in every drop, and they fell to the water. Too precious to disperse, they sank and put down roots to where there is emptiness, and there the worlds grew big. I am only the petal-tips, only the preserver, of all those worlds, and I catch heroes to populate them, and I must have my own brother to be king in one of them. Come, which will it be?”

She opened a world-hole in her palm. Deep inside he could see blossom floating in a starry void, big as planets. She scooped fish from the water and they fell into that space, into the black and bright. They tumbled and swam in the alien sky, monstrously big between the flower-stars. “How about this one?” she said. “It’s cold and dark and no one will laugh at you for being a fish-monkey freak.” And she reached for him.

“I could cut you up from the inside!’ he warned. Hadn’t his father done something like that in a story, once? She laughed again and he thought he would faint from the air-clotting perfume.

“Could you cut the universe up from the inside?” she asked.

So this was the danger of lone adventuring, of cutting loose. No brothers-in-arms, no faithful followers to leap from behind the scenes and save him. Only a sister with traps in her eyes, and infinite lonely paths.

“Why don’t you want it?” she said. “Why is this world better than any of the ones you could fall into? Here you’ll just be eddied around in the story-streams of bigger heroes.”

He opened his mouth to say, so why are you here, but she did not look for an answer, only reached for him, stroked his tail-hip. His words stuck. Her thorny fingernails snagged on an embroidered fin, and she snatched the hand away. Threads snapped, silver sequins scattered all about.

“Hah! You’re not a real Machanu!’ she cried. “What’s this cheap dancing costume? I don’t want an impostor inside me. Get out of here.” The roots that held him shrunk back. His lotus-spear released its grip on his wrists, but would not uncoil in his hands.

He went, his tail catching on hidden things, fins unravelling behind him, not knowing whether the strange power of this place was making him real or unreal. It was tugging his tail away, that was certain, though he’d left his post to keep it. If only he could grow extra arms to hold onto it! He made do with one hand to pull his threads free of twigs, the other to push low branches out of his way.

The far curling scent of salt pulled him on in the thorny dark.

In Pa-Karang

When he came to the sea, his tail was dragging, loose threads fraying all over, but still there, still his, and the sun was just beginning to reach over the forest-tops from the far end of the island. Machanu dove under the ghost-coloured waters and swam far out and down, with the dawn chasing the currents at his tail, trailing forest dirt and sequins behind him. He went swiftly until he saw a dark land of looming things, with glints and glares beckoning from here, from there. Cave-mouths were a-throng with morning market stalls, lit by greeny lanterns, and beyond were buildings he could not make out, in shade and the rolling ringing din. Then the sinking sunrise caught him up and crystal pavilions blazed, spat and spun reef-colours all about and dazzled his eyes; beyond, coral-forests spread far and wide and brilliant!

Unsure who to speak to or where to go, he swam into the forest, so high and vast it dwarfed the temples that were scattered abundantly between the coral-trees and stalks of great sea-lotuses. But Machanu swam closer and saw the temples were monsters all asleep, with horns adorned chedi-like and mouths ever-yawning, high arched doorways. He swam closer again, to the maw of the first monster. Its lips were like jade, its teeth pointed pearls with scenes carved in them. Its inner cheeks were so crusted by sea-lichens that someone had been able to paint lively frescoes over them, in colours ground from fish-scales and pearl-snails so the images all shimmered, as if in the light of underwater flames. The inside of the left cheek showed a time when the gods still swam the oceans as great horned fish, with storm-beasts and whirlpool-demons eating the power that whirled in their wake.

“This is just the first,” said Supanna Macha from the doorway. He turned and saw the Ocean-Queen: glorious, more glorious than he had ever dreamed her, chasm-black tresses beating in the water like night’s fin, tail thick and powerful and greener than any forest, any jade. She held out her hand, as if she had expected him. She led him from the chamber to the forest. “See those seven makara? They are brothers, telling the past lives of Pii Sua Samut, who gave us this library.”

“A library?”

“Yes; all of the sleeping monsters, from here to the forest’s far end, have all the great stories painted in them-particularly hers, for she tamed them and made them into warm shelters where all in the sea-kingdom could flourish and dream.”

“All the great stories? You must have Ram’s, then! Show me. I want to see where it comes to in the end.”

“Ram? Who’s that? Ram, Ram, I’m sure I’ve heard that name before…”

“Ram, the most famous king of the humans, mother! Your father’s great enemy; they say he’s Lord Narai born into a man’s body.”

“Ah, yes. I thought it sounded familiar. I think his story’s carved on a whale’s fang somewhere-it’s not very long. Come, we’ll find it.” She took him under red and yellow branches, through palm-tall anemones that parted for the Ocean-Queen, to a glade where a monstrous temple stood, built out of a beast like a city-wide whale, with the snout of a serpent, jaws of a demon, scales that could be used for shields. Men and women with the tails of eels worked inside, painting the last panel of the beast’s mouth with busy scenes of daily ocean-life around a centre-image of Hanuman fighting a fearsome sea-giant. The pearly teeth arched high above their heads, and Supanna Macha swam up to pluck one from the monster’s gum. It was huge and heavy in her hands, but she carried it down to show Machanu.

“The Story of Ram,” she read from the curling script along its base, and turned it so he could see the carven scenes. It showed Ram attending his wife Sida, showed him sending a monkey army after her, showed him warring against the demons. “We need this story to explain how Hanuman came to battle with Pii Sua Samut, though human kings are of little interest to the sea. But I’ll tell you about Pii Sua Samut.

“She was tall as a mountain and fat as a storm, she had long white tusks that curled up to her eyes, she stomped through the waves and sang songs to make the sailors blush, and she came down with tremendous fury on any who would harm the sea.” Supanna Macha showed Machanu the left cheek, where scenes of the yaksa’s birth and youth were painted in that moon-fiery pigment. One panel showed her watching whole realms and dynasties of fish devoured by storm-beasts; the next showed her transformation into a fearsome great butterfly, who bathed in the floating pollen of Himmapaan forest and returned to fertilise the depleted sea, turning it abundant with tiger-fish and boar-fish and many more creatures, that swarmed joyfully to live in the city of Pa-Karang among the merfolk. Another showed her binding the greatest and greediest of the monsters to the ocean floor, and stroking them into sleep, and reciting the ancient sea-lore that would later be recorded in murals behind the monsters’ jaws.

“But sometimes demons from the world would come down, and hunt our animals, and sport with fish and fish-folk alike.” She showed him a scene of Totsakan, glowing golden in bliss, clasping a great silver-white fish in his arms. “When the Ten- Headed One made love to the Queen of the Fish, she shone like the moon and he could not help but turn all his faces to her. Pii Sua Samut bent down and plucked the flower he wore in his crown, and put it in her hair. Now, his first queen Monto had placed that flower there, and would be angry to see it missing. So he begged it back, promising never to send his demons down again.”

Here was a scene of Totsakan taking the flower back, and discovering that two of Pii Sua Samut’s long black hairs had come with it. “Pii Sua of the Ocean was in his service, then, and went about patrolling the waters for him, until Hanuman came to Longka.” The painters with their tangling tails continued to embellish the first panel of their fight, while the master painter sketched the next on the breathing wall. “But that I’ll save for when the mural is finished.”

Machanu could guess. “He killed her, didn’t he? And you still fell in love with him.”

“It’s not so simple,” she said. “They both had to play the parts the war commanded. And nothing really dies in stories, or the sea.” She led him to the altar at the back of the monster’s tongue, where fish flocked to pay their respects to a pair of long white tusks.

When they swam out again, she nodded to the painters. “Will you have it ready in three days’ time?”

“What happens in three days time?” asked Machanu.

She laughed and bubbles scattered from her lips. “Where have you been, my son? I’m sure even people in Maiyarap’s domain have heard. Sida’s living with the Naak, and has called for a day of storytelling.”

“Ram’s wife? That Sida?”

“What has Ram to do with anything? You are fond of bringing him up. Sida, the most powerful storyteller there is, perhaps only rivalled by Hanuman. Do you know, when Totsakan was keeping her in his pleasure-garden, and the demon guards came with jeers and crude threats, she matched them, hissed exquisite curses, sweet poison fables, and none of the guards or demon-women could withstand her enchantment. None of them would harm her-though of course they guarded her all the more fiercely. Now she’s sick of the world and living in the ground, but says there should be story-meetings for all who are not welcome at the telling-festivals of human courts.”

“And you’re going?”

“You’ll come with me. It will be instructional. We’ll ride the fanged whalefish, bringing them the tale of Pii Sua Samut, and we’ll hear all sorts of wonders.”

“But it’s asleep…’

“Yes,” she said. “No one has tried borrowing any beast from the library since its Lady was slain, for fear they’d wake and eat us. But we’re harnessing it, and it holds her sacred relics in its mouth, and now is not the time for fear. We need a mount, for everyone else is sure to have a grand one. But I’m sure no one will have a manuscript like ours.”

In the Kingdom of the Naak

Sida sits on a gnarled stump of rock, on an island in a great river, ghostlike in the light cast by the looming phosphorescent fort. The Naak-King, in man-form, sits and talks with her, offers her a plate of pale underground fruits. Then one by one the guests arrive, some by water, some by soil, some by air. The naak welcome them all, with hissing voices.

Pirakuan comes singing on a raft built up into a hut, shelves lined with spell-bottles and jars of heart-broth. Her song is a new one. Malinu springs from the shallows in a budding of tiny golden lotuses, blooming up into a flower-monkey maiden. A whole crowd of demon women, some bringing their husbands along, come riding in on the tiers of a jewelled umbrella, buffeted on underground thermals. And up the river, look, here they come now—a mermaid and a fish-tailed monkey in a coral howdah bound on the back of a spouting tooth-clashing wild-eyed whalefish, led by a procession of eel-men blowing conches, tiger-fish leaping and flashing.

The naak hiss their welcome, ask what it is they bring.

“Oh,” calls Supanna Macha, beating her shining tail, ‘have we got a story for you.”

But they arrived last, and must listen to the others first. They sit, Supanna Macha happily on her own curled tail, Machanu uncomfortable on his haunches. His tail has deteriorated further, all its threads tied off in clumpy knots to stop the whole thing disintegrating. He wishes it would hurt, because surely a real tail would. But he tries to ignore the sad and frayed thing at his back. He wants to talk to this legendary storyteller, explain himself, ask her to help him, but his mother hushes him.

“Listen now.”

Pirakuan sings of long ago, when she danced with her first lover on the red demon plains, and then Malinu opens a hole in her chest (Machanu tenses, but she smiles at him) and shows them the world at the bottom of her heart where a young rice-farmer who is Malinu incarnate within herself-fights with diamond-scaled lizards.

“Every time I dream, I fill worlds with things, and this one most of all,” she says. “I made it beautiful, but it had no passion, so I had to go inside and breed love and war there, and now my heart beats better. But the story’s still forming, and I cannot show you the end just now.” She lets them see a little more of the unfolding, then closes petals over the hole.

The demon-guards tell great roaring tales that have them all laughing on the floor, and then Supanna Macha orders the whalefish’s jaws bound open, and shows them the tale of Pii Sua Samut, complete:

“They fought this way and that, and all the oceans trembled. Then the Lady of the Waters opened her mouth wide as a black ocean chasm,” Supanna Macha recited. “She swallowed the insolent Son of the Wind. So the monkey plunged, like a spear, into the yaksa’s stomach, and he slashed her insides with his diamond trident. He sliced and he tugged and he yelled, and dragged out her intestines into the light. He threw down her hands and feet for the fish to eat, and cast her body into the depths. All the fish that ate of Pii Sua Samut took some of her powers, and it was not the end of the demon.

“She sank down to us, and we feasted on her hands and feet, and made her bones into arrows, and she makes us glorious, the greatest land the four seas have known. If Malinu can pledge new stories, I can too: Pii Sua Samut won’t go unavenged. But for today, I’ve brought some of her relics for you,” she says, and presents them to Sida and the Naak-King.

And now it’s Sida’s turn. “I’ll tell you an adventure that’s never been told yet, of what I saw on my way down to this world,” she says, and all draw near. Her tales are like subterranean seas, dark, hard to navigate, full of stinging things. He feels it in his skin, and in muscles he’s forgotten he has, ones trained since childhood to dance in a monkey’s form, though he always had that quilted fishtail like an ever-tugging thought behind him, not quite as agile as the other monkey-dancers. But he’s not in that telling any more, he is a monkey. Finally, the knotted ends of Machanu’s tattered tail ache as they should, flesh made of matted cotton threads.

When she’s finished her tale, she calls him up, and he doesn’t try to explain himself. She holds jewelled scissors-is this what it comes to, escaping having his tail severed by Ram so he can have it severed by Sida?

She cuts through the knots and it hurts and beads fall to the floor like drops of tarnished blood, but when she’s finished his tail is free, out of its old skin, shining like the sea as he beats it, muscular and clean.

In the Royal Cinema

Hanuman is born at 7:45 every Friday night.

That the city is under curfew tonight shouldn’t matter for the story-shades that hang about the Royal Cinema. They’re used to lying faded, almost nothing, on the other weeknights. But the space has got used to the ritual. There’s no actor to wear his face, but stage-air is used to the glimmers of star-gales that brush it when the Wind-Son is born, the glimpse of endlessness.

And the stage recalls all its ghosts, air licking backwards through all the stories it’s carried, to see if it can find an entrance into their worlds.

