Goddess Of Light

She was born on a full moon night.

Curly, raven tufts of hair, on a face so fair,

Swaying red feet and hand dancing to some godly music,

She appeared like the deity of light

Her presence announced, she wailed her might.

A warrior princess to her tribe,

The child would bring fortune rare, it had been prophesied

But before her fate could be ossified,

Before she could open her scrunched eyes

Her destiny was sealed,

Earthy human hands rolled the dice,

“It’s a girl”, whispered the midwife.

Maids shirked behind their veil, wringed hand with terror rife.

The mother, tired, clutched the baby to her bare bosom,

While her befuddled mind whispered, “Oh Shiva! Why can’t I make it right?”

As lightening streaked and thunder rolled, breaking the quiet of the night.

Five hundred torches had been flamed to welcome the heir

Rain doused them all, save one in the Sardar’s lair.

Head bent, tearing at his hair

He hurled the pagdi to the ground, cursed by the Gods

There would be no heir of his blood.

The thunder passed, the sun shone gold.

Trees bereft and then hued again, became a few summers old

The tiny mite was grown now and a sight to behold,

Lotus eyes rendered a soul, decades old

Lithe, wearing the colors of summer sky,

She clutched the scimitar, sheathed within the saree’s fold,

A part of her it was, the only known among the unknown

As she stood staring at her Sardar’s disease ravaged body, dead, stone cold.

Sardar and never her sire, she glanced at the lit pyre.

Across it stood clan men, ready to claim the land and acquire

The women stood huddled, smirking at her unbound hair and attire

Fools, the lot of them, adorned by gold, minds filled with desire,

They preened with false pride, walking blindly into the mire.

Scimitar twirling, she breathed in deep, breathing in the purity of Champa, controlling her ire,

But an aged agony, rancid and putrefying reminded her what she cannot aspire,

Gone was the man but still the chains wrapped her body and choked her soul

Chained and corralled in destiny’s play, she was but a mere foal.

Time passed and, on a day, as blank and sole,

Raiders marauded her clan and their land atop the forested knoll.

Her home burnt, the young sardar looked on, severed head atop a pole,

Dripping blood, still warm, coursing, seeping through the land,

Writing stories, to be told a thousand times, by a blackened hand

Bodies grey, strewn where once the flaming Gulmohar petals had covered the sand

As screams of maidens, pilfered by wildest of animal shook the night

The children orphaned but, wide eyed, silenced by fright,

Still she cut and stabbed, wounded, nevertheless she did fight.

Hours rolled into one another and the night took flight,

Vultures swooped in, sun hung its head in shame

To witness and record, humanity torn and maimed.

Red feet and hand, sightless in pain she lay,

The light flickered to be extinguished forever and slowly her hands turned to clay,

Smirking, she thought the Sardar, her Sardar, was right.

The wind howled and, her sire, with it grieved at his clan’s plight.

Tears of rain lashed through the land while a pained echo,

Shook through the trees, “If only I had seen the light”.