Naming Maya

by Uma Krishnaswami

After that I stay indoors and thumb through all the moth-eaten books in the glass-fronted cupboard on the landing. Issues of The Strand Magazine with the original Sherlock Holmes stories. Scads of children’s books by a writer named Enid Blyton, about little English kids having tea and going to the seaside.

  Mrs. Rama Rao comes to chat with Mami. Mami goes next door to sample Mrs. Rama Rao’s new mango pickles.

  Prospective buyers begin to arrive in small groups. They walk through the house, pointing out flaws as if we are not even there. A few relatives drop by to say hello to Mom. I begin to put some faces to the names I have heard Mom and Auntie mention—Uttam’s daughter Raji, and Priya with the twins. They come and go like minor whirlwinds. Predictably they say, “Is this Maya? How she’s grown. Is this Maya who cried when she saw Kullan because he was so tall?”

  Lakshmi Auntie asks about others. “Did Ajit and his wife come to see you? What about … ?” She names a few others.

  “No,” says Mom. “It’s okay, Lakshmi. I’m not here to hold court with the family.”

  But Auntie sniffs and says, “They are so rude.”

  Mom suggests that perhaps the family does not approve of my parents’ divorce. “What is wrong with them?” says Lakshmi Auntie. “How totally medieval. What do they think, it’s contagious?”

  Lakshmi Auntie invites me to go with Sumati and Ashwin and her to the beach for a couple of days. “Come on,” she says. “Your mother’s busy. What will you do here by yourself? We’ll take a cottage. It’ll be a change for you, and you girls can have some time together.”

  “Yes, do come,” says Sumati.

  Even Ashwin begs. “The beach! Yes, Maya akka, come with us!”

  “Go, Maya,” says Mom. “Lakshmi’s right. It must be getting pretty boring for you here, hanging around the house.”

  Well, that’s true enough. Mom certainly doesn’t have time for me. I’m only in the way.

  “All right,” I say to Sumati, “I’ll come.”

  On the drive to the beach, Lakshmi Auntie chatters like a rattly set of window blinds.

  The “cottage” turns out to be a flat-roofed one-room house, painted pink, with a deep covered porch. A hammock dangles outside, slung between two coconut trees. We lug our suitcases inside. The room is painted like the inside of a peach. It has only one bed in it.

  “Where do we sleep?” I ask.

  Sumati looks around. A rolled-up pile of mattresses and sheets rests across the arms of a wooden chair. “We unroll those and sleep on the floor.”

  “Like camping,” I say.

  Ashwin sits on the bed and swings his legs. After a few minutes he says, “I’m bored.”

  “Come on,” says Lakshmi Auntie. “Let’s go sit out in the hammock and read a book.” She pulls copies of Chachaji, a children’s magazine, out of a tote bag, and Ashwin follows her out.

  “Want to go for a walk?” Sumati asks. “I’ll take you to a special place.”

  “Sure.” I check the film in my camera and slip a new roll into my pocket.

  Outside, Lakshmi Auntie and Ashwin have settled down to the riddles page of Chachaji. The laziness of sea and sand and sky has even managed to slow Ashwin down.

  “Maybe you’ll grow up to be a photographer,” says Sumati, “like my uncle.”

  “Your uncle’s a photographer?”

  “My father’s younger brother. He works for a newspaper in Delhi. He travels all over the place.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “What about him?” Sumati is leading the way toward the water, up a steep sand dune covered with some kind of trailing weed. I am barefoot, and the green stems feel like ropes between my toes.

  “He travels a lot too, right?”

  She wrinkles her nose, considering. “Yeah, he’s always gone. But so? We know he’ll be back. And then he’ll go again, somewhere else, and then come back. It’s how it is.”

  She sounds so sure, it twists my insides.

  We reach the top of the dune. Talking while climbing, I haven’t paid attention to where we are going. Now I look down, and see how far we’ve come. The row of pink box cottages stretches away far behind us. Before us is the gray sea, flecked with white foam. The waves reach across the horizon. You can’t see where they begin and end.