See if it can summon its players, rather than wait for someone play them. But with no one breathing, no one pulsing or waking-dreaming, it’s missing its conduit. Space clutches at space. To see if it can find the start. And… ah. There. This theatre, once a cinema, the city’s first-its own consciousness is rooted in a much younger form than the dances that haunt it. As shadows of khon-performers flit across the stage, the old movie-screen (long gone by now) wavers into light. Here’s the start, the space knows. The Hanumans and Totsakans, Machanus and Supanna Machas and Rams and nameless monkey-warriors and fish-girls and chariot-lions lean forward, waiting. They’ve given the show an audience; now a show gives itself to them.

If a space can be surprised, it is, to discover it doesn’t always need flesh-and-blood transmitters, voice-and-memory portals-all a screen needs is something projected onto it. And here, now, the ghost-screen shows a deep underground light, a glow-in- the-dark city and a storyteller sitting on an island in a river, telling new tales with a wicked tongue. The screen has its own stock of ghosts, action heroes decades-forgotten, possessed now, playing out scenes their actors certainly never filmed, or are split, spliced, given extra limbs, or demon-eyes, or fish-tails, as the story requires.

A Machanu in the audience nudges his mother. “Is that me? What am I doing?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Watch and see.”

Oblivion

A Journey

Vandana Singh

Memory is a strange thing.

I haven’t changed my sex in eighty-three years. I was born female, in a world of peace and quietude; yet I have an incomplete recollection of my childhood. Perhaps it is partly a failure of the imagination that it is so hard to believe (in this age of ours) that there was once such a place as green and slow as my world-shell, Ramasthal. It was the last of the great world-shells to fall, so any memory of childhood is contaminated with what came after: the deaths of all I loved, the burning of the cities, the slow, cancerous spread of Hirasor’s culture-machines that changed my birthplace beyond recognition.

So instead of one seamless continuum of growing and learning to be in this world, my memory of my life is fragmentary. I remember my childhood name: Lilavati. I remember those great cybeasts, the hay-athis, swaying down the streets in a procession, and their hot, vegetable-scented breath ruffling my hair. There are glimpses, as through a tattered veil, of steep, vertical gardens, cascading greenery, a familiar face looking out at me from a window hewn in a cliff—and in the back ground, the song of falling water. Then everything is obscured by smoke. I am in a room surrounded by pillars of fire, and through the haze I see the torn pages of the Ramayan floating in the air, burning, their edges crumpling like black lace. I am half-comatose with heat and smoke; my throat is parched and sore, my eyes sting—and then there are strange, metallic faces reaching out to me, the stuff of my nightmares. Behind them is a person all aflame, her arms outstretched, running toward me, but she falls and I am carried away through the smoke and the screaming. I still see the woman in my dreams and wonder if she was my mother.

In my later life as a refugee, first on the world of Barana and after that, everywhere and nowhere, there is nothing much worth recalling. Foster homes, poverty, my incarceration in some kind of soulless educational institution—the banality of the daily struggle to survive. But there are moments in my life that are seared into my mind forever: instants that were pivotal, life-changing, each a conspiracy of temporal nexuses, a concatenation of events that made me what I am. That is not an excuse—I could have chosen a different way to be. But I did not know, then, that I had a choice.

This is the first of those moments: the last time I was a woman, some ninety years ago in my personal time-frame. I was calling myself Ila, then, and doing some planet-hopping, working the cruisers and blowing the credits at each stop. I found myself on Planet Vilaasa, a rich and decadent world under the sway of the Samarin conglomerate. I was in one of those deep-city bars where it’s always night, where sunshine is like a childhood memory, where the air is thick with smoke, incipient violence and bumblebees. I don’t remember who I was with, but the place was crowded with humans, native and off-world, as well as mutants and nakalchis. There was a bee buzzing in my ear, promising me seven kinds of bliss designed especially for my personality and physical type if only I’d agree to let the Samarin Corporate Entity take over half my brain. I swatted it; it fell into my plate and buzzed pathetically, antennae waving, before it became non-functional. Somehow I found this funny; I still remember throwing back my head and laughing.

My fingers, slight and brown, curved around my glass. The drink half drunk, a glutinous purple drop sliding down the outer surface. Reflected on the glass a confusion of lights and moving shapes, and the gleam, sudden and terrifying, of steel.

There was a scream, and the sound of glass breaking that seemed to go on for ever. This was no barroom brawl. The raiders were Harvesters. I remember getting up to run. I remember the terrified crowd pressing around me, and then I was falling, kicked and stepped upon in the stampede. Somehow I pushed myself to safety under a table next to a stranger, a pale woman with long, black hair and eyes like green fire. She looked at me with her mouth open, saying one word:

“Nothen…”

A Harvester got her. It put its metal hands around her throat and put its scissor-like mouth to her chest. As she bled and writhed, it rasped one long word, interspersed with a sequence of numbers.

Her body turned rigid and still, her face twisted with horror. Her green eyes froze in a way that was simultaneously aware and locked in the moment of torment. It was then that I realized that she was a nakalchi, a bio-synthetic being spawned from a mother-machine.

The name of the mother-machine is what pushes a nakalchi into the catatonic state that is Shunyath. When they enter Shunyath they re live the moment when that name was spoken. Since the nakalchis are practically immortal, capable of dying only through accident or violence, Shunyath is their way of going to the next stage. Usually a nakalchi who has wearied of existence will go to one of their priests, who will put the candidate in a meditative state of absolute calm and surrender. Then the priest will utter the name of the mother-machine (such names being known only to the priests and guarded with their lives) so that the nakalchi may then contemplate eternity in peace.

For first-generation nakalchis, Shunyath is not reversible.

That is when I realized that this woman was one of the ancients, one of the nakalchis who had helped humankind find its way to the stars.

So for her, frozen in the state of Shunyath, it would seem as though she was being strangled by the Harvester all the rest of her days. No wonder she had asked me for Nothen, for death. She had known the Harvesters had come for her; she had known what they would do. I remember thinking, in one of those apparently timeless moments that terror brings: somebody should kill the poor woman. She was obviously the target of the raid.

But to my horrified surprise the Harvester turned from her to me, even as I was sliding away from under the table to a safer place. While the Harvester had me pinned to the floor, its long, flexible electrodes crawled all over my skin as it violated my humanness, my woman-ness, with its multiple limbs. Through the tears and blood I saw myriad reflections of myself in those dark, compound eyes, from which looked—not only the primitive consciousness of the Harvester, but the eyes of whoever manipulated it—the person or entity who, not content with finding their target, fed like a starving animal on the terror of a bystander. In those eyes I was a stranger, a non-person, a piece of meat that jerked and gibbered in pain. Then, for a moment, I thought I saw the burning woman from my memories of childhood, standing behind the Harvester. This is death, I said to myself, relieved. But the Harvester left me a few hair-breadths short of death and moved on to its next victim.

I don’t know how many they killed or maimed that night. The nakalchi woman they took away. I remember thinking, through the long months of pain and nightmares that followed, that I wish I had died.

But I lived. I took no joy in it. All that gave my mind some respite from its constant seething was a game I invented: I would find the identity of the person responsible for the Harvester raid and I would kill them. Find, and kill. I went through endless permutations of people and ways of killing in my head. Eventually it was no longer a game.

I moved to another planet, changed my sex to one of the Betweens. Over the years I changed my body even further, ruthlessly replacing soft, yielding flesh with coralloid implants that grew me my own armor-plating. Other people shuddered when I walked by. I became an interplanetary investigator of small crime and fraud, solving trivial little cases for the rich and compromised, while biding my time.

It was already suspected that the man responsible for the Harvester attacks that terrorized whole planets during the Samarin era was no other than the governing mind of the Samarin Corporate Entity, Hira-sor. The proof took many years and great effort on the part of several people, including myself, but it came at last. Nothing could be done, however, because Hirasor was more powerful than any man alive. His icons were everywhere: dark, shoulder-length hair framing a lean, aristocratic face with hungry eyes; the embroidered silk collar, the rose in his buttonhole. It came out then that he had a private museum of first-generation nakalchis locked in shunyath in various states of suffering. A connoisseur of pain, was Hirasor.

But to me he was also Hirasor, destroyer of worlds. He had killed me once already by destroying my world-shell, Ramasthal. It was one of the epic world-shells, a chain of island satellites natural and artificial, that ringed the star Agni. Here we learned, lived and enacted our lives based on that ancient Indic epic, the Ramayan, one of those timeless stories that condense in their poetry the essence of what it means to be human. Then Samarin had infiltrated, attacking and destroying at first, then doing what they called “rebuilding”: substituting for the complexity and beauty of the Ramayan, an inanely simplified, sugary, cultural matrix that drew on all the darkness and pettiness in human nature. Ramasthal broke up, dissolved by the monocultural machine that was Samarin. I suffered less than my fellow-citizens— being a child, I could not contribute a brain-share to Samarin. I grew up a refugee, moving restlessly from one inhabited world to the next, trying and failing to find my center. Most of the ordinary citizens of these worlds had never heard of the Ramayan epic, or anything else that had been meaningful to me in that lost past life. In my unimaginable solitude my only defense was to act like them, to be what they considered normal. When the Harvesters invaded the bar, I had been living the fashionably disconnected life that Samarin-dominated cultures think is the only way to be.

Hirasor was so powerful that among my people his nickname was Ravan-Ten-Heads, after the demon in the epic Ramayan. Near the end of the story, the hero, Ram, tries to kill Ravan by cutting off his heads, one by one, but the heads simply grow back. In a similar manner, if a rival corporation or a society of free citizens managed to destroy one Samarin conglomerate, another would spring up almost immediately in its place. It— and Hirasor—seemed almost mythic in their indestructibility.

What I wanted to do was to find Hirasor’s secret vulnerability, as Ram does in the epic. “Shoot an arrow into Ravan’s navel,” he is told.

The navel is the center of Ravan’s power. When Ram does so, the great demon dies at last.

But Samarin, and with it Hirasor, declined slowly without my help. An ingeniously designed brain-share virus locked Samarin’s client-slaves—several million people—into a synced epileptic state. After that Generosity Corp. (that had likely developed the virus) began its ascent to power while the Samarin Entity gradually disintegrated. Pieces of it were bought by other conglomerates, their data extracted through torture; then they were mind-wiped until the name Samarin only evoked a ghost of a memory, accompanied by a shudder.

But Hirasor lived on. He was still rich enough to evade justice. Rumors of his death appeared frequently in the newsfeeds for a while, and a documentary was made about him, but over time people forgot. There were other things, such as the discovery of the worlds of the Hetorr, and the threats and rumors of war with that unimaginably alien species. “Give it up,” said the few people in whom I had confided. “Forget Hirasor and get on with your life.” But finding Hirasor was the only thing between me and death by my own hand. Each time I opened my case files on him, each time his image sprang up and I looked into his eyes, I remembered the Harvester. I remembered the burning woman. Despite all the reconstructive work my body had undergone, my old wounds ached. Find, and kill. Only then would I know peace.

I knew more about Hirasor than anyone else did, although it was little enough.

He liked absinthe and roses.

He had a perfect memory.

He was fastidious about his appearance. Every hair in place, fingers elegant and manicured, the signature ear-studs small and precisely placed on each ear-lobe. His clothing was made from the silk of sapient-worms.

He had no confidant but for the chief of his guards, a nakalchi female called Suvarna, a walking weapon who was also his lover. He wrote her poetry that was remarkable for its lyrical use of three languages, and equally remarkable for its sadistic imagery.

Later I killed three of his functionaries to learn his unique identity-number. It did me no good, or so I thought, then.

In the years of his decline he lost his Harvester units; his three main hideouts were found and his assets destroyed, his loyal bands of followers dwindled to one, Suvarna—and yet he seemed more slippery and elusive than ever. Although he left trails of blood and shattered lives in his wake, he managed to elude me with trickery and firepower.

He left me messages in blood.

Sometimes it was the name of a planet or a city. I would go there and find, too late, another clue, spelled out in corpses. It was as though we were playing an elaborate game across the inhabited worlds, with him always in the lead. Slowly the universe began to take less and less notice. We were two lone players on a vast stage, and the audience had other, larger scale horrors to occupy them.

I began to think of myself as a modern-day Ram. In the Ramayan epic, Prince Ram’s wife Sita is abducted by the ten-headed demon Ravan. Prince Ram, beloved by all, has no difficulty raising an army of animals and people and following Ravan to his kingdom.

I was no prince. But Hirasor had stolen my whole world, as surely as Ravan stole Sita. I could not bring back Ramasthal or my childhood, but I could bring Hirasor down. Unlike Ram, I would have to do it alone.

Alone. Sifting through travel records, bribing petty little mercenaries who may have had dealings with his people, tracking down witnesses at the scene of each orgy of violence, trying to think like him, to stand in his shoes and wonder: what would he do next? I would sleep only when I could no longer stand.

Sleep brought a recurring nightmare: Hirasor standing before me at last. I shoot an arrow into his navel, and as he falls I leap upon him and put my hands around his throat. I am certain he is dying, but then I see his face change, become familiar, become my own face. I feel his hands on my throat.

I would wake up in a sweat and know that in the end it was going to be only one of us who would prevail: him or me. But first I had to find him. So I worked obsessively, following him around from place to place, always one step behind.

Then, quite suddenly, the trail got cold. I searched, sent my agents from planet to planet. Nothing but silence. I paced up and down my room, brooding for days. What was he waiting for? What was he about to do?

Into this empty, waiting time came something I had not expected. A reason to live that had nothing to do with Hirasor. Her name was Dhanu.

