The Sound of the Kiss

by Pingali Suranna

  14. By poetic convention, the cakravāka birds are separated each evening as darkness falls and spend the night moaning in longing for one another. A “bird” piece captured on the game board is metaphorically said to have been killed.

  15. The madam is afraid the four Brahmin women are deities of some kind, descended from heaven.

  16. Madasaya gives a Telugu paraphrase, which we have translated, based on the following, highly arcane reading of the text as Sanskrit:

  sunīve [Oh one who has auspicious capital]

  āyaṃ mā māna [don’t care for income]

  rāḥ [cash] alavā [undestructible] + ekā [alone] avat eva [only it protects]

  rāje (a)jeje [for the king who worships Vishnu]

  mā [Lakshmi] + āyātu [comes by herself]

  malāni na [ there are no sins]

  pāyaka [king!]

  santaḥ yadi [if scholars come]

  asamut [without joy]

  na pala [don’t turn away]

  mila [meet with them]

  sā + amī [they are Lakshmi].

  17. Madasaya here offers a new reading to the name given him by Brahma in his story (< mada, delusion).

  18. Reading śādhi [rule] + ina [king]

  kum [the earth]

  ā-giri [as long as the mountains last]

  mata [loved one]

  vikanasi [you flourish]

  lavamāna [like Lava, son of Rāma]

  mahima-vara-gaurava-de jāte suvibhau [loc. abs., so long as a good king like you is alive]

  iti nanu nā [a human being] + ataḥ [from this (respect)]

  nava-bhāḥ [has renewed power]

  gavi [with speech]

  rasakiri [that expresses beauty]

  vā+ a-nuvitā [won’t he praise?]

  19. The act of putting the necklace on the girl is here analogous to the tying of the marriage-necklace, the maṅgala-sūtra.

  20. nalugu.

  21. This is ghaṭṭa-kuṭī-prabhāta-nyāya, an illustration drawn from popular Sanskrit.

  CHaPTer 7

  Listen, son of Kondamamba . . .

  [ Kalapurna in Love ]

  From the moment Kalapurna, that celebrated king whose stories are always music to the ear, caught sight of Madhuralalasa in the forest, he could think of nothing except her amazing beauty, which had robbed him of his strength. He was unable to attend to any business, for his mind was filled only with her. He sat alone in his private palace.

  One day he invited his intimate friend, the aged Brahmin astrologer, and said to him after a while, “Dear friend, I’ve been thinking of asking you something, but every time you came, I hesitated. Now I have to ask.

  “You know the jewel-studded palace of Madasaya to the east of our city and, just beyond its golden walls, the luxuriant forest set aside for play, which is always in bloom. I went there the other day, following my falcon. As I was calling to it, I saw a woman. She was playing with her friends. One life is not enough to study her beauty. One tongue is not enough to talk about her loveliness. One pair of eyes is not enough to take in the joy of seeing her. What more can I say? She’s breathtaking. A total beauty. You can use all your metaphors, your hyperboles, all your powers of description, but no poetry can match her charm.

  “How lucky is the universe,

  and in it the Rose-Apple Continent,1

  and the Bharata Land,

  and Anga-desa,

  and Beyond-the-Smooth-Neck Town

  to have such a garden

  where she set her foot.

  “She cut right through me with her exquisite braid of hair, which could have been a double-edged sword, slightly curved at the end, with an ivory handle—the white flowers she gracefully ties at the top. I can’t stop thinking about that rich, black braid and the black curls; the fine line of her eyebrows; her soft, wide eyes; her smiling cheeks; in fact, her entire face; and then there’s the perfect curve of her breasts; there’s her tiny waist, to say nothing of the way she pulled me toward her with a shy but somehow inviting look. From the moment I saw her, the Love-God has been working his vengeance on me.

  To my eyes, she looked unmarried. Do you know her? Tell me if you do. If you don’t, go find out as much as you can.”

