With green Prem it was again over quickly. Slow plodding Prem, sent to work in the Big House to pay off his father’s debt, bringing home pats of butter each day. Being born was the quickest thing he’d ever done in his life. Prem loves the river. He loves flying his kite. He hates working the fields.
With gold Ragini there was some pain, and it took a long time, but that was the only trouble she ever gave her mother. Lucky gold Ragini with more marriage offers than any other Gopalpur girl. Ragini, hardly a woman, already married. She loves steaming her hair. She loved running her hands through her trousseau. She hates her brother-in-law accidentally brushing up against her.
White Sneha. She can’t remember Sneha’s birth . . . It’s all a haze now. Sneha with the beautiful eyes. She loves flowers . . . wading in the river . . . but beyond that what else?
Purple Mohit. What about Mohit? . . . Nothing. She remembers nothing. He’s her last born, still she doesn’t remember . . . and doesn’t remember. Only pain. Was it this painful with him too? All her births merge into one. Was it this one or the last one that hurt so bad? It’s odd that it should be so yellow . . .
‘Hey Devi, help me. Help me . . .’ Prayer is her only option. It is a plea, not just for her life, but for the outcome of her pain. Devi, the mother goddess, she is a finicky one; say her prayer all wrong and you could earn her wrath for eternity. ‘Hey Devi, accept your daughter. Hey Devi, save me.’
Devi knows all about suffering. Wasn’t Devi herself forced to hide in the Himalayas for ten days and nine nights to escape her pursuers, living off plants and seeds, but no grain? Come those same ten days and nine nights, Lata Bai and her daughters fast diligently, living off wild berries and water. By the third the mind starts to wander among forests of fruit, mountains of crisp twisted yellow jalebis oozing syrup, and rivers of sweet creamy lassi. The fourth night is probably the worst, when the mind returns and the stomach burns. An internal fire without any fuel. How is that possible? From then on, the girls feel little. Their desires leached from them like precious salt in desert soil.
She recites her childhood prayer. It is the one memory that hasn’t failed her. She’ll do well to placate the mother goddess. Everything lies in her eternal womb as seed. This day Lata Bai interprets the word seed literally. For herself, she asks that her seed might be pure. Uncorrupted. Whole. Male. For all those years of fasting, Devi must listen.
A long screech of pain. And then another. Another fifteen minutes and the pain becomes a slab, more blood and a huge slab of pain.
‘Devi, my mother, help me.’
Was it ever this bad? The clouds float over her head. She feels her self being pulled right into them. Floating away from her colourful children; and the yellow becomes white. She is dying and that’s why everything is so slow. Now the pain has gone into the clouds. It is floating away. Let me float in your arms forever, she prays.
Devi answers. Instead of taking her away somewhere peaceful, the clouds send a small, cold, stinging rain. Get up. Get up.
There is no other way.
She must stand.
She bunches her hands round the mustard plants. They come up with their roots. She would never have pulled out mustard plants by their roots on any other day. She turns to one side, her knees pressed into her chest. She vomits. A bit of grey slime trickles into her ear. She turns her head. The trickle climbs out of her ear and runs into her field. There is no white now, only pain. She is on one knee, then the other. She sits back on her heels, her bulbous belly slung low over her thighs. She can see it quiver. She takes her lumpy belly in her hands. She can feel her baby struggling to live inside.
‘Hey Devi. There is nothing but you. Keep and protect your daughter.’
In that moment her pain and prayer merge to become a conduit for Devi’s emotive love. She feels waves of energy flow and ebb through her like an open sea. The goddess’s manifestations unfold before her: Kali, eternity, governess of all cosmic destructive power; Varahi, the perfect cycle of life, digesting the whole universe without discrimination; Aindri, pure perception, the ticket holder to heaven; Vaishnavi, preserving, sustaining, maker of the cycle of birth and death: Maheshvari, bound by none, but compassionate to all; Kumari, the mother of valour; Lakshmi, benevolent, giving grace; Ishvari, pure reflection, holding authority over all universal wisdom; and Brahmi, governess of divine communication. Yes, she sees the energies, all-encompassing, governing what the eye can and cannot see. She knows why Devi must be all things to everyone. Is she herself not manifested in various forms: mother to her children, wife to her husband, friend to friend, sister to sister, daughter-in-law, worker . . . if she cannot simply be Lata Bai in her tiny world, then how can one form of the formless Devi satisfy all the longing in the universe?
Another pang, and then another. The flickering memory of a prayer learned falls into the pain and dies. She compromises, whispering the words into the earth. ‘Hey Devi, there is nothing but you. Wherever I look I see only you. Pick me up, give me your strength. Jai ho Devi, Devi jai ho.’ She can feel the baby’s head now. It is smooth and slippery like skinned fish. She pulls and then the baby pops right out on the wedding sari wrapping.
The baby’s head is filled with wet black hair, a full head of hair like a grown-up’s. Its skin is slippery smooth with whitish birth cream. A baby girl waves at the clouds, at the sky, at heaven. At Devi.
Another girl. With so much blood and pain, what did she get? Another girl, her girl parts swollen just to mock the mother. The baby’s body screams, Look at me, I am a girl.
The wind has started to pick up. The clouds are moving away, higher and higher. She can see the tip of a deformed electric pole miles away on the flat. They had promised electricity to Gopalpur years ago, that’s when they put in the garland of poles. But it was a broken promise, producing a broken garland, stopping miles short. What the villagers haven’t chipped away for firewood is going into the bellies of white ants. The last time she looked, the poles seemed to have been abandoned by the white ants too. It is a garland that won’t fulfil anyone’s dreams, not the insects and certainly not the humans. She can hear whimpering. The baby is alive.
How long has it been? The clouds have moved quite a distance and the wind is getting harsh. Soon there will be dust. Her body has started to shake with cold and fatigue. She links her fingers together, trying to still their shaking.
‘Devi, help me.’
Having asked for Devi’s help, it is now Lata Bai’s duty to show that she deserves it. What better way to show she deserves it than in receiving it? She must be renewed. She gropes for her husband’s knife. Her blind hand flicks this way and that above her head. At last, the feel of metal.
She looks at the knife. It is sharp. Sharp enough to cut the cord that unites mother and baby. Certainly sharp enough to kill. When does a female baby become a human being? At conception? At birth? At five? At puberty? At marriage? Never? When her parents can offer her a life?
The baby isn’t anything yet. Just blue and red and white. The white birth cream she should save. Take it off this girl and give it to the one who is getting married. It makes the skin soft. She holds the knife tight in her hand. She shifts, sending the baby rolling down the furrow, trailing cord. Grains of mud stick to the girl baby like black sesame seeds on a stick of caramel. She is on her elbows. The baby is crying – an open-mouthed full-throated cry, producing less than a trembling bleat. She can see right down the pink of her throat. What do they say about human babies? They are the most helpless creatures in the world. Calves walk within seconds of their birth. Turtle babies manage to rush to the sea and never forget where they were born. Snake babies fight with their siblings for survival. Bee babies eat their way out of their prisons. And human babies? What about howling helpless human babies? Useless-helpless-howling-human girl babies? She rolls after it, bringing the knife down swiftly and sharply.
For the rest of the world it may be the new millennium, but in Gopalpur time is static. Here the land lives quietly under the hills that rise from its dust, suddenly at ease with the sky, but shying away from the earth. The hills snare