She was an urbanologist for whom I had performed a small service. She was a small, fierce, determined woman with long, black hair turning to grey that she tied in a braid. The job I did for her was shoddily done, and she demanded a reason. “I’m preoccupied with something more important,” I snapped, wanting her out of my office and my life.

“Tell me,” she said, sitting down and waiting with her whole body, her eyes mocking and intrigued. So I did.

We became lovers, Dhanu and I. Somehow she found her way past the armor-plating of my mind and body; she found cracks and interstices, living flesh that remembered loving touch, regions of vulnerability that I hadn’t cauterized out of myself. Here is a memory fragment:

We lie in bed in my dingy room, with moonlight coming in through the narrow window, and the sounds outside of voices raised in argument, and the sweaty, chemical scent of the dead river that lies like an outstretched arm across this nameless, foul city. She is a shadow, a ghost limned with silver, turned into a stranger by the near-darkness. I find this suddenly disturbing; I turn her over so that the light falls full on her face. I don’t know what I look like to her. I don’t know what I am. I’ve been calling myself Vikram for a few years, but that doesn’t tell me anything.

“Tell me a secret,” she says. “Something about yourself that nobody knows.”

I pull myself together, settle down next to her and stare at the ceiling. I don’t know what to tell her, but something escapes my lips unbidden.

“I want to die,” I say, surprising myself because lately I haven’t been thinking about death. But it’s true. And also not true, because I want this moment for ever, the light from the broken moon Jagos silvering her hair, and the way she looks at me when I say that: a long, slow, sad, unsurprised look. She begins to say something but I stop her. “Your turn,” I say.

“I’ll tell you what I want to know, more than anything,” she says after a pause. “I want to know what it is like to be somebody else. I remember, as a very small child, standing with my mother on a balcony, watching the most amazing fireworks display I had ever seen. It made me happy. I looked at my mother to share that joy, and found that she was crying. It was then that I realized that I was a different person from her, that she was in some profound way a stranger. Since then I’ve sought strangeness. I’ve wanted to know what it is like to be a tree, a sapient-worm, and most of all, a made-being. Like a nakalchi or a Cognizant-City. Can you imagine what the universe would look like to an entity like that?”

We talk all night. She teaches me what she has learned about nakalchis and Cognizant-Cities, Corporate Entities and mother-machines—in particular, their rituals of death, because that is what interests me. I realize during the conversation that I am no more than a vessel for the death of another, and that is perhaps why I seek my own. Some time during the night she teaches me the song with which nakalchis welcome Nothen, their conception of death. She learned it from a nakalchi priest who was dying, who wanted someone to say the words to him. I cannot pretend to understand the lore and mysticism that the priests have developed around Nothen, which to me is simply irreversible non-functionality, the death that comes to us all. Or the philosophical comparison between Nothen and Shunyath. Dhanu tries to explain:

“If you go into Shunyath, you contemplate what nakalchis call The River, which is inadequately translated as the Cosmic Stream of Being. If you go into Nothen, with the Last Song echoing in your mind, then you are the River. You are no longer separate from it—you become the River, see?”

No, I don’t see. Never mind, she says, laughing at me. She says the words of the Last Song, breathing it out into the moonlit air.

It has a pleasing, sonorous lilt. It is supposed to induce a state of acceptance and peace in a dying nakalchi. I am not sure why, but there are tears in my eyes as I repeat it after her in the gray, hushed light of dawn.

Shantih. Nothen ke aagaman, na dukh na dard…

Lying with her, seeing her hair unbound on my pillow like seaweed, I find myself in a still place, as though between breaths. Hirasor does not walk the paths that Dhanu and I tread.

Looking back, I see how the paths branch out of each temporal nexus. For every pivotal event in my life, there was always more than one possible path I could have taken.

This is the path I chose:

I had accompanied Dhanu during one of her urbanology expeditions. We were in the bowels of a dying Cognizant-City on the ruined planet Murra. This was the first time she had had a chance to explore what was probably one of the earliest Cognizant-Cities in the galaxy. She was a few levels below me, attempting to salvage what was left of the City’s mind. All its recorded history and culture, its ruminations over the years of its existence, lay spooled in cavernous darkness below. The inhabitants had been evacuated, and even now I could see the last of the ships, a glint or two in a reddening sky over the bleak mountains of Murra’s northern continent. I was perched on the highest ramparts, standing by our flyer and looking out for rogue destroyer bots. Every now and then I saw one rise up, a distant speck, and crash into the city-scape in a small fireball. Thin spires of smoke rose all around me, but there was as yet nothing amiss where I was waiting.

Then I lost Dhanu’s signal.

I searched the skies, found them clear of bots, and descended quickly into the warren-like passageways that led into the city’s heart. Two levels later, my wrist-band beeped. She was in range.

“I’m all right, Vikram,” she said to my anxious query. She sounded breathless with excitement. “I had to go down a couple of levels to find the rest of the data-banks. This City is one of the first Cognizant-cities ever made! They still have direct human-to- City interfaces! I am hooking up to talk to it as I record. Go on up! I’ll only be a few minutes, I promise.”

When I relive that moment, I think of the things I could have done. I could have insisted on going down to where she was, or persuaded her to leave everything and come. Or I could have been more careful going up, so I wouldn’t lose my way.

But I did lose my way. It was only one wrong turn, and I was about to retrace my steps (I had the flyer’s reassuring signal on my wristband as a guide) but what made me pause was curiosity. Or fate.

I found myself in the doorway of an enormous chamber which smelled faintly of blood and hydrogen peroxide, and was lit by periodic blue flashes, like lightning. I saw the great, monstrous hulk of an old-fashioned mother-machine, her long-abandoned teats spewing an oily broth, her flailing arms beating the air over the shattered remains of her multiple wombs. She was old—it had been a long time since she had brought any nakalchis to life. As I stared at her I realized (from what pictures Dhanu had shown me of ancient made-beings) that she was probably a first-generation mother-machine. A priceless collector’s item, salvaged from who-knew-where, abandoned in the evacuation of the City. And now the City’s madness was destroying what little functionality she had, taking her to Nothen. Moved by a sudden impulse I went up to her and spoke the words of peace.

Shantih. Nothen ke aagaman, na dukh na dard…

Peace. As Nothen comes, there is no sorrow, no pain…

I regretted my impulse almost immediately because after I stopped, the mother-machine began to recite the names of her children, the first part of her death-ritual. In her final moments she had mistaken me for a nakalchi priest. I don’t know what made me stay—there was something mesmerizing about that old, metallic voice in the darkness, and the proximity of death. Perhaps I was a little annoyed with Dhanu for delaying, for wanting to join with the City in an orgy of mutual understanding. Dhanu’s signal flickered with reassuring regularity on my wristband.

Then I heard the mother-machine utter the name that to me meant more than life itself: Hirasor.

I will remember that moment until I die: the grating voice of the mother-machine, the dull booms in the distance, the floor shaking below my feet, and that pungent, smoky darkness, pierced by occasional sparks of blue lightning.

In the midst of it, clear as a bell, the name—or rather, Hirasor’s unique numerical identifier. Each of us had our identity numbers, given to us at birth, and I was one of the few people who knew Hirasor’s. But I had never suspected he was a nakalchi. Partly because of nakalchi lore and history—there never had been any confirmed master criminals who were nakalchi, conceived as they had once been to gently shepherd the human race toward the stars. Meanwhile the great uprising of the nakalchis in times long before Samarin, the consciousness debates that had preceded them, had all ensured that they were treated on par with human beings, so I had no way of knowing from the number alone. You can’t tell from appearance or behavior either, because nakalchis claim access to the full range of human emotion (or, if their priests are to be believed, to more than that). By now even we humans are so augmented and enhanced that the functional difference between nakalchi and human is very small—but important. To me the difference meant—at last—the possibility of vengeance.

Hirasor: a first-generation nakalchi!

That is why I had to wait. That is why I couldn’t go down to find Dhanu, why I ignored her frantic signals on my wrist-band. I had to wait for the mother-machine to tell me her name.

At last she said it: Ekadri-samayada-janini, intermingled with a sequence of numbers that made up a prime.

I left her then, to die. I left , repeating her name—what would always be, to me, the Word—so I would not forget. The floor was twisting and bucking beneath my feet, and a lone siren was blaring somewhere above me. I staggered against the rusting metal wall of the passage, and remembered Dhanu.

I got up. I went back. I wish I could say that I went into the bowels of the City, braved everything to find her and rescue her. But I didn’t. I went down until I was stopped by the rubble of fallen masonry. Her signal still flickered on my wrist-band but she did not answer my query.

There was a seismic shudder far below me, and a long sigh, a wind that blew through the wrecked passageways, running invisible fingers through my hair. I sensed—or imagined— Dhanu’s breath flowing with the breath of the dying City, her consciousness entangled inextricably with that of her host. But as I turned away I knew also that my real reason for abandoning her was that I was the only living being who had the means to bring Hirasor down. For that I couldn’t risk my life.

The roof of the passageway began to collapse. I was running, now, veering from one side to another to prevent being hit by debris. I burst into open air, my chest aching, and flung myself into the flyer. As I rose up, three destroyer bots honed into the very spot I had vacated. I had no time to activate the flyer’s defenses. A great fireball blossomed be low me. I felt its heat as I piloted the rocking craft upward through the tumultuous air. Up, in the cool heights, I saw that there was blood flow ing down my right arm. My shoulder hurt. I looked down and saw the myriad fires blooming, forming and dissolving shapes that my imagination brought to life. Monsters. And lastly, a woman, arms outstretched, burning.

In the Ramayan, Ram braves all to recover his consort Sita from the demon Ravan. But near the end of the story he loses her through his own foolishness. He turns her away, exiles her as he himself was once exiled, and buries himself in the task of ruling his kingdom.

All that: the war, the heroes killed—for nothing!

One of the most moving scenes in the epic is at the end of the story, when Ram goes down on his knees before Sita in the forest, begging her forgiveness and asking her to come back to him. She accepts his apology but she does not belong to him; she never has. She calls to her mother, the Earth; a great fissure opens in the ground and Sita goes home.

In the One Thousand Commentaries, there are different views on the significance of Sita. Some interpret her as signifying that which is lost to us. For a long time I had thought of Sita as my world, my childhood. I had seen myself as Ram, raising an army to win back—not those irredeemable things, but a chance for survival. Abandoned by my fellow investigators, hunting for Hirasor alone, I had, after a while, given up on analogies. Certainly I had never thought of Dhanu as Sita.

Dhanu was what I had to sacrifice to reach Hirasor, to rescue Sita. Dhanu had never belonged to me, anyway, I told myself. She could have come up out of the City at any time; it was her obsession with the made-beings that led to her death. Sometimes I was angry with her, at other times, I wept, thinking of the fall of her hair in the moonlight. At odd moments during my renewed pursuit of Hirasor, she would come unbidden into my mind, and I would wonder what her last moments had been like. Had she seen the Universe through the eyes of the dying City? Had she had her epiphany?

But I had little time for regret. My life narrowed down to one thing: find Hirasor. I set various agents sifting through mountains of possible leads; I re-established contact with criminal informers, coaxed or threatened information from scores of witnesses. At night I lay sleepless in my lonely bed, thinking of what I would do when I found Hirasor. My mind ran through scenario after scenario. I had to first put him in a hundred kinds of agony. Then I would say the name of the mother-machine and lock him in Shunyath for ever.

His silence lasted over two years. Then, at last, one of my agents picked up his trail. This time, curiously, it was not marked with blood. No small, artistically arranged orgy of violence betrayed his presence. All I had was proof from a transit shuttle record that he had been headed for the planet Griddha-kuta two months ago.

I went to Griddha-kuta. Apparently he had headed straight for the Buddhist monastery of Leh, without any attempt at covering his tracks. I went to the monastery, suspecting a trap. There, to my angry surprise, I found him gone.

An elderly monk told me that yes, Hirasor had been here. What had he done during his stay? Apparently nothing but walk around in the hill gardens and read in the library. Where was he now?

“He said to tell you that he had gone to Oblivion,” the monk said, watching me. “But why don’t you stay here awhile, before you go? There is no hurry. Hirasor is not running any more. Why don’t you walk the gardens and ease your burdens a little?”

They let me search the grounds and the building, but there was no sign of Hirasor. I wondered if he had really gone to Oblivion, a planet about which I knew little, except that it was as close to hell as you could get among the inhabited worlds. It made no sense that he would go to such an uncomfortable place.

While I was wondering what to do, I walked briefly in the gardens with the monk, Chituri. I told him a little about myself and my quest; in return he confided to me that he had been a world-shell citizen, too, before the fall. His world-shell had been Gilgamesh.

There is no doubt that there was some magic about the place, be cause I stayed longer than I intended. The gardens in the terraced hills were tranquil, verdant, misty with waterfalls. Amid groves of moss-laden stone trees, pale clusters of flowers hung in the sweet air. Memories of Ramasthal, which had faded with time, returned to me vividly. Mean while Chituri tried to persuade me to stay, to give up my quest for justice. As we walked, he would tell me stories from the Indic tradition, even resorting to his knowledge of the Ramayan.

“Don’t you see,” he would tell me, “it is only when Ram forgets the god in him, forgets he is an avatar of Vishnu, that he acts foolishly? What is evil but ignorance of our true nature?”

“You are forgetting that Ravan is the villain of the story, not Ram,” I would say coldly. “If you want to talk about evil, talk about him.”

