Word Count: 2337 | Reading Time: 8 min
The Grieving Mother takes her in when she is ten, one of the few survivors of the famine that ravaged the southernmost villages, now orphaned and wandering the streets, caught by the Grieving Mother’s henchmen. “Scrawny,” she says, prodding her this way and that, pinching her ribs, sparse as sitar strings. “Far too scrawny. But your hair,” the Grieving Mother touches the end of her braid, long and dark, the last remnant of her mother. She shies away, afraid the Grieving Mother might chop it all away. But the Grieving Mother only shakes her head, drawing the ends of her white odhni over her bald head. “Well. I can do something with that.”
She is given a new name, Charukeshi, which means “beautiful hair,” long enough to be pulled by grasping hands, silky enough to slip through their fingers if she is fast enough. Charukeshi, Charukeshi, Charu, Charu, Charu. The name chases her in her dreams, and soon she forgets the name she had before, deliberately burying it under heaps of memories. The touch of her mother’s hand. The sound of her father’s voice. The shape of her sister’s smile.
#
The House of Grief is a strange place. All the girls there are like Charu, given new names and new clothes, sewn from pale death shrouds left at their doorstep by grief-stricken widows, the mothers of those who have lost sons in the war or daughters in the womb, or the families of those who seek to keep the death-god at bay through charity. Sometimes there are offerings too, wrapped in coarse cloth, lac and incense and coin, or soft milk sweets with a brittle nutty center, which disappear into the oblong pockets of their tunics as soon as they arrive. Delicacies are hard to come by in the House of Grief, as everything is either too spicy or too bland, and always, always steaming hot. “You must get used to the burn,” says the Grieving Mother, ladling a spoon of scalding hot tea on Charu’s tongue. She yelps in pain, but the Grieving Mother holds her jaw tight, and there is no escape. “You must get used to the taste of death.”
#
Once a month, the House of Grief opens their great mahogany doors to the common folk, and the girls march out in a single file behind the Grieving Mother, like a line of ducklings following their mother. The Grieving Mother wears mourning white as well, but the fabric is too rich; eri silk from the eastern hills, embroidered with jasmines and water lilies, and the hem of her odhni is stitched with cowrie shells. “My people! My people! Hear, my lament! For years I have stayed true in service of our nameless lord, for years I have saved and grieved my girls. Hear now, my lament, to be married to my purpose and yet remain unwed, to be motherless even as I rear these girls. Hear now, my lament, look upon my girls, and give what your heart wills, and no more.”
There is a basket passed around, of woven cane, that quickly fills up with offerings; silver charms torn from the veils of believing women, a gold ring parted from a beloved’s finger, an ivory pipe along with a pouch of tobacco, a fine long hunting knife, sewing needles and bobbins of coarse white thread, lentils and rice and sugar and salt, fruits and vegetables and canisters of spices, and a whole lot of oil and wax and wood. The basket overflows in no time, and one girl races inside to get another, then another, then another, until every single girl has a basket in her hand, carrying them dutifully inside. It is the only time the girls ever see the sun.
#
The spoils are easily divided; the kitchens take most of the share, for good reason, and the Grieving Mother’s hulking henchmen take the silver, but she herself keeps the gold ring, in a sandalwood sandook that is tucked away inside a loose brick, and the pipe and tobacco as well, which she smokes from time to time, blowing grey rings in the early morning dawn. The girls are handed the thread and the needles, and given mounds of death-shrouds to sew. A girl called Padmamukhi (for her soft, lotus-pink mouth) is particularly skilled at it, sewing useful things, such as an extra pocket or two in the girls’ trousers, and secret pouches lining the inside of their tunics to slip in coin from the daily offerings, but the Grieving Mother takes note of it, and the very next day Padmamukhi is gone.
“A childless weaver couple came to me,” explains the Grieving Mother. “I could not refuse.”
But Charu has seen the cart rolling away from their window at the crack of dawn, Padmamukhi at the back of it, hands bound and gagged, a large bearded man crouched over her like a malignant ghost. She has seen Charu, and tried to signal to her perhaps, but the man clamped a hand down on her shoulder, and Padmamukhi quieted.
Charu too keeps quiet. There are many childless weaver couples in the kingdom, and the House of Grief has far too many girls to miss one.
#
They are taught to worship the nameless death-god, kneeling on the cold stone floor, reciting verses in a language none are familiar with. “You must trust in him as you would in your own husband,” says the Grieving Mother, voice sonorous in the prayer hall. “You must love him as you would your beloved, and must do all you can to please him.”
Earlier this year, a girl called Meenakshi, meaning fish-eyed, an ironic name for a desert-born girl, had fought with the Grieving Mother, hurling abuses at her, some too coarse to bear repeating. Before the henchmen came to drag her away, she ran to the prayer hall and broke the idol of the nameless death-god. It was expensive, carved of coloured lac, but also soft, and shattered easily, coming apart in her rage. “You are all fools,” she spat, kicking and screaming in the henchman’s arms. “All of you, you do not even know—”
“Soon,” says the Grieving Mother, stroking a hand through Charu’s hair, drawing her back to the present. The new idol is stone, not lac, and secured firmly to a wooden pedestal. All the girls bow to it proper. Meenakshi has not been seen since, and rumor is that she has been sent away, to the asylum near the sea, to calm her spirits. Charu does not know her fate this time. “Soon, you shall be united with him in both flesh and spirit.”
#
The pyre is tall, tall enough to tower over a grown man, and Charu is only a girl, sixteen harvests past, still unsteady on her feet from the drugs dissolved in her morning tea.
The elderly priest sniffs disdainfully at her as she clambers disgracefully atop the pyre, the thin cotton of her shroud-make saree doing nothing to protect her from the rough bark. The mogra flowers threaded through her head seem to weigh her down, the centers threaded through with bits of lac. Charu wonders what the other girls have been told this time. Asylum, weavers, the truth?