  The Brahmin thought, “This king’s in love. Let’s tease him a little.” He said, “Never mind if she’s unmarried or not; God bless her. She deserves to be queen of ten thousand countries. I’m thrilled you’re in love and that she’s torturing your mind. You want to know why? You’re always busy with your pandits and their eternal arguments. With your bards2 and their meaningless stories. With your poets and their screeching, like a Saturday rain.3 With your political advisors, who are a pain in the stomach. And when you disappear into the women’s quarters, finding you is like searching for Mercury at dawn. Do you ever take a moment even to say, ‘How are you?’ Now you finally found time to talk to me.”

  “Enough,” said Kalapurna. “I know you like to scold me. Just find out what I need to know. Who is she? What’s her name? Her family? What does she do?”

  “My friend, I hesitate to tell you who she is. What’s the idea? You may need some extra income to pay for refrigerants. If that’s the case, we can collect it from all the towns and villages. We’ll call it a “love tax.” These people don’t pay enough respect to the king. Actually, I’m only joking. You don’t need such extra income. All the kings of the world are sending you whatever you need for free. The king of Kerala has sent a huge supply of sandalwood trees. The Pandya king sent bushels of pearls. The king of Kamarupa sent cartloads of rose water. The lord of Kashmir sent tons of moonstones. The Turk sent bags of camphor. Just listen. You can hear your servants announcing out loud the arrival of all these gifts. You may or may not be joined to your beloved, but those kings are definitely being separated from their riches. In fact, they don’t have to spend all this money to keep you cool. Half would be enough—to bribe that girl to marry you.”

  “You old windbag—you top the list. You can’t be trusted. But if you could bring this off, I would bribe you myself.”

  This made the old Brahmin really mad. “You call me a windbag just because I don’t put on airs like those Brahmins who are always bathing and fussing with the darbha grass4 and sitting tight, doing nothing.” He marched off in a huff. Kalapurna rushed after him. “You’re a real Brahmin, gentle as a cow. No one should call you a windbag. I won’t do it again. Please come back.”

  Turning back, the Brahmin said, “It’s true what you said. I can’t be trusted. I’m one of your men. As people say, ‘Like king, like subject.’ I’m true to the proverb. But tell me, what happened to your promise to Rupanubhuti and Madasaya? Did you not say, ‘From now on, you are my mother-in-law and father-in-law’? You’re now paying for forgetting this. And because you forgot her, Rupanubhuti’s daughter is suffering, and you’re suffering, too.”

  “You mean that girl in the forest is Madasaya’s daughter? Why didn’t you tell me? How quickly she’s grown into a young woman! It’s amazing.”

  “Why are you so surprised? Who else could capture your heart? As to how fast she’s grown up, it only seems that way because you’re so busy all the time in your daily routine, taking care of the kingdom, exercising, riding horses, talking philosophy, eating, bathing, going to the theater, receiving ministers and guests and all your subjects. Meanwhile, the girl is miserable, tormented by love, as her friends keep telling me in the hope that I’ll report it to you. And you know what these rotten kings are like. Pride comes before life. Her parents will never come to tell you what’s happening with their daughter, even were she on the verge of dying. They think you should notice her yourself. Anyway, I’m only telling you this because you said you’d pay me a bribe.

  “This is a good match. There’s nothing lacking on either side. Her father comes from the family of the famous Kartaviryarjuna; and he is a world-conqueror in his own right. And you must have heard the expression “as noble as Sugraha”—this has become a bywo
rd among people, because Sugraha nobly offered protection to any king who asked.5 Let me tell you that he is the brother of Madasaya’s wife, that is, Madhuralalasa’s uncle. Because his lineage was so noble, many kings offered him their daughters in marriage, but he disregarded these offers; they became angry with him, and he disappeared without a trace. It’s no small matter to offend the family pride of kings.6 Sugraha got his name, “Good Planets,” because he was a born at a moment when many planets came together in an auspicious constellation. I wonder what happened to that prediction.7 But don’t let that bother you. I just mention this by way of telling you that Madhuralalasa comes from a good family.

  “If you want to make that girl happy, all you have to do is to marry her—fast.”

