Tulsi

He flaunts my chastity like a bag of gold, accruing power wherever he goes. I am his wife, the most devoted and godly woman a man could wish for. Without him, I am no one. Yet without me, all he has would crumble and fall away: I spend my days praying for my husband’s good fortune, a peaceful kingdom and my own family’s health. In return for my prayers, my goddess allows my husband to succeed in his ventures. This deal was brokered on our wedding night, when I knelt to pray just before the marriage was consummated. The gods have always flitted in and out of my dreams, their words never making any sense to me – a lowly human. They never seem to detect me listening in the dark or, if they are aware of my presence, they do not care. Only on that hot, humid night did any of them try to speak to me. Since then, my blessing from the goddess of fortune has been held fast by two things: my obedience to my husband, and my dedication to tending my goddess’s beloved tulsi plants after I have finished praying. Each night, just as dark falls, I hurry to my own corner of the gardens and inhale the vegetal smell of life taking root as it rises from the cooling soil. A year after this first blessing, I hear the god of death in a dream. His voice is shot through with snakes and blades, his image merely a dark shadow. “Why should this human prosper when so many in his land do not?” says the god of death. “Give him to me and I will show his people what it is to live and die in their world as true men and women, ungoverned by the favor of the gods and reliant only on their own wits.” I wonder who he speaks of. Another god replies. I recognise his voice as that of the consort of my goddess. The preserver of worlds. “You are right. He is too powerful. I fear my lady has indulged his wife too much.” A prickle travels down my spine, solidifying into a slab of unease that sits just above my bowels. “His wife?” “She who prays to my lady all day, every day. The most pious and chaste human woman in the land. Why else would her husband prosper so?” The voices continue, but they fade as wakefulness intrudes. I do not go back to sleep. I turn the conversation over and over in my mind in the following days, but their plans become clear to me when it is much too late. My husband comes to me in my bed one night. He is a fine man, tall with a luxurious beard and hands that can crush a man’s head in seconds. That is what my mother kept saying when she gave me to him, after rumors of my god-blessed dreams reached the palace: a fine man who will look after me and bring wealth to our family. I hold my mother’s words in my head on those days when I do not feel like praying yet again, or when he is rougher than usual with me. Everything I do is for my family – my pious mother, my humble father and my three younger sisters who I cared for from their birth. They raised me up from our impoverished village by offering me to the king. It is my duty to repay them. And the handsomest reward of all would be a child to strengthen my family’s connections to the throne. On this night, he seems different. Quieter. I make the usual display of welcoming him into my bed – a look, a certain shy smile, a flash of thigh under my nightgown. All of these are the tricks I learned from an older cousin before the wedding. He avoids my eyes, hesitating to touch me. Is he thinking of his other women, secreted throughout the kingdom? I want to tell him that I do not care. As much as I have tried, I do not love him. Only my plants and my family, who I have not seen since the wedding, and who I long to embrace. Yet I dare not speak the words. Instead, I wait, and eventually he lays his giant hands on me to remove my nightgown. His fingers seem smoother than usual; no callouses drag against my skin. His eyes finally meet my own in the moment that he enters me. With a jolt, I see the trick. I squirm away from under him and out of the bed, but it is pointless. He laughs the laugh of a careless young man and his disguise falls away, revealing taut, firm skin with a blue-gray tint. Dismay at the betrayal washes over me. We are ruined. I wrap a sheet around myself. “Why?” I whisper, even though I already know. The god stands and gives me a mocking bow. His smile is as warm and gentle as a sun-touched breeze. I shiver. “To redress the balance. This is right. You know this, deep down. And look! Now you are free.” I shake my head, but he is already gone, leaving me alone with the cooling bed, where new life will never take root.

*

My husband’s ventures fail, one after the other. His horde of soldiers grows smaller as the clerks blow the dust from pots of red ink. He begs me to pray for longer. I spend long nights kneeling on the cold marble floor of our shrine, feeling like a low, sullied fraud. I wash myself more frequently, scrubbing hard with my washcloth and leaving sore red marks down the inside of my thighs. Worry for my neglected tulsi needles at me whenever my thoughts stray from my incantations. An air of revolution pervades the land as our people realize we are not as blessed as we once were. They refuse to pay their taxes and burn our effigies in town squares across the kingdom. Eventually, bereft of gold, we dismiss most of our servants and pack up our things. I carefully place my plants in a sack filled with soil and let my maids deal with everything else. They linger over their tasks and look at me sullenly, eager to leave and find work in a wealthier household. When I depart my rooms, the harsh cawing of their laughter floats on the air after me. My king does not know the cause of our sudden fall, but he suspects. He must. He cannot bear to look at me, let alone touch me. On the day we are due to travel to live with my king’s smiling, treacherous brother and continue our reign from that viper’s nest, a familiar black shadow steals into the palace. I see it out of the corner of my eye and tremble. It is time. I shout at my husband even as I know it is useless to do so. “You must leave! Now!” He only gapes at me in confusion. The shadow finds him and wraps itself around his neck. My king dies choking, an expression of horror fixed on his face. I stand and look at his body afterwards, but I do not weep. Instead, I think of the scent of tulsi, the way it intoxicates in its plant form, yet clears the mind when brewed into tea. How I tend it for my goddess, day after day, and this still corpse is the thanks I receive. An unfamiliar feeling rushes through me. A curse unfolds inside me, thick as blood, dirty like my shame and full of death. I hurry to our shrine as if in a trance and point at a statue with a blue-grey sheen. I give voice to the curse and the air becomes charged with my fury. I collapse and sob when the last word leaves me. I have nothing left.  