“But, Paren,” he said, using the name I had given him, “don’t your commentaries say that the entire epic is more than a literal telling of an old heroic tale—that the great battle is really the battle within…”

He had a peculiar way of sidling up to me, of speaking as though imparting a great confidence, and yet his manner was ingratiating, ten tative. He hardly spoke above a whisper. I guessed he had suffered much before his arrival here, but I took a dislike to him after a while.

For me this period was, like the time I had met Dhanu, only an interstice, a time to catch my breath before resuming my quest. I was not interested in academic discourses on morality. Chituri did not understand that. He had seen Hirasor walk these very gardens—Hirasor, who had brought down his world as well as mine—and he had done nothing.

I finished my researches on the planet Oblivion, and made arrangements to go there. It was a difficult place to get to, since there was only one settlement, if one could call it that, and only a small scientific research craft visited at rather long intervals. The day I left, Chituri again tried to persuade me to give up my pursuit of Hirasor. He did this in his usual oblique way of telling me a story.

This time it was an ancient Buddhist tale about a murderer called Ungli-maal. Ungli-maal had been a bandit in the time of the Buddha, a man so depraved that he wore the fingers of his victims as a gar land around his neck. The Buddha was the only man he waylaid who was unafraid of death, who faced him empty-handed, with compassion. Eventually Ungli-maal— despite all he had been—became a Buddhist monk and a great teacher.

“If you are trying to persuade me that Hirasor has become a saint,” I said between clenched teeth, “you must think me naive indeed. He is still the man who butchered millions, destroyed countless worlds. He will not escape justice.”

“That was not the point of my story,” Chituri said, rather sadly. I was glad not to see his face again.

Oblivion, they say, is another word for hell. A bleak world, barely habitable, it was once known as Dilaasha, and was considered a reason able candidate for terraforming. Those hopes have long since vanished. The “habitable” zones are deserts, subject to violent dust-storms, and all indigenous life is primitive— bacterial, algal, and inimical to coexisting with humans.

But all this does not explain why the planet Oblivion is hell. Oblivion earns its name because those who stay there long enough slowly lose their minds.

It begins with forgetting and slips of tongue, peculiar speech disorders, waking terrors, and finally, silence. The rescue teams who first observed the early explorers (consisting of both human and nakalchi) could only speculate as to why the subjects walked around without apparent purpose, neglecting the basic needs of their bodies, muttering in unknown languages, reacting to things that nobody else could see. The second stage was one of great distress—the subjects howled or whimpered and ran about the compound as though to escape a terrible, invisible enemy. They could still, at times, respond to their names; they would look up when called, frowning, as though trying to remember who they had been. Sometimes they would weep in the arms of the staff ; a terrible, heart-rending weeping it was. The final stage was silence and withdrawal. In this last stage the sufferers seemed to have completely lost any knowledge of who they were—they did not respond to their names or to instructions; they wandered around with dead eyes, tracing out complicated patterns with their feet.

Only three victims had been taken off-planet. When removed in the second stage they would resist with maniacal strength— both such subjects had met violent death at their own hand. The third had been in the final stage and had simply faded away after removal, although he had been in fine shape physically. However an autopsy had revealed a bizarre restructuring of his brain that no scientist had yet explained.

So now all that is left of the original settlement on Oblivion is a study center where the remaining subjects are incarcerated. Regulations decree that nobody can stay on Oblivion for more than a hundred and ten local days. It’s after that that most people seem to start losing their minds, although in some rare cases twenty days is enough.

There are theories—volatile compounds containing nano-organisms that are slowly released by the soil, pervading everything, that act like psychotropic drugs, low frequency sound waves that boom through the barren hills, disturbing the inner functioning of the body, peculiar surges in radioactive emissions in the environs—but none of these are adequate explanations. Oblivion remains a mystery.

So I came, at last, to Oblivion, to the final confrontation. It was a fitting place for a last stand. The dome-town was mostly uninhabited, the empty buildings testament to the defeated hopes of the original settlers. The insane were housed in a primitive building built around a dusty compound. The skeleton crew that had managed the place for the last shift was irritable and moody, waiting to be taken off-planet

in a week, and the few scientists looked depressed and preoccupied. Nobody seemed interested in talking with me, despite the fact that I was apparently a representative of a rich philanthropist considering a major donation. Everyone seemed curiously lacking in vitality or enthusiasm, as though under the influence of some drug. Within a few hours of my stay there, I, too, felt a distinct mental lethargy, punctuated by spikes of nervousness and paranoia. The medic who examined me, a thin, dark, spidery man, was pessimistic.

“You’re one of those who will succumb fast,” he said, not without some relish. “This is a terrible place, affects some people much more quickly than others. Get out while you can, or you’ll be joining them!”

He waved his long fingers toward the observation window behind him. There was something ghoulish about the way he stood watching the crazies, describing for me in painful detail every stage of the terrible sickness. The afflicted—men, women, most of them half naked, wandered aimlessly around the yard, muttering and drawing patterns in the dust with their feet. Some wailed incessantly, beating their chests, while others tore at their clothes. Still others sat very quietly on the ground, looking straight ahead of them with blank eyes. I felt as though their pain and confusion was somehow connected to me, that theirs was a sorrow that was drawing me in slowly. The dust patterns on the ground (the subject of much debate among the scientists) seemed almost to make sense, as though they were the script of a language I had known and forgotten. I shivered and looked away. The medic was right. I couldn’t stay here long.

But when I looked back into the compound, there was Hirasor.

He came into the yard through a door in the wall. A tall man, he now walked with a slight shuffle. He sat down on an unoccupied bench and watched the sufferers. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but the gait, and the arrogant set of the shoulders, was unmistakable. My heart started hammering.

“That’s the other visitor,” the medic said, noting the slight start I gave. “Claims to be interested in our subjects, but he seems to have problems of his own.”

He didn’t explain. Hirasor sat for a while, then moved his hands upward in a gesture that I didn’t recognize, and returned through the door, which shut behind him.

I went into my narrow cell of a room to make my plans.

It was hard to think clearly. Blood, revenge, murder—the sufferings of those who had lost to Hirasor—my own long years of trailing him, giving up love and life for this one obsession— these thoughts reverberated in my mind When I closed my eyes I saw Hirasor’s face, or the Harvester’s toothed mouth. When I opened them, I saw the stark, claustrophobic room, and the view from the skylight of a yellow dust-plume over the dome. The air smelled faintly of dust and burning. I knew then that Hirasor had chosen wisely. I didn’t know to what extent he, as a nakalchi (and a hardened one at that) would be affected by the place, but he had gambled on it being a disadvantage for me.

The next day there was a message from him, an audio. Giving me the location of his rooms, and telling me that he would let me know when I should come, when Suvarna was not around.

Bring your weapons, he said.

This is the last memory fragment, the one most fresh in my mind.

I had been waiting for days. Hirasor and I would make an appointment, then he would abruptly cancel it because Suvarna had returned unexpectedly to their quarters. He did not want her to be in the way. I could sense that, like me, he wanted our final confrontation to be between us alone. At times I suspected that he was playing with me, that I should be more circumspect, perhaps induce someone to spy on him—but this was not the time to play detective. It was fitting that at the end there should be no tricks and subterfuges, only him and me, face to face at last.

There was no doubt that he was wearing me down, however. I lay restlessly in my room, plagued by headaches and nightmares. I started at every sound, and the dust devils visible from my window became fiery-eyed monsters.

Thus Hirasor and I waited, like illicit lovers, for the final assignation.

Then his summons came.

I will remember that last journey to the end of my days:

My armor-plated body, all weapons systems readied; the dull, boom ing pain in my head keeping time with my footsteps. The walk through the complex, through which the other inhabitants seem to float like ghosts. Everything tinged faintly with red, as though the world itself is rusting. The stairs, dusted with Oblivion’s fine grit. The door, a white rectangle, that scans me with a round eye and opens in silence.

Inside is a sparsely furnished receiving room. On a low divan sits a woman. Her hair cascades over her shoulders in black waves; her legs are crossed, her long, tapering, steel-tipped fingers folded over one knee. Her eyes are a metallic dark gray, multifaceted like the eyes of moths; a quick blink in the direction of the door behind me, and it shuts.

“Greetings, Suvarna,” I say, as calmly as I can, after the first heart-stopping moment. “Where’s Hirasor?”

“Out,” she says. “I intercepted some of his messages to you. It was I who sent you the last one.”

I am standing before her, outwardly calm, inwardly berating myself for my foolishness. Her nakalchi eyes track every move I might make, every muscle-twitch.

“My business is with Hirasor,” I say. I am determined that at the end of it all, she will not stand between Hirasor and I. But she will be hard to kill.

“I don’t think you understand,” she says, rising. She’s an impressive woman, tall, all teeth and muscle, but also beautiful.

“This may be a game for you and him,” she says, “but my job is to keep him alive. If it hadn’t been for you, he wouldn’t have taken to planet-hopping. He wouldn’t have found this accursed place. It’s time we stopped playing, Vikram, or whatever you are calling yourself now.”

I can sense her coming alive, the way a killer weapon comes alive when it finds its target. Through the fog in my brain it occurs to me that Suvarna might be Hirasor’s sibling, birthed by the same mother-machine.

I say the Word.

“What?” she says. She laughs. “Are you trying to distract me with nonsense?”

So it means nothing to her. She raises a finger-tip.

The next moment my alarm system begins to scream coordinates and trajectories; I leap aside just as a spot on the wall behind me blackens with heat.

I remember that she likes to play.

“If only you’d left us alone,” she says, watching me. “Hirasor is old and sated now, Vikram. All he wants—I want—is to be left in peace.”

“Don’t give me this old man nonsense,” I say breathlessly. “I know Hirasor is a nakalchi. He could live for hundreds of years.”

She stares at me, the perfect mouth hanging slack with surprise. I tongue a mouth-dart, but she recovers quickly, catching it in mid-air with a burst of flame. It falls smoking to the floor.

“How did you find out?”

Before I can answer, a door opens behind her. I see real terror on her face, then, as Hirasor walks into the room.

Except for the slight shuffle, he still walks tall, like Ravan- Ten-Heads.

“Get out!” she tells him, covering the ground between them in long strides, watching me all the time. “I’ll deal with him!”

He gives her a glance of pure hatred.

“Let me fight my battles, will you?” A look passes between them, and I see in that instant that what they had once shared has turned bitter; that they are locked in their relationship out of habit and necessity rather than passion, hating each other and yet unable to let go.

I study him as they glare at each other (one of her eyes is still tracking me). Now that I see him at close range, I am shocked by his appearance. How he has fallen! All that is left of his affectations is the silk tunic with the embroidered collar. His hair is ragged and unkempt, and his face, lean and aristocratic as a prize hound’s, is covered with scars. His burning dark eyes look out as though from a cage. I remember those eyes; I remember him peering down at me from the Harvester’s face. Silently I mouth the Word, waiting until he will be in my power.

He has turned toward me. He holds out his hands to show that they are empty.

“I want to die,” he says. “Even here, I can’t get rid of… I can’t go on. I have a perfect memory; I remember everything I have ever done, whether awake or in my dreams. All I want now is death… at your hands—”

“No, no,” Suvarna says to him. “Don’t talk like that. I won’t let anyone kill you.” She holds his arm, trying to pull him away. Her voice rises in a scream. “Don’t let him kill you! I’ll be all alone!”

“She thinks it will get better with time,” he says to me, ignoring her. “But I want to end it more than anything. I have had not a moment—not one moment of peace. Six times I tried to kill myself, and six times she prevented me.”

He turns to her: “Foolish Suvarna, we are all ‘all alone.’ I can’t allow you to interfere this time. Now go away and let me die.”

He pushes her suddenly and violently, throwing her across the room. She lies against the far wall in a huddle, staring at him with wide, shocked eyes.

“Death is not what I had in mind,” I say, coming closer. “Death would be too good for you, Hirasor.” I bring my armored hands up to his throat. He stands in front of me, not resisting, waiting. For a moment I think it is the old dream again, him and me at each other’s throats at the world’s end, but it is all going wrong. His wild eyes beg me for death. He shudders violently. I dig my claws into his neck, feel the pulse of the machine that he is, prepare myself to rip him half to death, to say the Word that will condemn him to perpetual hell, a hair’s-breadth short of death. “Please, please, hurry” he begs, half-choking, not understanding what it is I am giving him.

I cannot do it. This pathetic being—Hirasor, destroyer of worlds! He is no adversary. He sickens me.

Besides, he is in hell already, without my help.

I let my hands fall.

“Live, then,” I say angrily, backing toward the door.

His nostrils flare, his eyes widen. He begins a terrible high-pitched keening, clawing with his hands at his face and hair. Suvarna, who seems to have forgotten about me, has stumbled to her feet and is by his side in an instant. She puts her long arms around him.

“You are safe now,” she says, crooning, putting her red lips to his hair. “I’ll take care of him later. Nobody will take you away from me.”

“Let me go, Suvarna,” he weeps. “Leave me here on Oblivion. Leave me alone!”

As he thrashes in her arms, she says it, loudly and clearly.

The Word, which I had let slip in one panicked moment.

He becomes limp in her arms, his horrified gaze locked on hers. She lets him down gently on the divan.

She will not be alone now; she will have the perpetually suffering Hirasor to care for all her life.

I shoot him once, in the chest. She falls in a heap by his side, screaming and cursing. Over the wreck of his body, the slow and certain ebbing of his consciousness, I begin to speak the words of passing.

“Shantih. Nothen ke agaman na dukh na dard…”

And I walk out of the room.