  And with this, he opened the almanac and looked over the weeks and the dates. Counting on his fingers, he figured out the planetary positions. Suddenly, he brightened. “Tomorrow there is a beautiful moment suited to both your horoscopes. As a king, you don’t have to make any special effort to get things ready for a wedding. Your city is always festive in any case. It’s not for nothing that your city is named Beyond-the-Smooth-Neck Town, because the areca trees, bearing their golden-red fruit, stretch their smooth necks over the houses like a towering goddess of wealth. Therefore, the doorways always look like there’s a wedding going on. Still, we can decorate the city a bit more. All you have to do is get the bride. Dispatch the elders to your father-in-law’s house to ask for the hand of his daughter.”

  [ The Wedding of Kalapurna and Madhuralalasa ]

  Kalapurna was happy. First he summoned Satvadatma and informed him. Then he sent Agamas One through Four to his first wife, Abhinavakaumudi, to win her agreement to the new marriage. She agreed at once, saying, “Don’t they call me Abhinavakaumudi, ‘New Moonlight’? My family—the apsaras caste—is also moonlight.8 My whole nature is cooling joy. How could I make my husband unhappy? You don’t need my permission. I want whatever he wants.”

  She sent them off, and they reported back to Kalapurna. He then sent them to Madasaya’s house to settle the details of the wedding and to seal the agreement with the exchange of betel. An announcement was made in the town.

  The city was in a flurry of excitement day and night. Wherever you looked, you could see freshly polished golden pots. People were sprinkling the courtyards with cool water mixed with sandalpaste and smearing the walls with fragrant civet. Gem-studded porches were covered with musk, and threshold designs were drawn in camphor. They hung canopies with garlands of water lilies and built arches out of mango leaves. Old women went from house to house, with musicians beside them, to distribute yellow rice, betel leaves and betel nuts, saffron powder, oil and fruits as an invitation to the women of the household to attend the wedding. On every street in the city, men were mixing camphor, musk, and sandal in golden cauldrons; they heaped up jasmine, campaka, and vakula flowers and perfumed betelnut in the streets, along with mountains of betel leaves, tender and golden-green. They distributed betelnut and garlands to the entire population.

  The next day, married women with many children gave Madhuralalasa a wedding bath as music played, at a lucky hour. One woman smeared the ground with musk; another drew designs on it with pearls; another set up the seat of gold; another spread a new cloth on it, making sure its border was turned to the north. Then an older woman and two of the bride’s girlfriends made her sit facing the east and soaked her hair in campaka oil. Lovingly, they mixed a paste of myrobalan in turmeric and applied it to her head, pouring water from golden pots. They dried her with fine cloths and dressed her in white with yellow borders. After drying her hair, they braided in flowers. They smeared her body with sandalpaste, then wiped it off, leaving behind the fragrance. They painted vermilion designs on her breasts and fixed the forehead mark out of musk. Delicately they outlined the edges of her eyes with kohl and drew patterns of red lac on her feet. They covered her in ornaments from head to foot,9 but she herself was the real ornament to everything that adorned her.

  When she was ready, the women called her mother. “Take a good look at your daughter,” they said. “Our idea of beauty may be different from yours. Your very name, Rupanubhuti, means Love of Beauty, and it also means Experience of Beauty; so nobody knows better than you what beauty is.” The mother smiled and took a step backward, regarding her daughter up and down from the corners of her eyes. “It’s perfect,” she said.

  At the auspicious moment, with the elders of both families sitting on either side, Agama One sang the chants for the bride and groom—Madasaya’s daughter and Manistambha’s son. The King of Anga tied the marriage thread around his bride’s neck, while women sang wedding songs and barbers played their sweet instruments.

  Afterward the bride and groom poured rice on each other’s head. Her girlfriends cheered her on, standing on either side, as she lifted her head for the first time, shedding a little of her shyness with a smile. She raised her hands high toward the groom’s head, so her full breasts came into view as she stretched, while her tiny waist started to tremble. Married women placed her hands in the rice on a golden plate and filled them again and again, not letting the groom go any faster. Her graceful movements as she poured the rice offered everyone who was watching a new vision of beauty, never seen before.10

  It was time for the mother to say goodbye to her daughter. “Some wives make their husbands happy by their beauty; some by their goodness. You have both, like fragrant flowers given by the god. Don’t be too proud of your youthful beauty or of your husband’s love. Never forget your modest ways. Be kind to your husband, his friends and relatives, and to your co-wife.” Her voice was choking, and she held back her tears as she sent off her daughter, hardly able to let go. And the daughter, too, could hardly take her leave. Even great love for a husband doesn’t make it easy to separate from a mother.