  We sit on the highest point of this high hill of sand. I dig my heels in, and wiggle my behind into place. Waxy weeds tickle the back of my legs where my salwar has scrunched up.

  “This is my special place,” Sumati says. “I can sit here and listen to the ocean for hours.”

  We listen together. The ocean grumbles like an old woman, pulling its waves back, gathering its voice, then returning steadily to slap the shore. It reminds me of Mami, her voice burbling over the pots and pans in the kitchen. I wonder if she is telling stories today even though I’m not there to listen.

  I think of the map at the Hindu Culture Camp, with dot stickers showing where everybody’s families came from for three generations. There were yellow dots in different parts of America where most of us kids had been born. There were orange dots for places where parents had been born—many in different parts of India, but some in California and Ohio and New York. A sprinkling of blue dots told of grandparents born in Pakistan and Nepal and Sri Lanka, and even some in America. A few dots were scattered about in Canada; a few more in Guyana and Trinidad, mainly for Dina Ramchurran’s family, who were all from there; a few in England and Australia (the Gupta twins and Geeta’s uncle Prem); and even one orange dot on the little island of Mauritius out in the Indian Ocean (Coomi’s mom, who spoke French and taught us yoga two days a week). All of their faces, and the faces I know in my family, seem to be reflected in this water. Sitting here and looking at the ocean, the world makes sense.

  We used to go to the beach in New Jersey, Mom and Dad and I, when I was younger. But all the beaches we went to were white piers and boardwalk and saltwater taffy. Not like this wild place with its single high mountain of sand and this deep gray grumbling ocean. Mom said something about it once. “Isn’t it funny how pale everything is here? Even at the beach, all the colors are pastel. In India, everything’s so bright.” My father disagreed. “Goa has a beach with white sand. White. Can’t get paler than white.” “That’s different,” she said, and they stared at the ocean as if they were waiting to see if it would change color.

  No muted colors at this beach. Down at the row of cottages, flame-of-the-forest trees hold eye-popping orange flashes of flowers. I look back toward the water. In the distance I can see smudges of fishing boats—one, two, three of them—bobbing around. The air is filled with a sharp sea smell, fish and salt and seaweed. Farther up the beach from where we are, Sumati tells me, the next morning will bring crowds. “See there? It’s where the fishermen take off early, before the sun rises.”

  I can see the pegs that will hold nets fast to the shore. As she talks I can imagine the women in bright saris tucked up high to keep them out of the water, tying large nets to the pegs.

  “One time, when I was five or six,” says Sumati, “we came here and I went in the water with my chappals on.” She points to her flip-flops with the worn-out soles so I’ll know what she means.

  “I know chappals,” I tell her. “What do you think I am?”

  “Some kind of American, that’s what!” she teases.

  I shiver.

  “What’s wrong?” says Sumati.

  “It’s funny,” I say. “I’m American here, but in America, I’m Indian.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “I don’t know. Years ago we were going to a friend’s house for a party. It was Divali …” The Hindu festival of lights was always an occasion to dress up, me in a long silk skirt, with my hair braided and a sticky bindi on my forehead.

  “And?”

  “Oh, it was nothing, really. A bunch of teenagers drove by and shouted at us. They called us dirty dot-heads.”

  Sumati’s jaw drops. “That’s terrible. That’s—why, that’s racist!�
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  “Well, yeah. Of course. But you know, I was only five years old.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I took a really deep breath and gave them the best and biggest raspberry I could manage. I don’t know if they saw it, but it made me feel better.” She looks puzzled at “raspberry,” so I stick out my tongue and show her.

  Sumati laughs. “You are something. You know that?”

  She pours a trickle of sand onto her feet and watches them disappear. “Go on about your chappals,” I tell her.

  “Oh, it wasn’t all that exciting. A big wave came and knocked me over. And when my parents pulled me out, my chappals had washed away. I could see them floating off on the water like little boats. My father said they’d go all the way to Singapore, or maybe even Australia.”

  We laugh about those flip-flops from Sumati’s younger, smaller feet, traveling around the world with all its people, some of them with good hearts and some filled with hate. “I cried and cried,” she says, and smiles, the way you can smile at your younger self because, after all, what did you know back then? She adds, “They were purple.”

