Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana

by Edited by Anil Menon

  “What? You gotta be somewhere?”

  “No, just go ahead,” Val looks increasingly uncomfortable. I come off of the platform, and kneel next to Val.

  “So, Great Sage, I’ve heard of your amazing feats, that you meditated for so long that you can control all of your animal instincts and urges,” I whisper into his ear, breathily. I place a hand on his leg. “Is it true what they say, that you have mastered the arts of…”

  Val brushes my hand away and stands up, looking angry. “See, you shouldn’t be down here. This is what I’m talking about. Just get on the platform and go ahead and transform.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.” I get onto the platform and press the button that changes the music into the manic frenzy of beats I use for my transformation.

  “Oh Valmiki, great sage, I recognize you better up close. You’re nothing but a thief, a lowlife…you didn’t create this story, you just wrote it down,” I say harshly. “You hide behind this disguise, but I can see through you.”

  I throw the braided wig onto the floor and shake loose my real hair, that’s gotten increasingly more and more tangled as the night has progressed. I quickly insert my fanged retainer.

  “You dirty old man,” I yell. “You false idol, you fakester! You should have been buried by those ant hills you sat upon, that would have been better for this world, than perhaps Sita could have told the story properly, Ravana…even Hanuman would have created this world better than you. You think I’m a demon, a raksha? You’re every bit a demon as I am, but at least I can admit it.”

  All the while, Val sits on the couch staring up at me, holding me steady with his gaze. My costume is in shreds, my sari hanging off my shoulders. I don’t know what he wants from me.

  “Do it,” I say.

  Val shakes his head. I hand the sword to him. “Do it! We have to play it out!”

  “I know what you do, Sapna.”

  “Then why are we in here?”

  Val stands up, takes the sword from me and puts in back in its stand. “I’m sorry. I’ll make sure you get paid for this. I want you to take the rest of the night off .”

  “What? Val, you can’t fire me for Anita.”

  “You’re off the floor, tonight,” Val looks down.

  “Look Val, is this about the recruiters? I’ll pay you the contract difference. I need the money.”

  “No. I’ll give you an advance. How much do you need?”

  “Val, what the hell? You can’t help me, okay.”

  “Tell me how much you need,” Val pleads with me and I can believe his intensity.

  “I need a reverse voucher,” I yell and Val looks shocked. He slams his fist onto the platform by my feet.

  “You don’t know what it’s like up there, okay, my dad worked space station jobs because he thought that’s how he could get us to Reverse, and…and he never came back. It was just me and my brother, okay? So, we didn’t have anyone to protect us from everything. So, don’t get on me for not claiming being Indian, okay, I’m not. They beat it out of me a long time ago, all right?”

  The transformation beats are still blaring and I hit the button with my toe to turn it down, and then we just hear the beats distorting from the rest of the club, the movement of hundreds of people.

  “Look Val, I’m sorry about your father. But you know, my father went half a mile from our house and never came back. And now, they’re gone and we’re surviving, however we can.”

  Val nodded at me solemnly. “Just be careful,” he says. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  I look at him and see the weight of running this place, the stress of the years of passing, the sincerity of trying to protect me from whatever danger he thinks is out there. I kiss him on the cheek, and he smiles. It looks sad.

  Back in the costuming area, I sit down at my mirror and wipe away the make-up with a shaking hand. I pull out my demonness retainer that gives me big sharp teeth.

  I was a little girl when the Epics first started dominating all the media. The backlash was just beginning and there were protests against the movies and TV shows and cartoons, before they became the only stories told. I used to watch the Ramayana anime with my dad. His favorite episodes of the original series was when there would be guests from DC and Marvel, like when Superman was helping Ram fight Ravana, or when the Wolverine from X-Men came to India and fought and then became friends with Hanuman. My dad used to complain about the Epics, saying that the Indianification of everything was a sign of the end of times.

  “Even if it’s one of the greatest stories in the world, there are a lot of other stories out there,” he said. My mom teased him, told him to go out and join the protests himself. It was when that could still be joked about, before Indians were being shot in the street.

  He was writing about comic books then for Slo-merica, trying to go around and collect them, even though my mom was trying to convince him into a practical job with her at the call center. He was going to pick up a collection of old magazines and comic books that talked about the Ramayana. He was going to do post about it, but I know he wanted the artifacts especially to show me, show me the history of the stories. It was at a warehouse in North Vegas where he often went to trade or buy contraband paper goods. The police later said that someone was probably tipped off , knew an Indian was coming, and that he would probably be carrying cash. A lot of Indians were known to have cash at that time, in getting ready to Reverse, a lot of people liquidated their accounts so they wouldn’t have to declare anything and leave behind the thirty percent that the US government instated that year. It was probably four guys with cro-bars, or planks of wood. When they looked in his wallet, all they found was a benefit card for people with low percentages. No one was ever charged with the murder.

  I pull off the remains of my wig, and try to untangle my black curly hair. The streaks of whitened skin and dark skin make me look diseased, mottled like those Indian kids who waste away from plugging directly into the web for twenty hours a day. I need to get Val out of my head, I need to get everyone out of my head and just do the work, get Ma to India, or somewhere close enough that at least has good dialysis machines.

