The Chaos Curse

by Sayantani DasGupta

  I jumped and he caught me, holding me up by the waist with his strong rakkhosh arms and twirling me around. I flew, arms extended, the book held out from my hands like a glittering beacon in the dark. The other dancing rakkhosh gathered all around us, pulling out their copies of the book too. At my signal, we all opened our books and started simultaneously reading whatever story each of us had stumbled onto.

  I don’t know how or why, but the moment I began to read, my voice rising and falling in story, clashing and meshing with all the other voices reading their stories at the same time, I felt something magical happen. We storytellers began to glow, as if there was a power beaming out of us. The kids in the sangeet audience—children of villagers and lords, servants and ministers—ran forward toward the stage, to hear our stories better. They giggled and shouted at the funny voices some of the storytellers were putting on, chiming in at the familiar parts, begging for more when someone’s story ended.

  I heard a gasp from the audience and shouts of alarm. And then I heard it, clear as a bell, Sesha’s horrible voice from the darkness of the audience.

  “Stop reading! Stop laughing! Stop telling those dratted Kingdom Beyond stories!”

  As we had planned, he shot out green bolts of power at me from the audience. Just as they were about to reach me, I tossed down to Neel my regular copy of the book and he tossed me Einstein-ji’s magical one. Where Sesha’s power hit the powerful volume, the light already coming off it expanded and grew. Neel carefully put me down, but I held the magical book up over my head, like I’d once seen a boy in a movie hold a boom box playing love songs for his girlfriend. Only I was playing a different sort of love song. A love song for our stories, our lives, and the continued life of the multiverse.

  Shockingly, the magical book now glowing in my hand wasn’t just absorbing Sesha’s bolts; it was shooting them back out at him too. I heard where the little zings and zips of power whizzed through the audience, finding their target only in him.

  “What are you doing? Stop that!” Sesha growled. And now I could see him. He had run up right in front of the stage, from where he blasted me again with his bolts of power. His handsome face was screwed up with anger, his eyes flashing with venom. Right behind him, dressed in a brilliant lehenga choli and dripping with diamonds, was Pinki, Neel’s mother. She froze at the sight of us onstage, obviously recognizing us both.

  “You? Here?” she whispered.

  “I read your mehendi, Mother,” Neel said, throwing off his disguise. “You don’t have to marry this clown to protect the multiverse’s stories! You don’t have to protect them alone! We are on your side! We will do it together!”

  “I remember you!” Sesha looked from his bride-to-be to Neel and back again. Then he looked at me. His voice was wild with fury. “You were at the choosing, when I was captured by those monsters at Ghatatkach Academy! You called me father then! That day has haunted me for all my life—but no more!”

  “You were there!” exclaimed Pinki almost at the same time. “You were both there on that day—and it was you who convinced me not to marry Sesha!”

  I realized that by going back in time, Neel and I had changed our present. Both of our parents remembered seeing us when they were young people. “And we’re here now to give you the same message!” Neel shouted. “You shouldn’t have married him them, and you shouldn’t marry him now!”

  “Haven’t you learned your lesson?” I said, glaring at Sesha. “If you bring about the big crunch, not just our story lines will end, yours will too! But listen—everybody can change! Why not rewrite the ending to your story? You don’t have to be a villain! You can choose a different ending! You can choose to tell a different tale!”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, you impudent imp!” Sesha snarled. He increased the power of his green bolts so that now my arms ached from the stress of holding up the glowing-book-slash-weapon-slash-shield. “You are the part of my story I will change! You have always been the problem, the nagging sore, the out-of-place character! But not for much longer!”

  “Yesss! Kill her, Father!” It was Naga, that seven-headed pain in the rear end, right behind dear old Daddy, as per usual. “End her story! Close the book on her! Burn her library down!”

  “Nah, man, I don’t think so!” Neel leaped from the stage directly onto Naga’s heads. He slashed and fought with the seven-headed snake, leaving me alone with my past.

  “Die, Daughter! Die, you chaos curse!” Sesha snarled. “I will not have this confusion, these many stories! I will rule one universe united in singularity! I will erase you at last from the pages of the multiverse!”