Hirasor got his freedom, but what of me, the man-woman with a hundred aliases, none of which were Ram after all? There I was, boarding the first shuttle out of Oblivion, cheated of true victory at the end, my life’s purpose lost. I had been tempted to stay on, to live with the crazies and let my mind descend into chaos, but the people there wouldn’t let me. They seemed to think Suvarna had killed Hirasor; nobody cared to connect me directly with the crime, but his violent death was enough for them to send the stranger packing. I don’t know what happened to Suvarna; I never saw her again.

At the first opportunity I switched from the shuttle to a passenger ship that made numerous stops on various inhabited worlds, thinking I might go back to my last residence on the planet Manaus. But when it came time to disembark I couldn’t manage to do it. I am still on the ship, waiting until the impulse comes (if it ever will) to step out under the skies of a new world and begin another life. What has passed for my life, my personal Ramayan, comes back to me in tattered little pieces, pages torn from a book, burning, blowing in the wind. Like patterns drawn in the dust, half-familiar, a language once understood, then forgotten.

Here are some things I have discovered about myself:

I have no pleasure in life. I like nothing, definitely not absinthe or roses.

I want to die. But a curious inertia keeps me from it. The things of the world seem heavy, and time slow.

I still have nightmares about the burning woman. Sometimes I dream that Dhanu has a mantram that will bring me peace, and I am looking for her in the tunnels of a dying city, its walls collapsing around me, but she is nowhere to be found. I never dream of Hirasor except as a presence behind my consciousness like a second pair of eyes, a faint ghost, a memory. There are moments when I wonder what led a first-generation nakalchi to become a monster. The Ramayan says that even Ravan was once a good man, before he fell prey to hubris and lost his way. If legend is to be believed, there is a cave on some abandoned planet where copies of the first-generation nakalchis are hidden. Were I to come across it, would I find Hirasor’s duplicate in an ice-cold crypt, dreaming, innocent as a child?

Lately I have begun to let myself remember that last climactic moment of my encounter with Hirasor. I shot my Ravan, I tell myself, trying to infuse into my mind a sense of victory despite the loss of the chance for true revenge—but I no longer know what any of those words mean: victory, revenge. Still, there is a solidity about that moment when I shot him, small though it is against the backdrop of all the years I’ve lived. That moment—it feels as tangible as a key held in the hand. What doors it might open I do not know, although I am certain that Sita does not wait behind any of them. Perhaps it is enough that it tells me there are doors.

Vaidehi and Her Earth Mother

Pratap Reddy

I’m a writer who lives in Toronto. My short bio says it all: He moved to Canada in 2001 and writes short fiction about the agonies and the angst (on occasion, the ecstasies) of immigrants from India.

A story I wrote recently is called Mythili’s Place in the Sun. The title is a little ironic because the story is set in Canada, a country which is cold and dark for the best part of the year.

Mythli’s story is one of grit, determination and the desire to succeed against all odds. The tale drapes itself around Mythili, like the pristine snow which covers the slopes of Mount Meru. Mother to two lovely girls, Lavanya and Kushala, Mythili is a worthy heroine.

Some of you might ask, isn’t it customary for such sagas to revolve around men, say like the Odyssey, the Lusiads or our own Ramayana? That’s true, but there are some excellent books out there which have a female protagonist as the focal point. They are not easy to come by—you will have to look really hard. Off-the-cuff I can think of two fine examples: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and No Orchids for Miss Blandish. Besides, Mythili’s husband, like most men, is a prig, utterly self-centred, and capricious. On a whim, he had left his cushy job in India and dragged a scared, mystified Mythili to Canada with an empty promise of a better life. I’m not inclined to make a male chauvinist like him the chief subject of my story.

When Mythili’s husband first sprung the idea of immigration on her, she must have felt as astounded as Sita did when Rama ambushed her as she was returning from the garden, in the company of her giggly ladies-in-waiting. “Honey,” Rama may have said, of course using a Sanskrit (or is it Prakrit?) equivalent of the endearment. “I’ve to go away to the forest on a government matter. Would you like to join me?” Much like how a well-heeled Canadian might say to his wife or common-law partner, “Pumpkin pie, I’m going on a business trip to Florida. Care to come along?”

Ever dutiful and deferential, Sita cast off her silks, shed all her jewellery, and got into rough and ready garments suitable for a life in the bush. She knew that the jungles of central India were no place for a lady, but not even in her wildest dreams had she imagined the actual dangers that lay in wait for her. She had no inkling at all that armies of two men would wage a full-scale international war to see who could possess her.

For her part, Mythili too left her circle of relatives and friends be hind to start life all over again in a country half-way across the globe so that her husband could pursue his pipedream. As immigrants of limited means, they rented a cold and dark basement apartment where no sunlight ever penetrated. The basement was like an icebox in winter, and surprisingly turned into a sauna in summer. In the nights, Mythili could hear rats running amok in the wainscoting. Sita’s Panchavati, in comparison, seemed like Xanadu.

It’s a fortnight since the Canadian magazine True North accepted my story for publication. Helen Yorke, a proof reader, calls me on my mobile. Blithely mispronouncing my name, even though it has only three letters, she continues: “I’ve a problem with your story.”

“Really? What could it be?”

“I don’t know how to put it. Your character—Mite-ly, she’s gone missing.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I had a glance at your story last night, she was very much there. But today when I sat down to read it again, she’s nowhere to be found. She has disappeared completely.”

I’m horrified because, honestly, I didn’t expect this of Mythili. My other characters have pulled the vanishing act before and have stepped out of my stories never to return. Good riddance, I had told myself. Yet many readers, Vaidehi included, have complained of the abrupt way in which those stories end. They think it’s a literary affectation—how little they know!

“What are you going to do about it?” says Helen.

I’m tempted to say, “Call 911, I guess. Let the police look for her!” But I don’t. For one thing, it’s never a good idea to cross swords with an editor, even if she’s only a copy editor. For another, I’m sure there’s no police force in the world, not even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which can bring back, handcuffed and all, an author’s runaway characters.

If any of my readers were writers they’d sympathise with me. They’d know how fictional characters acquire a will of their own and thenceforth refuse to have anything to do with their creators.

I once spotted Lalita, whose profile looks so much like Bipasha Basu’s, in a night club on Lakeshore Road. This was soon after she had upped and left from my Demon Glass. She was seated on a barstool drinking a cosmopolitan. Wearing a sarong-like skirt and a puffy cotton blouse, she looked hot (I’m not talking about the weather here). When I tried to grab her, she screamed and hit me with her sequined handbag. Heads turned, and some hulky-bulky types started to move towards me. I made my escape before things got really nasty.

I have an appointment to see Dr Cunningham later in the evening. But Helen’s news about Mythili has upset me so much that I don’t quite feel up to it. I’m going to call his office and cancel the appointment.

I had conceived Mythli not as any run-of-the mill character but as a paragon of virtue, comeliness, and fortitude.

On arriving in Canada, Mythili couldn’t go to work because she had to look after her two infant daughters. Her husband managed to find a job at a gas station but they were always stumped for cash. In such circumstances, did you think Mythili just sat there in the Stygian dark ness of her basement apartment, twiddling her thumbs? Not a chance, she took to baby-sitting in a big way. The money wasn’t much, but it helped to buy those little extras of life—presumably, timbits, beavertails, poutine and other such local goodies.

When the girls, Lavanya and Kushala, came of school-going age, Mythili took up a job. It was a temporary, part-time appointment in the mail room of an investments company. All Mythili had to do was to slip huge quantities of manila envelopes through a Pitney Bowes franking machine, yet somehow she managed to convince her boss of her diligence and passion for excellence. Such was the power of her personality.

Soon, she was made fulltime. Then she moved into the main office as an admin clerk. Within a year, she became a team leader. Three more years, and a certificate in HR from Sheridan College, she was anointed as the office manager.

While their household income grew steadily, the family hopped, as people in Canada do, from one home to another, each more expensive than the previous one. First they moved to a condominium tower in the downtown core, close to Mythili’s office. Then they bought a semi detached house within the bussing zone of a good school, for their daughters’ sake. Eventually, they bought an independent house, with a small patch of lawn and an apple tree in the front.

Mythli, being green-fingered, developed a simple but eye-catching gar den. The emerald-green lawn was always in good trim, and a herbaceous border, in a lighter shade of green, ran along the driveway. In a long narrow bed, she planted tulips, which returned from their hibernation every spring to feast in the sun.

Mythili was deeply committed to the Environment. She supported all green causes and voted for Elizabeth May’s Green Party. She was particular, in fact almost paranoid, about disposal of household refuse (“Reduce, Reuse or Recycle” might have been embossed on her family crest). She knew all about the many coloured-bins and what went into them. (Though it’s a decade since I came to Canada, I find such things much too confusing—I had always let Vaidehi handle recycling.)

With Mythili, it was not just a matter of being eco-conscious— it was something more. She didn’t merely respect the Earth, she loved it with an intense filial devotion.

It’s a clear and sunny afternoon in June. I drive down to Home Depot to buy some garden plants. The capacious lean-to which houses the garden supplies is deserted. I look for pink and maroon tulips, Vaidehi’s favourite flowers. I fail to find any. Panic sets in and I break into a cold sweat. I’ve so much work ahead of me, all the digging and the replanting, to say nothing of the rescheduled appointment with Dr Cunningham. I can’t find anyone wearing the orange apron with the words ‘Home Depot’ splashed across their torsos.

I rush into the main building. I espy an idle associate, dawdling between the aisles in the electrical area. She looks south Asian, an Indian probably. From the way she is dressed I reckon she’s a newbie, fresh off the boat. When I approach her she brightens up.

“It too late in the season for tulips,” she says grandly, shepherding me into the plumbing area. What did she think tulips were? Something they use in washrooms? I make a quick about-turn and, pushing my shopping cart, run for my life.

Back in the lean-to, I load my cart double-quick with twenty-five pots each of pink and maroon geraniums (to hell with the tulips). When I reach the parking lot, I’m breathless. I look at my watch. It’s nearly four. I know I’ll never be able to make it to the meeting with Dr Cunningham. I call his office.

“Not again!” says Darla. She’s a big bear-like woman who dwarfs not only the furniture in the ante-room, but also the visitors and Dr Cunningham for good measure.

“I’m sorry, Darla-ing,” I say. “Something unexpected has cropped up.”

“You’ve done this once too often. Dr Cunningham will not be pleased. You should be more serious about your health. Hmm, let me see if I can squeeze you in next week.” While I wince at the prospect of being caught in Darla’s bear hug, she continues, “How about 2 o’clock Thursday afternoon?”

“Suits me fine,” I say, hoping to terminate the conversation.

“Wait a minute!” Darla interjects. “What about your tablets? Don’t you need a refill?”

“No, I have a few left,” I say truthfully. I’m not a stickler for following doctor’s orders, especially Dr Cunningham’s.

“Don’t forget to take your medication every day. Aripiprazole isn’t something to play around with,” she says and adds my name, mispronouncing it to sound like a constellation in the night sky.

You might say, as Shakespeare did, what’s in name? A lot, actually. The person who wrote Ramayana in Sanskrit had used the nom de plume (excuse my use of French, Canada is a bi-lingual country) of Valmiki. His given name was Ratnakara. He had started his career not as writer but as a full-blooded bandit. One day, deep in the jungles, he waylaid a traveller. Unfortunately for Ratnakara, his victim turned out to be Narada, a sage and troubadour rolled into one. To cut a long story short, the wily minstrel not only managed to save his own life, but he brought about a complete change of heart in the bandit. But Ratnakara had so steeped himself in crime and iniquity that the good Lord Rama’s name simply wouldn’t roll off his tongue. So Narada advised him to utter the word ‘Mara’ (which means a tree) over and over again. Seating himself on the floor of the forest, Ratnakara began to recite “Mara-Mara-Mara-Mara…” In due course, even without his knowing, the repetitive chant turned into “Rama-Rama-Rama…” He continued to sit there repeating Rama’s holy name, day after day, washing away all his past sins, until an anthill (‘Valmika’ in Sanskrit) grew around him. Valmiki means one who has emerged from an anthill.

This story is about Vaidehi, not Mythili. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the title again. But I’m not surprised that you thought otherwise. The blame rests with me for letting the situation come to such a sorry pass.

The presence of Vaidehi is meant to permeate through this tale like the haunting fragrance of the night-flowering parijatha in Indra’s celestial garden. But I’ve let my obsession for Mythili get the better of me. She has insinuated herself into this story and usurped it completely. This is so totally out of character.

I had hoped to portray Mythli as an Indo-Canadian version of the docile and demure Savitri. Not just the namesake in mythology who was married to the ill-fated Satyavan, but the champion glycerine-gal of Tamil and Telugu films in the 60’s. In almost every one of her films, Savitri essayed the same role: a wronged, woebegone wife who suffers in silence (except for singing six sad songs) until her reformed husband returns at the bitter end.

When I go over the early drafts of Mythli’s story, I’m appalled to learn how far gone she already was. She bears no resemblance to any of the ancient satis, like Anasuya or Arundhati, so dear to my heart. Witness the passage of arms that takes place between Mythili and her husband:

Husband: I think we should have another child.

Mythili: Two are more than enough. Remember the slogan— Hum do, Hamare do?

Husband: We should have a son, Mythili.

Mythili: Nowadays, daughters are just as good and capable as sons. Don’t tell me you think otherwise!

