The Sapiens Goddesses

                 I

The scent of rosewater and sandalwood infused with the resonance of the ceremonious tolling of the dense copper bells consecrated the Singh mansion as a sanctified edifice for the birth of a son. Rajneesh Singh sculptured this majestic fortress through unabated hard work amalgamating obscured respect, pride and justice into the architectural foundations of an honourable home. His mother, Meera, was a lady sheathed in the wildfire of faith, but an indisputable dignity patronised today’s occasion for the esteemed family had to be stopped from callously sinking into the ocean of nothingness. Meera pushed open the colossal oak door into the patio to admit the silky sunrays blended with the tantalizing aroma to unfurl its incandescence across the hall that was rotted but dry, tormented in the pestilence of no male child. The untimely death of her husband who succumbed to the precariousness of typhoid fever and her indolent daughter-in-law, who first gave birth to a girl and took a decade hence to ornament her uterus again, satirized Meera’s perseverance as she fermented in the humid stench of old age. 

“Ashwini, bring Chaya to the porch to welcome Pandit Ji” 

An embodiment of social docility and withering youthfulness that she inadvertently bade, conceding to the triumph of domestic life, Ashwini was exceptionally elated for she had been silently talking to her womb, night and day, and the child was certainly a boy. She hurriedly placed a silver plate jewelled with yellow jasmines and a ghee lamp on Chaya’s lap and rubbed her tanned cheeks with talcum. It was decided, after much scrutiny and blatant circumstantial evidence that the puja would be in contrast to the ceremony preceding Chaya’s arrival, which implied that there would be no guests; of course, excluding Mr Sharma’s family, whose prestige and veneration surpassed superstition. The fact that this controversial verdict did not pertain to Chaya being unloved, had been solidly established in the Singh family; for she was unanimously crowned to the pedestal of an archangel to the Deity, incarnating elegance and intense supremacy, who unfortunately could not drop to the atrocities of human labour, the quagmire of earning and the convolutions of hierarchical property ownership. She had been weaved with delicacy, and everything beneath worshipping was abysmal. Ashwini reinsured that all eateries, this time, excluded onions, ginger, potatoes, saffron and salt, and as Chaya with soft jurisdiction washed Pandit Ji’s feet in the tantalizing white marble hall, putra puja commenced. 

A hoarse hum of opulent religious scripts enthroned the prayers that arose from the seismic vibrations of the interiors of soil, water, rocks and red fire, augmenting at a differential rhythm towards the thunderous enigma of supernatural energies, battling to vanquish the demonised air as it climaxed adagio to loud shrieking mantras of a gravitational agony, centralising in its misery, corpuscles of negative cosmos and vehemently demolishing it to the apocalyptic realm of placidity. Mystified by the enchantment, the hot monsoon air bewitched the droplets of vapour that dawned upon the bowed heads, annihilating every quantum of misfortune that could destroy the family. The blessed enunciations  diminished as it synchronised, in whispers of heavy silence, a sense of purity with calm and aged honesty. Expansive holiness possessed their souls for several minutes, and then, as mysticism summoned celebration, the Singh family rejoiced with the confident anticipation of a pristine winged phoenix waiting to fly. Meera, after almost half a century, allowed her lips to twitch a smile. In her shaking palms, she brought out rabri seduced jalebis, sugared cashews and supple seasonal fruits that were savoured amidst whimsical laughs and omnipresent exuberance.

She prepared a velvet draped box for Mrs. Sharma, who did not come. Never till the end of his life, did Dillip Sharma proclaim, nor was it ever verbally questioned, but her absence perpetually expressed beatings of the night before. The prowess of mantras instantly adorned positivity, for Pandit Ji, as he was leaving, gallantly informed Meera that he had found a cure for her daughter’s, the

blackened virgin’s non-functional rudimentary ovaries, ultimately guaranteeing her acceptance into a well reputed family, preferably by a matrimonial bond to Mr. Sharma’s eldest son. Unlike her contemporaries with the illness, Sangeeta Singh was admired even by the vicious old ladies, the ones suffocating in the monotone of feeding and defecation of their husbands. Her bronze skin subtly caramelised the arches of her almond-shaped face and deep hazel eyes. Every look at her revealed a profound paradigm of beauty that rightfully earned her forgiveness despite being dysfunctional. 

 

                   II 

  

The mellow pond water glided through the crests of their feet surfacing little gold fish that spawned in the wet month of July, and softly nibbled into the dead skin as Sangeeta and Chaya basked in the constancy of changing nature. They munched on the fruits of the lush pear trees approaching senescence that flaunted their charm in valediction, and propelled the seeds into the distant waters observing the gyration of the spherical waves. Lazing by the pond till purple skies blanketed and the rancour of predatory mosquitoes forced them away, constituted all of their summer siestas until a week back, when Sangeeta’s treatment began at sharp 4:04 pm every day. Sangeeta, with almost no signs of astuteness, particularly preferred the solitude, as she modestly adored the illicit tender glances of Faizul, the son of Sheikh Mohammad, who blushingly gawked at her. It was never a perverted stare, but an innocent admiration of stoicism. She had never spoken to him, never intended to and forgot about him when he was not staring. As the final ripples camouflaged, Chaya stepped out of the water, wiped her feet on bare pebbles and commanded her aunt to head home. With bony fingers wrapped around Sangeeta’s arm, chirruping exaggerated sagas of her friends, Chaya hopped all the way back.