  I kept deflecting Sesha’s evil blasts with Einstein-ji’s book, but I was getting tired. The glowing volume grew so hot I almost wanted to drop it. The book was buzzing and humming, searing my hands with heat.

  “Ahh!” I cried out in pain, almost crushed by the power of the stories in my hands. Neel looked back, and that was his downfall. As he turned to look at me, one of Naga’s giant fangs caught him through the shoulder.

  “No!” I screamed.

  Hanging there from Naga’s fang, Neel started to shake. His skin became crisscrossed with venom. His eyes started to roll to the back of his head, and I knew I was losing him.

  “My son!” Pinki shrieked, leaping on Naga with all her terrible power. She flung the seven-headed snake to one side, cradling Neel’s form in her arms. Then she turned on Sesha with such a terrible cry, he stopped shooting out his green lightning at me. I fell to my knees, the book still in my hands.

  “You’re almost my wife—you can’t fight me,” said Sesha, but he could say no more, because with a multiverse-shaking move, Pinki opened her mouth and screamed. With Neel still lifeless in her arms, the Demon Queen’s jaw became unhinged from her face and the darkness of all of outer space came shooting out. I saw planets, moons, and comets, and then, awfully, the Victrola funnel shape of a black hole. The black hole reached out to swallow Sesha, like a formless cosmic rakkhosh, now creating life, now ending it. And then, not with a bang, but with the tiniest of whimpering, popping sounds, Sesha was gone.

  “Father!” Naga cried, writhing around in agony. But the seven-headed serpent had never been as stupid as our father had made him think he was. When he realized Sesha’s fate, he quickly slithered down the audience aisle and away into the night.

  As soon as Sesha disappeared into the void of the black hole, Pinki laid Neel tenderly on the stage. The sangeet audience all gathered around now, clucking their tongues, oohing and aahing as if this were a part of the show. Neel shuddered and gasped, the lines of venom slowly disappearing from his face. But still his eyes were closed.

  “He’s not waking up!” I cried.

  Pinki screamed again, her cries generating new universes that sprung out of her open lips. As if aware of the galaxies spinning out of Pinki’s mouth, the magical book leaped out of my hands to expand and grow into the shape of a small star in the cosmos that Pinki had created. I heard every story in the book, every story in the room, every story in the multiverse, being told in a rising babble of voices. The words manifested themselves in the air, in all sorts of languages and images and metaphors spinning around and around one another, finally coming together in a fireworks display of star collision. The light was so bright, I had to shield my eyes from it. The audience, as well as the rakkhosh dancers behind me, began yelling and howling, protecting their eyes and ears from the brilliance too.

  When Neel began to stir, Pinki sobbed in relief.

  “I think he’s going to be okay!” I breathed.

  Finally, with a huge inhale, Pinki swallowed it all once again. The planets. The galaxies. The magical storybook turned star. The black hole containing Sesha. All of it. And then she let out the most giant burp I have ever heard.

  “Impressive, my gaseously gifted daughter!” said a wibbly-wobbly voice so familiar and dear I almost screamed with joy.

  It was Ai-Ma, with her gangly limbs and three-toothed grin and
galumphing walk and all her love and all her stories and all her wisdom. It was her. Neel’s grandmother—who was monster, goddess, crone, ancestress, teacher, and friend. It was her, but also not her. She was so transparent, we could see all of outer space through her form. She was so huge, her feet were like ships, her arms were like highways, and her head touched the sky.

  “Mother!” cried Pinki. “The stories brought you back!”

  “Not in the way you are thinking, my silly demon-drop of an evil daughter,” Ai-Ma cooed, holding her see-through hands above Pinki’s head in a blessing. “No, my silly-billy chitty-boo of a booger blossom! I am gone from this plane, but as long as you are all alive, my story is not ended.”

  “You gave your life in that undersea detention center to save me, but I wish I could save you!” Pinki had tears streaming down her face, and I felt my own heart breaking at her sorrow. How could I have been so wrong about her? Some villains, like Sesha, choose not to change, but some, like Pinki, do.

  “You already have saved me,” Ai-Ma called as she vanished more and more into the ether. Where her body had been was the gold and platinum stardust we had experienced down in the underwater hotel. The glittery rain fell all over us, and when it hit Neel’s face, he finally opened his eyes.