Husband: Of course not. But according to our sastras…

Mythili: Cut that out. We’re living in Canada, come on. Are you expecting a male child to light your funeral pyre in Dundas square? More likely, the funeral director of the electrical crematorium is going to be the person who will press the button.

Husband (in a menacing voice): Mythili! Zubaan ko lagaam do. Enough’s enough. I don’t like the tone of your bloody voice…

I can’t believe I’ve written all this! How deluded I’ve been!

As a writer, I’m used to mixing fact with fiction, myth with reality. We writers live perpetually in the twilight zone where the brick-and-mortar of reality collides with the shimmering mirages of fantasy. Any wonder then that I’m unable to distinguish between the real and the unreal at times?

While living in the treacherous forest of Dandaka, Sita too had to grapple with the problem of reality and illusion. Maricha, whose very name has come to mean deception, was a rakshasa, an ogre, in Ravana’s pay. He transformed himself into an exquisite golden fawn and entered, with mincing steps, the front yard of Sita’s mud-and-wattle home. Sita was so captivated by this beautiful animal that she wanted to possess it at once. But when the deer gave her the slip, Sita persuaded Rama to go in chase of it. Even though Rama pursued his quarry to a good distance he couldn’t catch up with it. Frustrated, he shot an arrow at the beast. The bolt found its mark, and the dying animal, which was none other than the diabolical Maricha, called out for Lakshmana in Rama’s voice. Hearing the cri du coeur (there I go in French again!)Sita ordered a reluctant Lakshmana to go after Rama. That was how it came about that Sita was left alone and unprotected, setting the stage for her abduction.

There was a Hindi film in the 60’s whose posters carried the tagline: Who is the real Anita? Seated here in Toronto, in front of my computer, I’m compelled to apostrophise: Who’s the real Mythili? Is she an ideal wife, a veritable pativrata, docile and dutiful as her author envisioned? Or an independent woman, demanding and domineering, with a mind of her own?

My preoccupation with Mythili is threatening to send this story into a tailspin. What’s the connection between Mythili and Vaidehi, the rightful heroine of the story? Are they two different individuals, or the same person seen from two different standpoints, like the two sides of a coin?

I have no answer. Right now, I’m more confused than you are.

Jagame maya, the universe itself is an illusion, goes a Telugu film song. On the screen, the matinee idol of the yesteryears, Nageswara Rao, appears to sing the melancholy number, but in reality it’s the mesmeric voice of the playback singer Ghantasala. This sums it up nicely -I don’t intend to add anything more to the already voluminous literature on the concept of maya.

It’s one o’clock on Thursday afternoon. A glorious late-June day: the weather is deliciously warm with a languorous feel to it. I’m seated on a deck chair in the front porch, steadily working my way through a six-pack of Molson’s Canadian.

The apple tree is weighed down with fruit which are still green. A pair of red-breasted robins is hopping about on the lawn as though looking for clues. The grass is a little overgrown, but who cares? I can hear the thrum of bees hovering on the bed of pink and maroon geraniums. I’ve to admit, the flowers don’t seem to be in great shape. What the hell, not everyone can be as efficient as Vaidehi.

I’ve decided not to keep my appointment with Dr Cunningham. Who likes to visit a psychiatrist on such a lovely day? Not unless he was a madman of course. Believe me, I can live without Dr Cunningham’s tablets, and Darla can screw herself (‘scuse my French). Thinking of these two brings on my depression.

Let me think of something pleasant. My daughters will be coming home soon for summer. They go to an exclusive boarding school. It will be nice to go on a family vacation. Perhaps, we may travel to the other side of the pond; I always wanted to go motoring in the south of France. On second thoughts, a short trip to India appears to be a better proposition. My parents would love to see their granddaughters. My mother was very keen on a grandson, but now she’s gotten over it.

There are times when I too wish I had a son, there’s something unique about a father-son relationship. But you can’t have everything, can you? Vaidehi had a point when she said nowadays girls are just as good as boys if not better.

Two police cruisers enter the lane on which my house stands. I wonder what they are doing on this quiet street. They purr along, searching for the right door number. They come to a stop in front of my house. How interesting.

A cop steps out of the first car and walks up the drive. He is tall and strong, as though constructed with steel and concrete. In his crisp blue uniform and a pair of darkly opaque sun-glasses, he looks like a killing machine.

“I’m Sergeant Williams,” he says.

I get out of the deck-chair and introduce myself, pronouncing my name the right way, not making it sound as if I were a Dodge pick-up.

“We are investigating the disappearance of Why-day-hee,” he says, taking a peek at his memo-book.

“Who says Vaidehi has disappeared? She’s not at home, that’s all. She’s gone away.”

“According to the information we have…”

“I’ve told you, she’s away. She’s gone to her mother’s place.”

“Her mother’s place?” says Sergeant Williams. ”Would that be in India, sir?”

“You are one bright copper, aren’t you? You seem to know every thing.”

“We have a warrant to search the house,” says Sergeant Williams.

“Go ahead and search. Let me know if you find anything interesting.”

“I sure will,” he says. The cop from the other squad car joins us. He looks identical, just as strong and lethal but one shoe-size smaller. He is carrying neither a baton nor a truncheon but a bloody shovel! (What’s the police force coming to?)

“This is Sergeant Cuff,” says Williams.

“Pleased to meet you,” I say. While Sergeant Williams keeps an eye on me, Sergeant Cuff begins to dig in my front yard. Dust flies as he scoops out the earth from the flower bed and lays it in a heap to one side.

“Go easy on my geraniums!” I shout. To Sergeant Williams, I say: “What’s he hoping to unearth? The moonstone?”

“Maybe, a woman in white.”

“You are bright, Sergeant!” I say. “Care for a beer?”

“Some other time,” says Sergeant Williams. This guy’s a riot, let me tell you.

“I’ve something here,” says Sergeant Cuff .

“What’s it, Mike?”

“Looks like a body of a woman.”

“How awesome! She must be my very own Mythili!” I shout, clapping my hands with delight. “She had gone missing and I could never find her!”

“Mite-ly?” says Sergeant Williams, giving his memo-book a quick scan.

“Yes, my beloved Mythili! I’m so happy you’ve found her. Ontario Police is undoubtedly the best police force in the world!”

I extend my hand to Sergeant Williams in congratulation. But he doesn’t take it. I had expected the bloke to be thrilled, but he has a look of utter incomprehension on his face. Funny man.

Falling into the Earth

Shweta Narayan

1. Foundling

The king her father found her in a furrow, so the story goes, and named her after it. Sita, daughter of the Earth. Sita: a place where seed is planted.

Mama and Papa have talked about your adoption so often you dream of it; wailing in the agency doctor’s huge dark arms while Mama and Papa sort through the papers and the bill. (American dollars only, Ayah says.) The room is pale yellow and it smells of disinfectant, like bath rooms in the morning. A tube light flickers silver in Mama’s hair. Papa counts out dull green notes. Lots of them.

You fall, dream-soft, into Mama’s arms, and are caught in a yellowing photograph: pale against her pink sari, her arms gently pulling you close, supporting your neck with one hand. Papa was an obstetrician and Mama a pediatrician; they both know how to hold babies.

“Our own foundling,” says Papa, beaming. Your black hair is vivid against Mama’s grey. You are nothing like the red-faced bald babies he delivered in America. “Our Sita.”

Ayah adds that you’re a black market baby. She has been with the family for long enough to say these things. You should always be grateful for it, she says while she brushes out your hair, because you were born to the sort that gives a child up for adoption. Maybe even an unmarried mother, like in Aradhana.

Here, you’re a princess.

Ayah doesn’t have to tell you to sit still while she tugs through the tangles; gratitude means that princess, playing her role. Mama is too frail for disappointments.

You dream of falling into dark earth soft as Mama’s arms.

2. Swayamvara

Sita’s father held a competition when she came of age, a grand event to which all her hopeful suitors were invited. The princes and kings, great archers all, were challenged to string a bow infused with divine power.

Perhaps Rama and Sita met in secret and fell in love, and she prayed for him to succeed. Perhaps she prayed for the perfect man.

Perhaps he was just strong.

After every other man strained to lift the bow a finger’s width, struggled, and gave up, Rama picked it up one-handed and strung it. He drew back the string, and broke the bow in two.

Arranged marriages are not so very arranged these days. Mama doesn’t want you on anything as vulgar as a marriage website, but you get to choose your groom from the eligible boys that she and Papa’s cousins know.

The first boy won’t stop bragging. The second only wants to know what you can cook. The third is engaging till you tell him your degree is in performance arts. Then he says, “I thought you went to a real college.”

You dream of running from princes armed with ladles and calculators, of pulling banana leaves over yourself and hiding in damp, summer-smelling earth.

Ram’s auspicious name brings you out of hiding. His statistics are encouraging: MBA, in charge of his father’s restaurants in California, green card holder.

Emailed pictures tell you he’s tall, with an easy smile and Bollywood charm. The hint of grey over his ears adds distinction. He’s wearing a kurta, blue-green as banyan leaves, over jeans. The photos do look a bit lightened, but darkness hardly matters in a man. You wonder what he makes of your pictures, whether he’ll get in touch. You wonder how American he is.

He emails.

He asks what you think about the different dance forms you’ve studied. He says he’s glad you wear traditional clothes; nothing can match their elegance. He asks if you’d be willing to leave Mama and Papa behind to go into exile with him; to come home, as they did, only in old age. He doesn’t ask if you can cook.

You talk on the phone. His low voice, his foreign vowels, make your toes curl.

You’re scared of a decision made too soon, and he’ll agree to wait. But Mama and Papa are old now, stooped and translucent, and Mama says plaintively that she wants to hold a grandchild before she dies. And how, after all, could Ram and Sita go wrong? He flies in for a visit.

At dinner, you talk over candlelight. He tells stories that make you laugh, and grins when you do: “Arrey, she threatened to sue because she thought the chilli was a tomato!” Candle shadows dance across his face. “We’re not entirely pakka; one of our best cooks is Pakistani. But the only thing he terrorizes is the paneer. He’s a good guy actually.”

You’ve set a date before the candles sputter out.

Wedding preparations whirl you through the next months; they set you down on the divan three days before the wedding, with henna-covered hands stretched into a patch of hot sunlight and time, finally, to fret. The swirling patterns smell of wet earth. Hidden in their perfect shadows, drawing your eyes, one man’s initials mark you.

Ayah, silhouetted, dabs sugar water on your hands and tells you not to scratch.

Mama reads out loud, voice quavering. She reads the stories she used to tell you at bedtime: Sita following Rama into the jungle, Sita keeping patient house for Rama and his brother. Sita obeying, Sita turning aside arguments with a gentle smile, Sita’s staunch loyalty.

Ayah sighs. “Never underestimate those virtues in a marriage,” she murmurs. You wonder, too late to ask, how she knows.

3. Exile

Rama was the eldest of his brothers; but one of his father’s junior wives, wanting her son to be king, prevailed upon her husband to exile Rama for fourteen years.

Ever obedient to all his parents, Rama left. His brother Lakshman would not part from him, so they and Sita lived together in the jungle. The princes learned to be hunters, the princess to keep a house.

You join your prince in California, land of pink-skinned people and red-skinned trees and green card applications, to live in a golden house in the hills; burned yellow stucco, bamboo floors, golden tones in Persian rugs and Ravi Varma prints. It even smells lemon-gold; citrus fresheners are plugged into electrical outlets in every room.

The front windows look onto a spill of iceplant, unnaturally green. In the back grow colors of tarnish—rust and verdigris clawed with old-silver branches, sage soft and white as oxidized lead. Swimming pools sprouting, copper sulphate blue. You polish every figurine and oil lamp before they turn into the hillside.

When Mama phones, you describe the house. “What about Ram, beti?” she asks.

The bedsheets are creamy, soft as rich soil, but your first night under them was painful. Worse, it was awkward; Ram too anxious to laugh at the absurdity of it, trying too hard for you to relax, gone when you woke. He’s been working late, most nights, too tired when he gets home to do more than cuddle. You say, “He has a lot to catch up on.”

You don’t say that you’ve mostly been relieved.

“It takes time,” Mama says, “and work. Love is the result of a successful marriage, not the cause.”

Carven rosewood is scattered through the house, the images familiar, beloved, absent only in the kitchen of flat glass and steel. You dust battles out of myth, running pink microfiber over maces, demon tusks, four-armed gods. Like the maids do at home.

You pull out your old Ramayana comics, the ones with pages falling out. Ram finds one on the bedside table. “I used to love those when I was a kid,” he says.

“They’re not bad for adults either,” you tell him.

“They made me think I’d turn blue someday.” He picks one up, traces a line with one fingertip; his smile is half embarrassed, half wistful.

Ram warns you of a party next weekend. “Just another type of work,” he says. “Schmoozing. Ranjan’s always are. I’m sorry we won’t get the evening together.”

You start to smile at the prospect; you’ve hardly talked to anyone except for Americans so incomprehensible you’re amazed both of your languages are called English. But there are lines between his eyebrows. You finish the smile, say, “You’ll have to make it up to me.” The worry lines ease.

You practice walking in heels till you’re confident that you won’t stumble or put a heel through chiff on. They’re for the beaded blue sari with the strappy blouse, and the long earrings heavy with sapphires, the ones that make you look like Aishwarya. You hope.

You dream of heels sinking into damp soil. When you try to pull free, the tarnished ground shakes under you. You’re not sure, later, if you dreamed the quake.

You can’t help tensing up in the car, though Ram knows what he’s doing. They drive on the wrong side of the road. It would be easier if you were in the back seat, with a driver up front. But normal people don’t employ chauffeurs here.