  It’s Tania’s time of night now. I watch for awhile from the tunnel before emerging onto the floor. The Golden Deer is always a dancer—gyrating and twirling on the platforms. My Golden Deer crush makes me think she’s otherworldly, and the crowd does, too. They are going wild for her now and she leaps from dance platform to platform. I decided to forego the wig this time, though I straightened my hair, made it a big mane around my head. I wear a black sari with fluorescent embroidery. I step out onto the floor and ease my way into the crowd, the Lust Dust creating large masses of writhing bodies—connected by a hand, sweaty waists, tips of fingers. I went easy on the skin lightening, at this time of night, it’s better to get out to the crowd, people tire of the disguises, they just want the story.

  Someone taps me on the shoulder, and I turn and it’s the short Russian man I saw earlier with the Nicoya Ravana. He is sans costume, dressed in black and carrying a small case.

  “Can I interest you in an elixir, maybe a moment in our booth?” he asks, all business. He motions over to a private booth in the corner. I can’t see much, but I know that this might be the break I’m looking for. I nod and follow.

  The booth is empty but it feels warm and sweaty, as though it was recently evacuated. The Russian pours me a drink from the faux-bamboo carafe on the table.

  “Terrible touch, the carafes. Everything should be bronze, silver or Gold,” he says, sneering mildly. “You’d think Val would have better taste.”

  “Val makes mistakes,” I say.

  “He certainly knew what he was doing with you,” the Russian says, finally looking slightly lecherous—it made me relax more, the expression familiar. “You give great demonness, I hear.”

  “Not hard, growing up here.”

  “Ah yes, the best
players bring themselves forward,” he says, looking me up and down. “My client is willing to offer you a substantial percentage to come to work for him.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “He’s creating his own stable of players—they would work where he requires, but it’s worth it.”

  “Space stations? West China? What are we talking about here?”

  “My client has various locations. He is working on developing some frontier boutiques.”

  I feel my heart thud in my chest, frontiers, that could mean space frontiers or the Border. Either way, the play would be rough and possibly deadly.

  “Sounds exciting,” I say boldly. “I’ll do it for a Reverse voucher for my mother.”

  The Russian looks at me carefully. “There’s no such thing,” he says.

  “Oh really? That’s too bad.” I say innocently, getting up from the booth “It was great to talk to you. Sounded like a great opportunity.”

  “Wait,” the Russian says, looking around. “The voucher can probably be arranged.”

  “Oh, how nice,” I reply. He hands me an encrypted chip with his information, tells me to get in touch within the week. I get up and kiss the Russian once on each cheek. His eyes are an icy blue.

  “I look forward to working together,” he says.

  While I’m walking away from the table, I see Val looking down at me from his office, his arms folded across his chest. He’s just a silhouette and, for a moment, I imagine I can see all the ants behind him, burrowing into the synthetic sand in his walls—imagining they are doing the work for a reason, protecting the queen, their own epic played out as part of our fake one. Val shakes his head at me. I smile up at him, thankful. I can’t remember the last time someone actually looked out for me. Then I turn back to the floor.

  Tania glows in front of me, her costume shooting out holograms of herself reflected over the room, so we can only see her image if we tilt our heads up. The ceiling has clouds projected over it to make it seem like we are in the jungle, that we are all dreaming the same dream somewhere. I stop and look up at her image flashing.

  Suddenly, she is in front of me, her golden costume covered in tiny beads of sweat that the latex breathes out from the heat of her body. I hear the crowd stir, even in their sluggish Lust haze, because the Deer never usually touches the floor. Tania smiles at me with her crooked incisor, mischievous, daring. She starts dancing with me and I move with her. Before the crowd swallows her up, I see the Russian out of the corner of my eye, standing with the men he works for, the men I might soon work for. I see Val above us, watching all the pieces of his universe. And then, I just close my eyes, and dance, the glow from Tania’s costume flickering behind my eyelids. The music flowing through us, the vines of the fake trees climbing towards the sky.

  Making

  Aishwarya Subramanian

  Months from now a god will casually touch a squirrel. A deceptively human gesture of thanks, his touch will burn through it and alter its very squirrelhood; searing the marks of his fingers onto the backs of all squirrels forever.

  Mythili has been touched by a god. He has given her no ornaments, but has traced lines around her neck that glow like chains of gold, anklets for her feet, a line of light that sweeps up into her hair. He has drawn bracelets round her wrists (his hands gripping them tightly, thumb and forefinger just about meeting at the point where she can feel her pulse). These are the marks he has made deliberately but everywhere he has touched her she is radiant. His lightest touches have dappled her skin with brightness. Wherever she stands she will always look as she does now in this forest under these trees, patterned with leaf and sun.