  I dig my hands into the sand, finding small shells, round ones and little cone-shaped ones, mostly broken, but some whole. There is one little double shell, its two halves still joined at the hinge. It seems too perfect to disturb, so I put it back gently and cover it with sand again.

  Sumati slides around till she is lying flat on the ridge of sand. She stretches out and sighs, closing her eyes.

  “Say ‘pizza,’” I tell her, and get my camera ready.

  She opens one eye and makes a funny face. I laugh and click. She sticks out her tongue, and I click again.

  “My turn. I’ll take your picture. Can I?”

  After that we sit for a while, looking at the ocean. From this high up it is like a painting. Soon Ashwin comes yelling for us. “Come see me fly my paper aeroplanes!”

  All that evening we help Ashwin flutter his paper planes back and forth across the beach. The next day we walk along the beach and watch a man do his morning yoga. Ashwin tries to stand on his head and the man, distracted, frowns at him.

  The day goes by in a warm glow of sunlight on water. We get in the car and drive to a place where ancient temples have been sculpted out of solid rock. The carvings are intricate, each telling a story. A cluster of small temples is strewn on the seashore, each designed to look like a chariot. A larger one, farther away, sends two spires towering up into the sky. “Look,” says a man who has appointed himself our guide. “Single rock carved into temples. Seventh century. Pallava dynasty. UNESCO has declared this as a World Heritage Site.”

  He shows us a panel with an image of the goddess Ganga descending to earth, tumbling down into the great god Shiva’s matted locks of hair because if she fell directly the earth couldn’t bear the force of her rushing water. Enormous slabs of rock bearing images like this stand scattered among the groups of temples. Unlike the old temples in the city that are still used for worship, these lie deserted. It feels as if something’s missing—incense, chants, and people circling the shrines. Ashwin wanders in awe around the massive feet of a carved stone elephant. Next to it he looks tiny.

  And then I come face-to-face with a panel that takes my breath away. “Mahishasuramardhini,” says our guide proudly. “Goddess Durga defeats evil.” The pinkish stone of the giant carved wall gleams in the sunlight. Was it once the wall of yet another temple now in ruins? No one knows. The goddess is slender, almost a girl. One of her many arms pulls back the string of a bow, training the arrow upon her victim. She rides a curly-maned lion. Each of her hands holds part of an armory—knives, clubs, spears, a trident, a whirling discus. A massive demon rises to confront her. His heavy club is raised in readiness. Horns spring from his water-buffalo head.

  “Fifty paise for your thoughts,” says Sumati.

  I shake my head. “That’s powerful stuff.”

  She nods. “Take a picture of it.”

  I do. The slight stone figure holds me spellbound. Every fold of her robe is delicately sculpted. A tassel dangles from a necklace, swinging away from her graceful body as she aims her arrow. Other figures in the panel shrink back from the two in the middle, making way for the final scene. You know the demon doesn’t stand a chance.

  “Mami told me this story,” I say.

  “You’re named for a goddess too,” says Sumati.

  “Me? No, I’m named for Buddha’s mother. Can’t imagine why.”

  “Silly,” says Sumati patiently, “who do you think Buddha’s mother was named for?” Oh. That’s a new one. She explains it to slow American me. “One of Devi’s names is Mahamaya. Maha means great, yeah? Well, she’s supposed to have come down to earth and put the army of this wicked king, Kamsa, to sleep. Then she takes the form of a baby girl, because he’s looking for another baby—the infant Krishna. So Kamsa finds her, and then the goddess goes back to her true form.” Sumati slams a fist dramatically into the palm of her other hand. “Just like that,” she says. “No more Kamsa.”

  I know about Krishna, of course, from Culture Camp—blue—skinned, naughty Krishna, who was really the god Vishnu, who stole butter from the milkmaids. I’d heard of the wicked king. But I didn’t know the goddess played a part. And no one’s given me this quick-time version before.