And only fobs call them drivers.

At the party you smile through the laughter at “Ram and Sita”, take the violently pink cocktail someone hands you. You’re fairly sure that refusing to drink is fobbish, too. You sip. It even tastes pink.

The rest of the party is a happy blur. You’re never more than slightly tipsy—you know better—but that little bit helps. And it’s a respite from being a jungle housewife. You have missed getting to know people. You have missed having a chance to sparkle.

Ram gets quieter, seems more tired, as you become central. You want to tuck him into bed; but at least you’re taking some of the burden off him.

But he is frowning all the more on the way home, and his lips are one thin line. Eventually he says, “Was there a single man there you didn’t flirt with? Oh right, there was. Me.”

You make naan bhaaji and pistachio mitthai as Mama and the cook taught you, sending smells of cardamom and cumin and chilli through the house. The calming fresh-earth smells of home, your spell to repair whatever went wrong. But by the time he gets back the naan is leathery, the bhaaji needs reheating, and the pale-citrus scent has taken back over. He doesn’t complain; he doesn’t say anything at all.

You bite your tongue, tell yourself that Sita in the stories wouldn’t snap at a silent husband. And you did misjudge the timing; overcom-pensated for the help you’re used to at home.

Except that this is home.

You catch him before he leaves for work. He is heavy-eyed, the frown etched deep into his forehead. He reaches out a hand.

“Sita…”

Arms crossed, you say, “What did you mean, flirting?”

His hand drops. He turns away. “You’d like a definition? Try the dictionary.”

The door snicks shut behind him before you can respond, and you find yourself shaking in fury. Sita might not have lost her temper in the stories—but in the stories Rama never sulked. You want to knock the ground out from under his smug, his perfect facade of a house loose. You want him running home to the mess you’re feeling –

And with a rumble too huge to hear, the world drops away.

He bursts into the kitchen just minutes after the shaking stops, eyes wide and tie as crooked as his paintings. He says, “I came as—we were right at the epicenter.” He hugs you tight. “That was a big one. You must have been so scared.”

You are one huge pounding heartbeat, but you’re not the least bit scared.

You dream of kneeling in yellow dust, citrus-scented, trying to coax a banana plant to grow. Next to you, Lakshman builds a sandcastle. It slides into an undifferentiated hill each time his hands move away.

A paintbrush lies between you, caked with paint; the tip is a single, unbending clump the color of dried blood.

He turns up the next day; in the waking world he has a round baby face and an incongruous mustache. You offer him bhel, coffee, sweets.

“So gracious a hostess,” he says, “but I need a nap. I’ll settle in my normal room, acha? You won’t even know I’m here.” He runs a hand through his curly hair and sighs. “Gods know Ram won’t.”

You smile politely, wishing you could unhear that.

He grimaces. “Shit. Blame it on the jet lag, okay?”

At dinner he tells Ram, “I missed you.”

Ram laughs. “Of course you did. You’re surely not here to get away from anyone.”

Expression fades out of Lakshman’s face. He stares at the potato on his fork while he mushes it against the plate. “I ‘t justah, forget it.”

Ram’s smile does not show teeth. “And yet. She’s our mother now.”

Lakshman mutters, “Our mother wasn’t a—”

“Don’t,” says Ram.

Lakshman’s up early the next day. He’s not a quiet riser. You stumble out of rice-paddy dreams into the hall as Ram says, “Where are you going?”

“Coming in with you,” says Lakshman.

Ram laughs. “As if I’m going to bore you off,” he says. “Sleep in. Have fun.”

“I am here,” Lakshman says, “to help.” There’s a note in his voice that strangles yours.

“And you’re helping by being here.”

You find Lakshman, later, slumped in front of a Hindi film. His eyes are slitted, one hand holding his face up. Thinking he’s asleep, you back out.

You’re pulling the door shut when he says, “Good thing we’re both decorative, isn’t it.”

You replace all the room fresheners with sandalwood scented ones. You arrange huge red roses in a new vase and hope Ram will bring you their replacements.

“So why not dance professionally?” Lakshman asks over dinner. His eyes start on you, but he’s looking at Ram by the time he stops speaking.

In that moment you hate him. Because he’s poking at this, because Ram hasn’t, because the sweets he brought are covered in silver foil and smell of home. Because Ram is home early today. You focus on tearing your paratha into bits. “It hasn’t come up,” you manage.

“You know what they’re like,” Ram says. “No respect for their own traditions, let alone ours. They’d think she was just an entertainer. They wouldn’t get it.”

Lakshman snorts. “In San Jose?” he says. “You wouldn’t see three white faces in the audience.”

“Think all Americans are white?” says Ram. “Plenty of them look just like us.”

You say, “I’d rather not go on a stage, anyway.” You wonder if that’s true. Your paratha is a shredded mess. “But I might teach, sometime.”

“Not that you’d have to,” says Ram.

You nod, get up to get everyone’s lassi.

Lakshman comes with you to take a glass. His hands are unexpectedly soft, and far too close. Lips brushing your ear, mustache hairs bristly against your skin, he murmurs, “Never going to happen.”

You bite your tongue, give Ram his glass with the best smile you can manage. A dozen stories remind you that Sita thought of Lakshman -always, properly—as a brother.

You suggest to Ram that night that Lakshman may be happier helping at the restaurant. He sighs. “Nobody’s happy working in a restaurant,” he says. “But Lakshman would cut his hand offfor me—and laugh, and insist he was tired of that hand anyway.”

You dream of serving golden mud on supple banana leaves, their green too bright for California, the dirt too dead for the jungle.

You wake to Asha Bhosle remixes on full volume, bass rattling walls, shivering the air, humming in your chest. You’d yell at Lakshman—but he’s not in the living room, so you dance instead, your own improvised semiclassical through the jungle in your mind; you end on your toes, arms thrown out, breathless, laughing.

“It’s a damn crime,” Lakshman says from the doorway, “to keep you locked away here.”

Ram brings you orchids, orange-gold, elegant, bare of leaves. “I’m glad he’s here,” he says. “I’ll have time—soon, surely—but till then, I’m so glad you’re not lonely.”

4. Capture

Sita saw a deer one day, a glimpse of brushed gold that bounded into bushes and jungle vines and vanished in their shadows. Normally Sita cared little for pretty possessions; duty ornamented her more truly than any bangle or earring. But she wanted that deer and could not stop wanting.

The deer ran from Rama without panic or hesitation, and he realized it was an unnatural creature. So he shot it.

The deer screamed out in Rama’s voice.

Lakshman was supposed to take care of Sita, but when they heard that scream, he drew a protective circle around her and ran out into the forest.

Remixes wake you again; an invitation. You hesitate on the threshold. Lakshman looks at you out of the corner of his eye, grins, and starts singing along with Asha in a squeaky voice. You join in on the male part, voice wobbling with laughter. When he attempts to dance as the girl, you lose the tune entirely.

Halfway through the second song, Lakshman has to lean against the wall to catch his breath. You keep dancing, feet lighter than they’ve been in months.

You spin, and catch the hopeless wish in his eyes.

You can draw a circle of space around yourself, keep Lakshman out of it, but not without him noticing.

“Just tell me what I did,” he says.

You can’t answer.

He looks away, mutters, “Or is it what Ram doesn’t do?”

That note again; jealousy. Did you encourage him? Did you want to?

In the old tales, this could never happen; in a film, it would be the scene before he died, and grief would bring you and Ram together.

If this were a film, you’d have just killed him. You reach out for the wall, needing strength, insight, a different tale. Needing.

The ground below you grumbles. Just a little shake; a reminder.

Lakshman looks around, disconcerted. You pull yourself straight. “Your elder brother,” you say, “works gruelling hours so we don’t have to. It’s time you gave him a chance.”

You’re not sure it’s Lakshman you are telling.

“Come on, no, let me take over,” he says to Ram. “Just for a couple of days. You haven’t even had a honeymoon.”

Ram says, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“And that’s the problem. Look, what can I really screw up in two days?”

“I would like to see Napa,” you say dutifully.

Ram looks from Lakshman to you, then back again. He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Okay, come in with me for now,” he says. “but promise you’ll tell me if it’s too much, acha?”

Alone, you fill the vase with sunflowers and dance to them.

“He’s managing,” Ram says.

You’ve heard some variant of this every few hours all weekend. Ram checks his phone constantly, and he’s called home ‘just in case’ at least six times. You’re pretty sure he won’t notice a redwood till the photographs are printed. You say, “Maybe because Lakshman likes people.”

Ram frowns, bewildered. “I like people fine,” he says. “Just not when they’re being asses.”

Lakshman’s grin and gestures are huge when he tells Ram how the weekend went. Ram’s frown just grows. “I’m glad it wasn’t horrendous,” he says. “You never know with Saturdays.”

Lakshman laughs.

Later, he asks you how the weekend was; you tell him it was nice. His grin falls abruptly away. “No fibs,” he says.

You aren’t about to tell him you dreamed of dancing around redwoods with Ram—a Ram with hair long enough to curl, with a quick grin, with no worry between his brows. The silence drags out.

Lakshman says, “This is… you’re not…” He grabs at his hair. “Look. It’s your life, but he’s my brother. If you don’t tell him, or do something, I will.”

You visit a therapist in a glass hospital drenched in soothing music and diffuse light. She smiles kindly, and she enunciates without talking down to you; you would like to like her. But what can you say to her, this golden stranger? Truth would betray every vow you’ve made; besides, her concern is a role. How do Americans manage it? You leave her bewildered and don’t go again. Nor do you tell Ram.

You make sure to smile brightly around Lakshman, to laugh at every thing, but his face grows longer and more drawn, and when he’s home Ram’s worry lines deepen. You tell Lakshman it’s all sorted out now.

He says, “You think I can’t see what it is?”

Two days later he tells Ram he’s going back to Mumbai. The brothers, both full of silences, look more alike than you have seen them outside dreams.

The night Lakshman leaves you find a small vial, stripped of labels, on your bedside table.

5. Ravana

While both the men were gone, ten-headed Ravana came to the cottage disguised as a wise man; and Sita, compelled by the laws of hospitality, left her circle to care for the guest. The moment her foot touched ground outside Lakshman’s white line, Ravana snatched her up and carried her away to his palace.

The perfect wife would flush these down the toilet. Or better, tell her husband everything.

You drop the vial into the drawer. Under it is a sheaf of papers covered in tiny print. Warnings, overdose, side effects. In red pen across this, Lakshman has written BE CAREFUL.

You shove that into the drawer too, resolving to tell Ram, to work out what to do together. Hoping you won’t have to admit everything.

You’d left him nursing a drink in the living room, wondering why his brother left; you fetch a glass of water and ask if he’s coming to bed. He says, “Later.”

You go back to bed. The pills are white, engraved with Xes. You step out of the circle.

You dream of floating, weightless, and wake with cheeks strange from smiling. Your neck’s not stiff. You wiggle your head back and forth, alive after all.

Later you dance, and you dance, and you dance.

The single pills stop working far too soon. You can’t focus. You can’t sit down for long. In your dreams you’re falling, always falling, never touching earth. You want to scream at Ram. Some nights later, unable to sleep, you take a second pill and fall back, smiling again.

Light behind your eyes becomes a plane of perfect triangles, white, black, white, black, and the most beautiful golden deer you’ve ever seen steps out from geometry, from stories, looking straight at you with one hoof raised. You call for Ram. The deer startles, bounds away over triangle grass and triangle bushes, a green too sharp to grow: traffic lights, cellophane, glass.

You’re not asking him to chase it. You know this tale too well, and its green is from too far a land. But Ram doesn’t wait to hear you; he just says “Later,” and runs after the deer as though it was Lakshman, and maybe it is. Lakshman is gone, after all.

Ram is beautiful as the deer, kurta glowing against that cutting green. And though you know he’s gone and you’ll soon hear his scream, you cannot stop smiling.

“I thought we’d see a dance show for your birthday,” says Ram one day. “But I’ll have to work late. Maybe next weekend?”

You beam at him. Five pills last night; resentment lives outside your glass-lined cage.

“Are you all right?” The frown on his face makes you giggle, then sneeze. The house is full of sharp-edged dust these days. “Of course I’m all right,” you say, but someone’s voice is screaming those words and someone’s tears blur the sight of someone’s fists pounding, pounding against Ram’s white kurta as he holds you.

Faces glare through the lattice. Tens, hundreds of faces, all the same, ten heads on one man leering at you, reaching for you through fragile interwoven triangles. “Rama will come for me,” you tell the faces.

They laugh.

And you knew all along that Ravana was waiting, that you courted him. Only triangles keep him away, now; white pills and knife-edges and the hope of Ram.

Who wears Lakshman’s face, sometimes.

You scream curses. Someone shakes you, holds you. Smudge-eyed, frightened, as he never is in tales. With triangles in his hair and dirt-green walls behind him, and that dead antiseptic smell underneath. For an instant he is blue. You snicker.

“Sita,” he says in a tenth of his voice, “where have you gone?”

6. Rescue

The monkey people had engineers who could build a bridge to Lanka. To win their aid, Rama helped their king’s brother kill him and usurp his throne. We’re told this was honorable, but maybe he just did anything he had to. He needed Sita back. Then.

You wake in a room not your own, dressed in clinical widow’s white. The bed, blanket, IV drip are sharp-edged with green, and the many-headed demon comes back in every counselor who talks you down—to four pills, three, two.