  Yet it is she who looks at him. Her husband’s long eyes are shaped like lotus petals. His skin is so much finer than her own that the blue tracery of his veins comes through. He is leaning against the wall of the shelter he coaxed the trees to form in this glade where it is always breezy and mild. When he hums to himself tiny flowers spring up out of the earth in response. He smells of earth and herbs and the very trees yearn towards him, bending their heads closer to the ground to be as near to him as possible. Mythili recognises that feeling better than anybody.

  They are being watched. Brother and sister hide in the bushes. When they leave, the grass where they stood is brown and dead.

  Meenakshi in her workshop crafts a body fit for a god. Limbs long and smooth, skin petal-soft . The feet are long and narrow, the hands small but with long nails. The hair is copper (they must stay true to their roots) and as it captures the light of the forges it glows. She cannot help but wonder what it will look like when the man in the forest has laid his light-giving hands upon it. Underneath the hair a perfect face -straight nose, wide mouth, lovely, fish-shaped eyes that slant. She lines the eyes with coal dust.

  “It won’t work.” her brother Vishravan sounds almost sorry.

  She plays with the hair (her hair) and runs a finger down the lovely profile that will soon be hers.

  “It will.”

  His own workshop is as far away from hers as possible. Meenakshi can do a thousand things that he cannot. She can imitate the waxy texture of the surface of a leaf. She can make small birds that fly, look and sound exactly like the real thing. Only Meenakshi could make herself a body fit for a god. If he asked her to, she could fill the city’s gardens with trees and flowers and birds, make of it the place he dreamt of when he begged for ten years for a kingdom of his own. He does not ask.

  Vishravan thinks too often about the frenzied sea turned white and the huge, pliant, living rope so strange under his hands. He has brooded for so long on that ancient story of a contract that was broken that sometimes he believes he was there himself. He knows how proud the Daityas were at being approached, how strange it was to be around these beings with whom they were now equals. The twinge of triumph at being needed, even if only to make up the numbers. And then, when it came to the time to divide the fruits of that great labour, finding out that the decision had been made without them. He doesn’t remember how the Gods looked at him, but he remembers that they lied.

  They were promised nectar and given poison. It seeped into them and leached away what powers they had. They crept into the dark corners of the world (often forests, out of some perverse need for revenge) and nursed their wounds. Where they lived nothing would grow. Daityas turn the grass brown when they stand for too long, and animals flee from them as if their breath was toxic. But they can still make things.

  Meenakshi’s greatest creations are the ones that look the most real. Vishravan will have no truck with the real. He will let her have her workshop but everything on the surface of the city he prayed for for so long must look made.

  He is in his sister’s workshop when Meenakshi leaves. He is still there when she brings back her broken body. Even now it is so lifelike that he can barely look at it. There is a gaping hole where the nose was; one ear still dangles on a tag of flesh and her skin is melted and corroded as if someone had thrown acid at her. His sister is shaken and hurt and also furious. As he comforts her he plays with her beautiful hair and notices how the light falls upon it. The god in the forest must have touched it. He prefers not to think about this.

  Mythili’s husband sits under a tree. When he returned from his hunting he wore smears of demon blood and an expression of distaste. Asked where he had been, all he would say was “protecting you” before cleaning himself in the river and sitting down to meditate.

  The low, rumbling note that comes from his throat is the oldest thing in the universe. Every living thing in the forest feels it stirring within them when they hear it. What must it be like to be at variance with that sound, as is the creature he has defended her against today? What must it be like to be forever, fundamentally discordant?

  The thing the demon builds in his forge bears little resemblance to an actual deer. It is unashamedly fabricated (as if anyone could be taken in by a gold deer)—all poli
shed gears and gleaming metals. But its gait is rather lovely and the bowing of its neck as graceful as that of any real animal. It is very beautiful.

  “Capture it for me”.

  Mythili has never ordered her husband to do anything before. She is prepared to argue her case (it is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen) but he is already off chasing it through the trees.

  Her captor seems strangely uninterested in her. He is a huge man dressed entirely in bronze armour. She cannot see his face. She thinks that he must be blisteringly hot in there. He speaks to her just twice on the journey south, both apologies. Once for the kidnapping, and once for the “barrenness” of his city. They arrive at night and all she can see of his home are the lights in the houses and the gleam of the domes.

  Her servants (she has had none since her marriage) are automata, and her home is pink marble. She spends most of her time in the garden outside. There is no grass in Vishravan’s city, but the ground is paved with coloured stones. There are trees of dead wood and dull iron, and the leaves and flowers (she will learn that they were made for her by her captor’s wife) are tinted glass. The strange deer-like thing she saw in the forest is also here, though she doesn’t ask how.

  Of necessity she spends a lot of time in the palace. Everyone is wary of her, all but Vishravan’s wife Mandodari. From her she learns that her captor has many brothers (she never sees them while she’s there and all she really remembers is that one is particularly pious and one particularly sleepy), and that the quiet, middle-aged lady who sits next to him on a throne is his sister, a widow and a clever craftswoman. She senses that Meenakshi avoids her on purpose, but even her new mentor doesn’t know why.

  She learns that this palace (a wonder in crystal and coloured stone) was made by her protector’s father. In years to come he will make other celebrated palaces but this one, for his daughter, is his masterpiece.