  Kalapurna paid all the usual courtesies to the kings who had come from many countries to honor him at his wedding; then he gave them leave to depart. The bride, meanwhile, heard her girlfriends whispering among themselves that she would be with her husband that night for the first time. It excited her; she started moving back and forth in an absentminded way in the palace. They combed her hair and covered her with decorations, which, out of shyness, she tried to shake off.

  When they had got her ready, they held up a mirror so she could see herself; but she was too shy to look. Only when they left did she study herself, adjusting her curls with her fingernails. When her friends came back, she said, “What a mirror—you can see everything,” as if she were merely testing its quality. She was hoping her husband would see her before everything got creased.

  She sat down, quite alone, on a bed made of flowers, her cheek resting on her hand. Even if the Love-God had his own mirror, it could still not capture all her beauty. She was thinking. She wanted her husband that very minute, in her arms; but he wasn’t there.

  When will he come? Could anything stop him?

  Something Abhinavakaumudi might do?

  Surely she accepts that he and I

  will make love. If she doesn’t, he’ll never come.

  But then he’s in love with a woman from heaven, so why should he want me?

  “When I went to see her and bowed to her, she embraced me as if she really liked me. She even blessed me and said, ‘Live long and happily with your husband.’ So it seems that she wanted this. But can I really believe her?

  “What’s more, a woman who has had the unbelievable good fortune of making love to this man, handsome beyond anyone in all three worlds, wouldn’t want him to leave her even for a single second. She’d be planning and scheming all the time to find a way to keep him for herself. People constantly compare my man to Kama, the god of love. It’s nothing more than a habit, as the Sanskrit proverb goes: gatânugatiko lokaḥ, “People follow people.” If Kama were really that handsome, the whole world would be flooded with happiness. Siva would have had no reason to burn him up.”11

  She was adrift in th
ese thoughts, imagining her husband in all his parts, in her arms, when it suddenly occurred to her that her friends might be looking all over for her. As she was about to get up, they appeared, giggling and excited.

  One of them, somewhat more experienced, touched up her hair and fixed the mark on her forehead. “It’s time for you to go to your husband,” she said. “Come with me.” She stood there, waiting for a moment for Madhuralalasa. “Now,” she said. “Your husband is waiting. You know what you’re supposed to do.”

  Madhuralalasa stood motionless, her head bent, eyes focused on her breasts. Her friends coaxed her forward. “What’s going on? Is this any way for a girl to behave? Come on.” Somehow she managed to move just a little, until shyness paralyzed her again. An older and bolder woman appeared and pressed her, “Are you coming or not? I can tell you: even women who have bunches of children still feel a little embarrassed when they have to go to their husbands. You think you’re the only one?” She pulled her by the hand.

  Kalapurna was waiting, listening to the bustle around him. He couldn’t wait to see his bride. He stood up and looked through the window. Amazed, he stared at her from top to toe, lingering at every spot. He lay down on the bed, waiting.

  “Go in, you silly girl,” said one of the women. “Look—he’s watching you.” Covering her mouth with her hand, she pointed to the king. Madhuralalasa tried to hide behind her; her feet were shaky, but her skin was tingling as she looked back and caught a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye. Still, she tried to withdraw, but her friends physically caught her and dragged her into the room. One of them picked her up under her arms and forced her to sit on the bed, near Kalapurna’s feet. Then this friend left the room, saying, “Someone’s calling me. I have to go see. I’ll come back.” “Nobody has fed the parrot,” said another, on her way out. “I forgot the betel leaves,” said another. “Have to go get them.” “Where’s she going?” called another; “I’ll fetch her.”