You taste his copper sweat in the air. You hear him speak from five mouths at once. He’s hurting you. You dream of him, reaching for you while you stand at the edge of his tower. You think of stepping off that edge, and hear yourself crying for Mama.

You fall into yourself instead.

The tower is gone. The rehab people are just people now; people who help you build a bridge that Ram can cross.

And he comes, scared, stubborn, too tired for heroism, cutting through every face the demon wears. You walk through fire to stand with him again.

Lakshman, he says later, told him about the pills. The anger in his voice is a thin skin over hurt. “What did I do wrong,” he says, “that stopped you talking to me?”

You say, “When were you there to talk to?”

He loses a breath, crumples, like you punched him in the stomach. You start to stammer an apology. He reaches out to cup your cheek. “No,” he murmurs, pain shimmering in his eyes, “Please don’t say sorry. Not for being right.”

He stays till they chase him out, and he comes back and back again. He sneaks Hindi films in on his laptop; and when you dance along, sitting up in bed, he dances with you.

7. Sanctuary

The story ends here, sometimes; the demon vanquished, Ram triumphant, reunited with his perfect wife and returned from exile to reign in peace.

And sometimes it goes on: Lord Rama’s people start whispering that Sita has been tainted; it is shameful to keep a wife who’d been under another man’s roof. Rama listens to his people.

And exiles her again.

The doctors say a lot of long words that mean the drug hit you unusually. Their lips thin when you explain this to Ram, and they add that you never should have been medicated in the first place. They suggest a change of location to help you recover.

“To lower my chances of relapse, they mean,” you say. Their lips thin again.

Ram ignores them. “I’ve been wondering,” he says. “if you might heal better back home. With your parents. Or in an ashram, maybe? With simple food and clean air and peace.”

His wistful tone speaks of jasmine, of rain on fresh banana leaves, but the words stop your breath. You know this version of the story. Once Sita goes to the ashram, Rama will never take her back. He’ll take the twins she bears, but he’ll hesitate over her—and she will give up. She’ll call on the Earth her mother one last time; the earth will open under her feet, proving finally that she is pure.

You think of falling into safe earth, of cool dark-smelling damp.

You think of what you’d lose.

You call Mama, tell her. Everything. You talk and cry and talk into the phone, and she is silent for so long you think the call has dropped. “Mama?”

“I’m here,” she says.

“What should I do?”

“You should come home, beti,” Mama says. Her voice is old and thin. And calm. “But tell me one thing first. Where is home?”

Even the old tales end two ways. Why not a third?

“I’m not leaving,” you tell Ram that night, “unless you come too.” Your finger is on his lips before he can protest. “Call Lakshman back,” you say. “You know he’ll take over here if you ask. What you maybe don’t know is that he wants to. Let him help us, love.”

He looks at you, hopeful, uncertain; no more perfect than you are. Blood pounds in your ears. “Come home with me,” you say. “We’ll start a different story.”

His lips find yours, and you say no more.

Contributing Authors

Molshree Ambastha is a doctor’s daughter, the wife of a mining engineer and the proud mother of a son. She completed her B.Sc. (Mathematics) from Vikram University, Ujjain, and an M.Sc. (I.T.) from Pt. Ravi Shankar Shukla University, Raipur. Currently, she works as a Guest Lecturer at the Government College, Raipur and as an anchor at the local Doordarshan Kendra. Earlier, she had been a software developer with an IT Company. She is fond of reading, found Painting and writing.

Neelanjana Banerjee is a writer, editor and teacher whose creative work has appeared in PANK Magazine, The Literary Review, World Literature Today, Asian Pacific American Journal, Nimrod, A Room of One’s Own, Desilit, and more. She is a coeditor of Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas Press, 2010). In 2007, she received an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She has worked in main stream, ethnic and independent media over ten years, focused especially on helping young people tell their own stories.

Priya Sarukkai Chabria is a poet, writer and translator. Recipient of the Indian Government’s Senior Fellowship to Outstanding Artists she has worked on the Rasa Theory of Aesthetic Rapture, co-founded a club that showed silent films, written the script for Dhaara that was showcased at Oberhausen Film Festival and collaborated with classical dancer Malavika Sarukkai. Her books include two poetry collections, a novel and one speculative fiction narrative; her work is anthologized and on numerous websites. In 2012 Immersions in Bombay/Mumbai: Essays and Love: Stories will be published followed by The Autobiography of a Goddess, translations of eight century Tamil mystic Aandaal hymns, and a book on cinema. She’s at www.priyawriting.com.

Indrapramit Das is a writer and artist from Kolkata, India, currently living in Vancouver, Canada. His fiction has appeared in Apex Maga zine, Redstone Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online and New Scientist CultureLab. He has also written reviews for Strange Horizons and Tan gent Online. Having graduated with his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, he’s ready to flounder about trying to be an adult until someone publishes his novel (which might make him officially an adult). To find out more, visit http://flavors.me/indradas.

Abha Dawesar is the internationally acclaimed author of such novels as Babyji and Family Values. She has been honored with ALA’s Stonewall Award, a Lambda Award, a NYFA Fellowship in Fiction, and several writing residencies. More information on her is available at www.abhadawesar.com.

Sucharita Dutta-Asane is based in Pune. She did her M.Phil in En glish Literature from the Department of English, University of Pune. In 2008, she received Oxford Bookstores debuting writers’ (second) prize for her anthology, The Jungle Stories. Her short stories have appeared in Ripples, an Anthology of Short Stories by Indian Women Writers (2010) and in Unisun Publications’ Vanilla Desires (2010). Her articles, book reviews, short stories, and a novella, Petals in the Sun have been extensively published across electronic publications. At present she juggles writing with editing of fiction manuscripts and bringing up two very young kids.

Lavanya Karthik When not writing and illustrating children’s books, Lavanya Karthik writes creepy tales about three headed mutants and clockwork women. Her short fiction has appeared in Crossed Genres; her comics have appeared in Comix India Vol.2 and 4, Kindle magazine, and several issues of the Indian Chicken Soup for the Soul series. She also relives her misadventures in writing, parenting and pretending to be sane, through her comic strip Maya Bizarre (www.mayabizarre.tumblr.com). She also blogs at: www.lavanyakarthik.wordpress.com

Swapna Kishore juggles multiple roles in her personal and professional life, and one major role is that of a writer. She has written technical books and a business novel. She blogs regularly, creates content for websites, and writes fiction. Writing helps her sort out her thoughts. She especially enjoys writing fiction because it lets her explore worlds well beyond the boundaries of reality and speculate about “what if worlds. Her stories have appeared online and in print, in reputed international and Indian publications.

Tabish Khair Born in Ranchi in 1966 and educated in Gaya, Bihar, Tabish Khair has won the All India Poetry Prize and been shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asia, the Encore Award (UK), the Crossword Vodafone Award and the Hindu Best Fiction Prize. His new novel The Thing About Thugs is already being translated into four languages. He is completing a play, The One Percent Agency, and a new novel, How to Fight Islamist Terror From the Missionary Position, both due in 2012. Web: http://www.tabishkhair.co.uk

Sharanya Manivannan’s first book of poems, Witchcraft, was published in 2008 and her fiction, essays and poetry have appeared in Drunken Boat, Killing the Buddha, The Nervous Breakdown, Pratilipi and elsewhere. She can be found online at www.sharanyamanivannan.com.

Kuzhali Manickavel is the author of a short story collection called In sects Are Just like You and Me except Some of Them Have Wings and an echapbook called Eating Sugar, Telling Lies, both of which are available from Blaft Publications. She lives in a small temple town on the coast of South India and blogs at http://thirdworldghettovampire.blogspot.com/.

Mary Anne Mohanraj wrote Bodies in Motion (a finalist for the Asian American Book Awards and translated into six languages) and nine other titles. Mohanraj received a Breaking Barriers Award from the Chicago Foundation for Women for her work in Asian American arts organizing, and has also won an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship. Mohanraj is Clinical Assistant Professor of fiction and literature and Assoc. Dir. of Asian and Asian American Studies at the Univ. of Illinois. She serves as Exec. Dir. of DesiLit (www.desilit.org). Mohanraj lives in Oak Park with her partner, Kevin, and their two small children.

Shweta Narayan was born in India and has lived in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, Scotland, and California. As a child, she says, she got really angry with Ram; this story has its seeds in that anger. Shweta’s fiction has been published in Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and the anthologies The Beastly Bride, Clockwork Phoenix 3, and Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, among others, and her poetry in places like Stone Telling, Goblin Fruit, and Strange Horizons. Shweta was the Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship recipient at Clarion 2007. She hangs out online at shwetanarayan.livejournal.com.

Manjula Padmanabhan (b. 1953), writer and artist. Her books include Hot Death, Cold Soup, Getting There and This is Suki! Her most recent novel is ESCAPE, set in a dystopian future. Harvest, her fifth play, won first prize in the 1997 Onassis Award for Theatre in Greece. Her comic strip character Suki appeared weekly in Bombay’s Sunday Observer (1982-86), daily in New Delhi’s Pioneer (1991-97). She has illustrated some twenty-five books for children, the most recent of which is The World Tour Mystery, a picture-puzzle book.

Pratap Reddy was born in India and moved to Canada in 2002. He writes about the agonies and the angst (on occasion the ecstasies) of newly arrived immigrant. His work has been published in Canada, the USA and India. He has received the Best Emerging Literary Artist award from the Mississauga Arts Council, and a grant from the Ontario Arts Council. He has completed a creative writing program from the Humber School for Writers.

Julia A. Rosenthal is a freelance writer in Chicago. Her stories have appeared in the US-based publications A cappella Zoo, Ensorcelled, Kaleidotrope, and Columbia College’s annual Story Week Reader. She is working on a novel about the murder of a young king in early medieval England. Julia’s first encounter with the Ramayana came through R.K. Narayan’s prose translation, to which she is deeply grateful for the inspiration for The Mango Grove.

Pervin Saket is a writer and editor. Her fiction has been published in Kalkion, Page Forty Seven, Katha, Ripples and Perspectives among other print and online anthologies. She has written a collection of poems A Tinge of Turmeric and her poems have featured in Kritya and The Binnacle. Pervin conducts workshops on Creative Writing and Communication Skills, as well as Teacher Training programmes in various educational institutions. She blogs at www.pervinsaket.blogspot.com.

K. Srilata A poet, fiction writer and translator, Srilata is Associate Professor of English at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. Her books include a novel Table for Four (long listed for the Man Asian literary prize and published by Penguin in 2011, two collections of poems titled Arriving Shortly (Writers Workshop, 2011) and Seablue Child (Brown Critique, 2000), The Other Half of the Coconut: Women Writing Self- Respect History (Zubaan, 2003), Short Fiction from South India (OUP, 2007) and Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry (Penguin/Viking, 2009).

Srilata was a Charles Wallace Writer-in-residence at the University of Stirling, Scotland as well as a Sangam house writer-in- residence.

Aishwarya Subramanian was born in the West Indies and grew up in England and India, a list of loyalties that makes watching cricket a fraught activity. She went to Delhi University and Trinity College Dublin, and worked for two years in the children’s publishing industry. She currently lives and works in Delhi as a freelance editor, columnist and book reviewer. She sometimes writes short fiction, of which this is her third published work. She also maintains a blog, where she talks mostly about books.

Lavie Tidhar’s most recent novel is Osama (PS Publishing). It has been compared to Philip K. Dick’s seminal work, The Man in the High Castle by both the Guardian and the Financial Times. His other works include steampunk trilogy The Bookman, Camera Obscura and the forth coming The Great Game, all three from Angry Robot, the novellas Jesus k The Eightfold Path (Immersion Press), Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God (PS Publishing) and many others.

Tori Truslow grew up in Bangkok, and now lives in the UK, having recently graduated from the Warwick MA in Writing. Her fiction usually features some combination of storytelling, cities, the sea, gender and ghosts, and has appeared in Clockwork Phoenix 3, Verge 2011, Paraxis and elsewhere. Find her online at http://toritruslow.com. She is grateful to the Sala Chalermkrung Royal Theatre for the inspiration, and would like to point any visitors to Thailand towards it—it’s one of the few places you can still see a traditional Khon performance of the Ramakian.

Deepak Unnikrishnan writes. Short stories, mainly. He is Abu Dhabian, manufactured and product tested in the capital of the Emirates by a quiet yet befuddled South Indian family. His first set of shorts, Coffee Stains in a Camel’s Teacup (2004) was published by Vijitha Yapa Publications (Colombo, Sri Lanka). His work—essays, fiction—have appeared in Drunken Boat, Himal Southasian, Ego Magazine, among others.

Abirami A. Velliangiri has been published in Danse Macabre, Nether Magazine and The Brown Critique. In 2010, she won the third place in Poetry with Prakirti’s All-India poetry contest. Since childhood the Ramayana has taken many shapes in her mind, transforming from a beloved bedtime story, to racial propaganda, to a sublime love story and more recently to one of the most intense tragedies Indian literature has produced. She is now pursing her Masters at the London School of Economics and Political Science and enjoys poetry, prose and good cinema.

About the Editors

Anil Menon's stories have appeared in a variety of international magazines and anthologies. The Beast with Nine Billion Feet was published by Young Zubaan and shortlisted for the Vodafone-Crossword Prize. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.

Vandana Singh was born and raised in New Delhi. As a teenager, she acquired a life-long interest in peace and environmental issues, and was one of the founders of the environmental NGO, Kalpavriksh. Her critically acclaimed anthology The Woman Who Thought She Was A Planet, and her series for children featuring the character Younguncle, are published by Zubaan.

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