  “See?” Sumati smiles. “Maya is not just any old name.” She likes it better than her own name. “Sumati is so ordinary,” she says.

  I tell her about the Great Name War when I was born. How Thatha called me Maya and Dad’s parents called me Preeta. “They came to visit us once a year,” I say. “Well, until my parents split up. And every single time Dad shouted and Mom cried. But they brought me lots of presents, and we always went out to dinner and the zoo and movies when they came.”

  “And they called you Preeta? What did you want to be called?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Sometimes I liked Preeta. Sometimes I didn’t.”

  “Maybe the name thing wasn’t about you at all,” Sumati points out. “Maybe it was your mom they didn’t like? You know what I mean? So whatever she liked, they’d make sure they liked something else.”

  I have never thought about it that way before. Sumati goes on, “But that’s their problem, right? Not yours. Maybe it’s not so bad having two names. That way you get to choose.”

  What would the goddess say? She has thousands of names, and thousands of forms—some to protect, some to destroy evil, some to change the course of the universe. It strikes me that nothing in India is what it seems to be. Everything has many names, many forms, many meanings. Maybe that’s why so much of what I see here is both strangely familiar and just plain strange, all at the same time. Maybe these meanings just show up when you need them. I glance at the goddess. It is surely my imagination, or maybe the shadow of the setting sun, because of course she couldn’t possibly have moved her stone lips in a flicker of a smile.

  Too soon, it’s time to leave. “Madam, come back this evening, please,” the tour guide begs Lakshmi Auntie. “Shore temple floodlights will be on. All maintained by Mamallapuram Town Panchayat.” Lakshmi Auntie gives him a handful of rupee notes, and he leaves, urging us to return.

  A vendor comes by selling hot roasted peanuts in paper cones. Lakshmi Auntie turns up her nose at first, but when Ashwin begs, “Please, Mummy, please, I’m so hungry!” she gives in and buys us one each. They are salted, and there is spice in them that creeps up on me, so I eat them without realizing how they will make my eyes water. But maybe it’s my own mixed-up feelings that are making that happen. It’s hard to tell.

  The Movie

  When we get back to town I find Mami has cleaned the house till every last doorknob gleams.

  She sprinkles water over the front step and the gravel at its foot. Then she pinches some rice flour between her thumb and index finger. Every morning she trickles it out onto the step in fine lines, and then onto the gravel in circles and stars and swirly designs unt
il magical patterns decorate our threshold. By the end of the day they get blown off, swept away, walked over, and then the next day she does it all over again. When I look up and down the road, there are the same kind of kolam patterns on every doorstep, every threshold. But ours are bigger and better because Mami has double the energy that any of those other women have.

  “Teach me,” I ask her one day after I’ve taken some pictures. She tries. I am clumsy. She is patient. But as I pour the fine flour into delicate circles and connect-the-dots like hers, my fingers slip and I end up instead with a scattering of flour all over the steps, all over my feet.

  And Mami begins to laugh. At first I join her. We laugh together. Then I stop. And she carries on laughing. It is only then that I realize her laughter is too shrill.

  She laughs until she has to clutch her stomach and sit down. She laughs and it seems she cannot stop. I am alarmed by the small trickle of saliva that escapes from her mouth, and at the harshness of the laugh as it forces itself out of her throat. Can you die from laughing too hard? Can you be choked by laughter?

  She stops suddenly and frowns, as if taken by surprise. She dashes the moistness from the corner of her mouth with the end of her sari, and says to me, unsmiling, “That’s enough. I have work to do,” as if it is somehow my fault she has nearly died laughing.

  I try to decide if there is something here for me to worry about. If Mom were here I could ask her. But she has gone out to get some papers stamped by the notary who sits in a cool dark office under a thatched roof three blocks away. And I decide it is just as well, because what would I ask? Is Mami okay? What reason do I have for thinking she might not be? Laughter is not cause for concern in the world. Is it?

  While I am spending time being undecided, Sumati shows up. “Want to go see a movie?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “Mom’s not here.”

  “Oh, come on. She won’t mind, will she?”

  “I don’t know. She might if she comes home and I’m not here.”