*

I am supposed to let death take me. My king was my life and now it is gone. Even worse, I have been spoiled by that trickster, the one who claims to preserve us all. Yet a tendril of resistance winds its way through my veins and blooms into a hardy determination. He said that I was free, and he was right. It is time to live my life. I go to my family in both sorrow and joy, but they reject me, calling me the devil’s widow. They send men to snuff out my life, but I escape them, heartbroken, and flee to the coast with nothing but the old, sturdy robe for gardening that I wear and the sack of tulsi. I find some sandy soil within view of the beach, and settle my plants into it. Whether they will live, I do not know, but I may as well take the chance. I go to the deserted beach and eat the salty seaweed and soft green algae that the tide brings each day. I find a spring near my tulsi where I drink cool, clean water. I sleep in an abandoned hut, my dreams haunted by the winding shoots of a plant as black as death. My husband never enters my dreams. His story will be wielded as a warning to others tempted to take more from the gods than they deserve, but for both myself and the kingdom now in the hands of my brother-in-law, he is gone and forgotten. As is my past self, the most pious woman in the land. Who I am now, I do not know. One night, I am stirred from my uneasy slumber by the sound of weeping. I sit up and follow the sound outside. The goddess of fortune has come to cast her judgment on me. This is no dream, for the gods stopped visiting my dreams the night my chastity was broken. She is half-submerged in the ocean, her tears mingling with the sea. The gold edging of her sodden sari is still bright despite the water and catches the light of the moon, dazzling me. I fling myself onto the sand in a gesture of supplication. “Why do you weep, holy one?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. “He is gone. My love, my life,” she wails. My heart goes out to her, but I stay silent. She must know who did this to her. If she is merciful, my death will be quick and quiet, out here on the edge of the world. I should be fearful, but I am not. If I am destined to die now, so be it. “Speak! Tell me where he has gone.” Her voice booms across the water, disturbing gulls who squawk and take off from the distant cliffs, wheeling into the night sky. “I do not know. I am sorry, holy one. I spoke in anger and did not think of the consequences.” A half-truth; I did not know that her tulsi gave me the power to do what I did. It does not matter now. “I watched it happen,” she says, her tone less imperious and almost confiding. “His skin all blackened, from head to toe. His beautiful skin. His form stiffened into stone and then he vanished, right in front of me.” I look away from her sorrowful gaze. “I am sorry.” “Spare me your pitiful sentiments. You should pay, young one,” she says, her trembling voice becoming steadier with each word. “You know not what you have unleashed by taking my love away from me. Not just your death, but the deaths of those close to you.” “So kill me,” I say, turning my face up to meet her glowing eyes. “Do it now. Your consort stole my life the moment that he tricked me. I have no care for it now.” She examines my face for a long time. I do not blink. Then, “No.” “No?” “You do not want to die. And I cannot extinguish your life now, not even in revenge for him. I heard your prayers, young one. Even now, you fight to preserve my tulsi. For many years, I bathed in the glow of your regard. You say my lord stole your life, but you had already given it to me. Now I wonder, what could you have done? Who could you have been if you had not married your king?” I look away from her. She is only voicing the thoughts that have plagued me since my king’s murder, but they are hard to hear. I do not know how old I am, or how long I was married. My life skipped from birth to childhood to womanhood in the blink of an eye. Then everything paused for me, there in the silver palace with my prayers and my plants. “You must make a choice, young one. Live as you are, human, poor and friendless. Childless. You will not be able to take your own life, however. The lord of death will come for you when he is ready, and when you least expect it. “Or take refuge in your tulsi, the fruits of your labor. Live by the sea in your plant form, taking succor from the earth and the monsoon rains. If my lord ever returns, he will be the one to wake you. I warn you, however: you will become his. My influence over your life will end the day that he comes.” I shiver as I weigh the choice in my mind. Loneliness and poverty, or contentment followed by a life of servitude to he who ruined me. Nausea rises within me as I picture his blue-gray skin on mine, forcing and taking until the end of the universe. As much as I am tempted by the possibility of transforming out of this barren existence, I cannot do it, violated and impoverished as I am. There is so much out there that I have never experienced, chained to my king and my tulsi for all these years. The possibility of living on my own terms appears in my mind, emanating a tempting glow. I snatch at it. “Leave me as I am, holy one.” She takes a quick, sharp breath. “Foolish human. You are sure?” I nod. “I have already spent my life in servitude to someone who thought himself greater than he was.” I hesitate, but say the words anyway. “I have no wish to spend eternity with a god cut from the same cloth.” Anger flashes across her face. “I will forgive you for that slur this time, young one, because you have just condemned yourself to a short, miserable life wishing you had chosen more carefully.” The moon’s light strengthens until it blinds me, forcing me to shield my eyes with my hand. A minute passes, then I dare to look again. The moon has turned the sea into churning milk, its beams caressing the water where the goddess had been. The ocean is empty. I turn around and walk slowly to my hut without looking back. Tomorrow, I leave this beach and her tulsi behind me.