“Please,” she says, when the elderly priest comes to bless her one last time, the torch in his hand scorching with heat. She knows she is supposed to stay quiet, to succumb herself to the pain as many have done before her, but she cannot help herself. “Please, I cannot—”
“Child,” says the Grieving Mother with sickly benevolence. “Come now. Your bridegroom awaits.”
She steps forward, bending down to kiss Charu’s forehead. Charu notices the strands of pearls round her throat, each perfect and pink as the dawn, far too rich for a priestess of the nameless death-god. The Grieving Mother smiles, and turns one pearl to the side. Charu stares at the engraving; the name sending an unexpected bolt of pain through her chest. “She was a difficult bride, I must say. But in the end, for all her nakhre, she went gracefully to her husband. Once you join her,” murmurs the Grieving Mother, “I shall have a pearl of your name too, straight from the king’s hand. You shall be with your sisters forevermore, as Meenakshi is.”
“Please,” pleads Charu, for what else can she do, raised in this death-cult to be the bride of a cruel god? “Please, mercy—”
“Charukeshi,” says the Grieving Mother, sounding affectionately wearied, as if she were protesting her curfew instead of her self-immolation. “We must please your bridegroom, must we not? He has been good to us, so good. Not a single calamity has struck us since we have sent him brides of his choosing. Do you want the famine to strike again?” She asks, patronizing. “Do you want another girl orphaned on the streets like you were?”
“So you could take her and burn her?” Charu spits.
The Grieving Mother stiffens. “I saved you, dirty peasant scum!” The anger lacing her voice crackles like the torch in the elderly priests’ hands. “This is a high honor, too high for the likes of you. Consider it a blessing that our lord is not too picky at the moment, or you would not have been fit to even be kindling to this holy marriage-pyre.”
“Another dose,” Charu bargains, because this is all she has now, only a dulling of the pain before her marriage-pyre engulfs her for good. “Please, just—”
“No,” the Grieving Mother speaks softly, stroking her hair, almost maternal. “You cannot arrive drugged out of your mind at your bridegroom’s door, after all.”
Charu trembles, this time with rage. Why has she not been allowed to indulge just this once, to dull her senses just a little? Did the death-god care only if his bride is a little tipsy, and not at all if she is charred to the bone?
“Be brave now, Charukeshi,” says the Grieving Mother, stepping back so the elderly priest can light the pyre. Charu shuts her eyes, preparing for the worst, against the thick onslaught of useless tears that clog her throat. Do not grieve, she hears the priest say, as the flames lick the kerosene-dipped hem of her saree, Mother do not grieve—
#
She jumps from her marriage-pyre, engulfed in flame, the ends of her hair scorching with heat. Charu hears a few stuttered gasps, and the elderly priest drops the lit log and steps back in fear, raising his hands above his face. But she is not headed for him.
“Charukeshi,” the Grieving Mother tries to command, but the name holds no meaning now, burnt away like the length of her hair, scattered in the air. The Grieving Mother half-turns, ready to flee, but Charu lurches forward, fingers looping round the precious strands of pearls, the blood-price of her sisters’ deaths, snapping free in her hand as she pulls the Grieving Mother into an embrace. The Grieving Mother shrieks for the elderly priest, but he has already turned tail, his cowardice winning over his shaky sense of justice.
“You,” the Grieving Mother snarls, pushing at Charu’s chest in an attempt to save herself, but Charu holds firm, holds her through the burning pain, watching in dim fascination as flames catch at the ends of the Grieving Mother’s saree, for she too, had worn shroud-make today, intending to appear pious before the priest. The Grieving Mother shrieks in pain, twin to Charu’s own, and even through the clogging weight of smoke in her throat, Charu manages a hoarse laugh.
#
When the sadhvi passes by, the village quiets. Children pause in their games of sticks and stones and make-believe to gawk at her, the men step back like a flock of frightened pigeons, each looking to the other for direction on how best to proceed. They are not used to seeing a woman wandering alone, much less one that looks like her. The women are bolder. They prod the merchants gone still to take action; cajole them into parting with a bit of coin here, a handful of nuts there, fill some water in a gourd; gathering it all up in their shawls. The sadhvi takes it, fingers trembling.
“Bless us, Mother,” speaks one, heavily pregnant. “Bless my child.”
The sadhvi says nothing, but that is not surprising; many holy folk take on vows of silence. It only cements their belief in her. Instead, she touches the woman’s protruding belly for a moment, and holds her palm open. The woman gasps, but takes it, for she may well invite a curse if she refuses a holy woman’s gift. The sadhvi makes to leave then, and the crowd parts for her, watching her go in soft bewilderment.
“A pearl!” exclaims the woman’s husband, appearing by her side.
“That looks straight from the king’s coffers,” muses another, holding it up to the light. “What are the chances she stole it?”
“How dare you!” a woman smacks the offending man on his shoulder, likely his wife. “To speak thus about a sadhvi! Have you no shame?”
“Did not look much like a sadhvi,” grumbles the grain merchant, adjusting his scales. “All those burns…”
“Perhaps she really is a miscreant,” says his partner. “Did anyone get a good look at her face?”
“As if you can see anything underneath that damn odhni,” the grain merchant snorts derisively. “It is strange business, all, and none of ours. No need to get ourselves worked up, or get the king’s men involved.”
There is a chorus of half-hearted agreements. The whispers and murmurs soon subside. The sadhvi is a fading silhouette in the distance now, pitted against the setting sun. The pregnant woman stays watching her for a while, long until after everyone is gone. “Wonder who she really is,” she muses, the pearl strangely warm in her palm.
END