Pandit Ji, already stationed behind his palette of alchemic tinctures, on seeing Sangeeta signalled her to stand in front of the Tulsi plant. The rituals transfigured in accordance to the waning moon and today,  endorsed with rich Sanskrit chants, half a gallon of cow’s urination was cascaded on her fossilised head. On other twilights, she consumed some urine or cleansed her body with manure, howsoever instructed; following which, they all rested on the porch, immersed in analysing grave issues of increasing thefts, sewage rats and prostitutes. Chaya, meanwhile, usually played with Pandit Ji’s lock of hair jutting of his bald head that he told her was a rat’s tail and she burst into hysterical giggles. Sometimes, she would recite poetry and well articulated limericks and once, she mesmerised them with her flamboyant Lucknow Kathak: aesthetic gestures entwined with delicate but arrogant charisma. Her eyes, at all times, irradiated mists of juvenile euphoria. Today, as the elders grieved about the increasing disrespect towards the sanctity of dowry, she busied herself with Meera’s gold chain. In order to evince her intolerance towards the blasphemous vulgarities of modernisation, Meera bestowed the chain for her granddaughter’s wedding and a moment of heartfelt gratitude enveloped Ashwini for such a philanthropic honour. The evening dissolved with islets of harmless gossip about the neighbourhood and Chaya bewildered by the shimmering lucidity of golden glitter, remained in solitary for long minutes on the patio. She suddenly felt the warmth of a stout arm slipping into her frock, pinching the buds of her gestating breasts, the other hand solicitously smothering her dried up mouth. Her gaze trailed the tender palm that slithered past her abdomen and cradled her vagina. A gentle cold caress metamorphosed into a crescendo of violent tremors, eroding the smoothness of her skin. The heavy body shuddered with powerful passion as two ugly fingers punctured into her, unleashing a viscous ravine of dark crimson blood. She felt all her viscera

detaching and a concoction of bile and acid flooded her tongue. The movements of the hand gradually masqueraded with particles of darkness that meshed her vision and embroidered a shroud of heat, putrefying her softly. And then, heat was all she sensed. 

The serene descent into the effervescence of molten Earth tarnished her body into embers, as reflexes synapsed with hollowed infinity, and the lava sublimed her to the tranquil realm of unconsciousness. Ashwini paralysed behind the bars of the steel window, held her breath, not in terror but in a vague attempt to impede the labyrinth of time, of incessant seconds integrating to coalesce into eternal torture. Sangeeta, clasping her brittle hand whispered “bhabi” in condolence. They stood, soldered in the obscenity of respect, respect that had manoeuvred celestial defences of power and indestructibility; waiting for the divine clandestine to terminate. Silence reverberated as words abandoned sound: tears vocalised and the temerity to retaliate arduously cocooned itself within those tears for disdainful intervention could silhouette a storm of omen, ergo death of the male foetus. 

Ashwini retrieved Chaya from the coagulum of blood precipitated over her flaccid bruised flesh. She bathed her in basil-camphor water in the sienna stoned bathroom and smeared the inner of her thighs with artifices of an ointment, known to permanently efface scars. Chaya’s ingenuous oblivion fragmented into a delirious sleep and she wailed with tiredness. Ashiwni gently placing her on a clean white sheet and turned up the stereo to drown the screams. Suffocating her daughter in a protective embrace, she affirmed,” Don’t be scared, Pandit Ji was blessing you.” 

Sangeeta, in an abyss of amnesia, marched into the pear foliage and surrendered to Faizul. Simmering in the ardent ache of love, Faizul lost himself in her arms and she made no attempt to conceal this union from the world for it was not an act of desire but of repentance. Still in fugue, she condemned herself to the streets and with an embezzlement of sindoor on her forehead that symbolised her fornication with the Hindu Gods she began a monologue that she repeated for the rest of her life, “I witnessed unspeakable evil and I watched; but I do not deserve meagre death or sweet forgiveness, I deserve abhorrence of my kind. And I knew of no greater offence to be worthy of such hatred than befouling myself with the impure breed. I bequeath my soul to Thy and I thirst for punishment.” Later, her brother in disgust, shame and helplessness, beheaded and made several pieces of the cow who had been supplying the holy ureic excretion. 

                  III

 

Chaya reincarnated with the softness of a lotus, unfurling a petal at a time. There were sleepless bed wetting nights, drawn-out dumb hours, recurring physical anguish and memories of distaste; that Meera, to Ashiwni’s relief, concluded were symptoms of premature menstruation and remained 

unconcerned. Her body, now skin canopied bones, hurt and her emotional soreness revolved solely around the disappearance of her aunt. When she resumed walking, she gazed at the gold fish, the sliminess reflecting white light into her eyes that hunted for fading images of Sangeeta and then, she befriended from the shallows of the pond a thick girth branch that she felt was strong enough to combat the physical attack of Pandit Ji’s blessings. She nurtured and decorated it, and at times, allowed Ashwini to use it to dig into the earth who decrepit in the tumult of secrecy tried uniting with Chaya’s abscessedsoul: at first, she sliced tiny chunks off her toes in consternation and then began chewing worms, till she gave birth to a boy without genitals. The protrusion below his umbilicus ascertained his masculinity but a hole adjoining it confirmed that it was a beast. Burned in silence, his castigated ashes were fed to mud pigs and he was never spoken of again. Meera had to send Ashwini back to her father, whilst Chaya, continued to bloom, for she could no longer hear pain. Drenched in sympathy towards the remaining family, every villager brought flowers, devotional offerings, idols and pragmatic fluidism to share the grievances. It was not a silent convention for crackling voices, crying children, cluttering utensils, the stench of staling food, musical narrations by unknown bands, reunion of lost relatives and the fervour of desperate mothers making a final attempt to wed off their middle aged girls to Rajneesh culminated an absolute void of commotion that stifled all tones of sadness. The Singh mansion echoed the essence of honour and respect. Individuals with self-assigned roles of performers, caterers and designers orchestrated breath-taking programmes all day and Chaya immersed herself in the soliloquies of clamour.