  “Ai-Ma?” he said, his eyes uncertainly straining toward the spot where the dear rakkhoshi had just been.

  “Live in joy, my toadstool baby bats! Sing your varied stories, my dung-covered lily pads!” Ai-Ma’s disembodied voice crooned from the darkness. “And tell of me, and how much I loved you, to all who want to hear!”

  And so we would. To tell her story was to tell our own. We would tell it, and add to it, and let it nourish us forever.

  Even though the wedding was called off, the second sangeet was a huge success. The groom wasn’t present, but the entire Kingdom Beyond decided to have a giant song-and-dance performance in the royal palace square. The Raja had returned from exile and was now gathered on the dais to watch the performances with his four sons: Lal and Neel, Buddhu and Bhootoom. To the other side of the dais sat Mati, Naya, and a lot of the PSS crew.

  As a surprise, Neel sent Bunty as well as the pakkhiraj horses Snowy and Raat to go get my parents, Jovi, and Zuzu from the right version of New Jersey and bring them to the festivities. Ma arrived in her second-best sari—since she’d brought her wedding sari for me to wear. She’d also dressed the real Jovi and Zuzu in full lehenga choli and Indian jewelry. Baba was elegant in his pajama-panjabi.

  “How’s the store?” I asked Ma as she helped me pleat and pin my outfit.

  “The store? Oh, it’s wonderful, my little piece of the moon, my princess, my darling,” Ma replied. “We will have to all go back soon to help your father with the inventory.” I was relieved to see her hair was in its usual impeccable bouffant bun. She waggled her eyebrows at me. “Now, you tell me about that handsome Neelkamal!”

  When I saw Baba, he gave me a huge bear hug and wiped away his own tears on my hair. Finally, he let me go enough to look weepily at me. “You’re looking tired, darling. Have you been eating enough fiber? Are your bowels regular?”

  In the past, I would have been furious at my parents for being so embarrassingly loving, so ridiculously themselves all the time. But I’d learned to appreciate all their strangenesses. They might be weirdos, but they were my weirdos, after all.

  With Jovi and Zuzu, it was a little bit harder. “I had to explain to Jovi about everything, who you are, where you’re from,” said Zuzu, pulling me aside. The bright blue lehenga choli Ma had put her in beautifully complemented her hair and eyes. “She’s confused; she’s not even sure why she’s here. Are you guys even friends?”

  “Well, she’s on the fencing team with you, isn’t she?” I grinned, taking my friends’ hands. “I’ll explain later, but I’m really glad you’re both here.”

  “I am too. These outfits are tremendous!” Jovi spun around, her green skirts spreading dramatically wide. “And everyone here seems awesome!” she said, giving Priya a little wave. It must have been a good wave, because the rakkhoshi Priya, who had been super embarrassed about her whole Princess Petunia episode, actually smiled and waved back.

  The sangeet was amazing. No one wore disguises, so the rakkhosh clanspeople danced in their full fangs and tusks, twirling their wings and tentacles to their hearts’ abandon. Singing and dancing weren’t the only thing on the performance roster, though. Some of the PSS girls did a skateboarding show, setting up a half-pipe, and proceeding to drop, whirl, and fly for the roaring crowds.

  The last performer at the sangeet was quite a surprise. It was Neel’s mom, the Demon Queen, decked out in her elaborate wedding finery. Her red silk sari was heavily embroidered with gold, her sparkling nose ring connected by a gold chain to the shining butterfly clips in her dark hair, her ears and neck dripping with jewels that sparkled like the stars.

  “I needed a place to wear this, right?” she explained with a snap of her teeth and a righteous belch. “But before I go onstage, Kiranmala, find me an antacid, won’t you?”

  The humans in attendance were a little nervous at first, but Pinki’s song-and-dance number was a huge hit. There were strobe lights, images projected behind her, and a huge entourage of backup dancers in elaborate costumes.

  “Everything is connected to everything,” she sang.

  “But how?” sang her backup dancers, doing super-coordinated twirls and jiggles.

  “By the love of those who came before!” crooned Ai-Ma in our hearts.

  “But how?”

  “By the love of family,” sang Ma and Baba.

  “But how?”

  “By the love of community,” said our extended friends and family.

  “But how? But how? But how?” asked the backup dancers, swirling and leaping, sashaying and flossing, step-ball-changing and doing all the jazz hands.

  “By love,” I told Neel, smiling.

  “By love,” he agreed. All around us, I noticed, were the blue butterflies, dancing as if to their own magic rhythms.

  And as the festivities continued, long into the night, we felt the multistoried multiverse pulsing and swirling all around us, in an ever-expanding cosmic dance. Because there was love, there would be more stories, and a multiverse that kept growing and thriving. Love and stories, stories and love, these were the stars that lit our way forward.

  The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond Book 3) is an original story that, like the first two books in this series (The Serpent’s Secret and Game of Stars), draws from many traditional Bengali folktales and children’s stories. These are stories beloved in West Bengal (India), Bangladesh, and throughout the Bengali diaspora. I’ve used many of these stories as a basis for inspiration while writing the books in the series, and as a way to tell my own story as an immigrant daughter.

  Thakurmar Jhuli and Rakkhosh Stories

  Folktales involving rakkhosh are very popular throughout all of South Asia. The word is sometimes spelled “rakshasa” in other parts of the region, but in this book, it is spelled like the word sounds in Bengali. Folktales are of course an oral tradition, passed on verbally from one generation to the next, with each teller adding spice and nuance to their own version. In 1907, Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar collected, wrote down, and published some classic Bengali folktales in a book called Thakurmar Jhuli (Grandmother’s satchel). This collection, which involves separate stories about the Princess Kiranmala, the brothers Neelkamal and Lalkamal, and the monkey and owl princes Buddhu and Bhootoom, is also full of tales involving rakkhosh and khokkosh, as well as stories about the Kingdom of Serpents. The giant birds Bangoma and Bangomee make an appearance in the story of Neelkamal and Lalkamal, as do pakkhiraj horses. The Demon Queen appears in the original Neelkamal and Lalkamal story, as does the lovably goofy rakkhosh grandmother, Ai-Ma. Lalkamal and Neelkamal never meet Kiranmala in their original stories, but brave Kiranmala does have two brothers named Arun and Barun whose lives she must save. A version o
f the Serpent King appears in this collection as well, although not exactly as he appears in this book. Of course, a magical version of Thakurmar Jhuli plays a role in The Chaos Curse, as it is the time-traveling and otherwise protective object given by Albert Einstein-ji to Neel and Kiran. Although this book didn’t help me actually time travel when I was younger, the stories in it were magical to me and as such, I wanted to honor the collection in this way.

  The rakkhosh figures Surpanakha and Ghatatkach in The Chaos Curse are not from Thakurmar Jhuli, but from Hindu epics. Surpanakha is the sister of Ravan, the main antagonist of the Ramayana. She’s attracted to the hero Ram, but when she approaches him, she is rebuffed by him. When she then tries the same tactics with his younger brother Laxshman, she is again rejected. Humiliated by the two heroic brothers, the demoness goes to attack Ram’s wife, Sita, but has her nose cut off by Laxshman instead. She runs to her brother Ravan to report this shameful event, and sets off the events of the epic, including Ravan’s kidnapping of Sita. I always thought that the Ramayana treated Surpanakha pretty unfairly, so I made her the headmistress of the rakkhosh academy in this book. Ghatatkach (after whom the made-up Academy of Murder and Mayhem is named) is a rakkhosh from another epic, the Mahabharata. The son of the second heroic Pandav brother Bhim and the rakkhoshi Hidimbi, enormously strong Ghatatkach fought alongside his father and Pandav uncles in the great war upon which the epic is based. Even though he was raised by his rakkhoshi mother, he was enormously loyal to his father and family and was an almost undefeatable warrior, so it made sense to me that he would have a rakkhosh school named after him!

  Thakurmar Jhuli stories are still immensely popular in West Bengal and Bangladesh, and have inspired translations, films, television cartoons, comic books, and more. Rakkhosh are very popular as well—the demons everyone loves to hate—and appear not just in folk stories but also Hindu mythology. Images of bloodthirsty, long-fanged rakkhosh can be seen everywhere—even on the backs of colorful Indian auto rikshaws, as a warning to other drivers not to tailgate or drive too fast!