Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana

by Edited by Anil Menon

  Let me think of something pleasant. My daughters will be coming home soon for summer. They go to an exclusive boarding school. It will be nice to go on a family vacation. Perhaps, we may travel to the other side of the pond; I always wanted to go motoring in the south of France. On second thoughts, a short trip to India appears to be a better proposition. My parents would love to see their granddaughters. My mother was very keen on a grandson, but now she’s gotten over it.

  There are times when I too wish I had a son, there’s something unique about a father-son relationship. But you can’t have everything, can you? Vaidehi had a point when she said nowadays girls are just as good as boys if not better.

  Two police cruisers enter the lane on which my house stands. I wonder what they are doing on this quiet street. They purr along, searching for the right door number. They come to a stop in front of my house. How interesting.

  A cop steps out of the first car and walks up the drive. He is tall and strong, as though constructed with steel and concrete. In his crisp blue uniform and a pair of darkly opaque sun-glasses, he looks like a killing machine.

  “I’m Sergeant Williams,” he says.

  I get out of the deck-chair and introduce myself, pronouncing my name the right way, not making it sound as if I were a Dodge pick-up.

  “We are investigating the disappearance of Why-day-hee,” he says, taking a peek at his memo-book.

  “Who says Vaidehi has disappeared? She’s not at home, that’s all. She’s gone away.”

  “According to the information we have…”

  “I’ve told you, she’s away. She’s gone to her mother’s place.”

  “Her mother’s place?” says Sergeant Williams. ”Would that be in India, sir?”

  “You are one bright copper, aren’t you? You seem to know every thing.”

  “We have a warrant to search the house,” says Sergeant Williams.

  “Go ahead and search. Let me know if you find anything interesting.”

  “I sure will,” he says. The cop from the other squad car joins us. He looks identical, just as strong and lethal but one shoe-size smaller. He is carrying neither a baton nor a truncheon but a bloody shovel! (What’s the police force coming to?)

  “This is Sergeant Cuff,” says Williams.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I say. While Sergeant Williams keeps an eye on me, Sergeant Cuff begins to dig in my front yard. Dust flies as he scoops out the earth from the flower bed and lays it in a heap to one side.

  “Go easy on my geraniums!” I shout. To Sergeant Williams, I say: “What’s he hoping to unearth? The moonstone?”

  “Maybe, a woman in white.”

  “You are bright, Sergeant!” I say. “Care for a beer?”

  “Some other time,” says Sergeant Williams. This guy’s a riot, let me tell you.

  “I’ve something here,” says Sergeant Cuff .

  “What’s it, Mike?”

  “Looks like a body of a woman.”

  “How awesome! She must be my very own Mythili!” I shout, clapping my hands with delight. “She had gone missing and I could never find her!”

  “Mite-ly?” says Sergeant Williams, giving his memo-book a quick scan.

  “Yes, my beloved Mythili! I’m so happy you’ve found her. Ontario Police is undoubtedly the best police force in the world!”

  I extend my hand to Sergeant Williams in congratulation. But he doesn’t take it. I had expected the bloke to be thrilled, but he has a look of utter incomprehension on his face. Funny man.

  Falling into the Earth

  Shweta Narayan

  1. Foundling

  The king her father found her in a furrow, so the story goes, and named her after it. Sita, daughter of the Earth. Sita: a place where seed is planted.

  Mama and Papa have talked about your adoption so often you dream of it; wailing in the agency doctor’s huge dark arms while Mama and Papa sort through the papers and the bill. (American dollars only, Ayah says.) The room is pale yellow and it smells of disinfectant, like bath rooms in the morning. A tube light flickers silver in Mama’s hair. Papa counts out dull green notes. Lots of them.

  You fall, dream-soft, into Mama’s arms, and are caught in a yellowing photograph: pale against her pink sari, her arms gently pulling you close, supporting your neck with one hand. Papa was an obstetrician and Mama a pediatrician; they both know how to hold babies.

  “Our own foundling,” says Papa, beaming. Your black hair is vivid against Mama’s grey. You are nothing like the red-faced bald babies he delivered in America. “Our Sita.”

  Ayah adds that you’re a black market baby. She has been with the family for long enough to say these things. You should always be grateful for it, she says while she brushes out your hair, because you were born to the sort that gives a child up for adoption. Maybe even an unmarried mother, like in Aradhana.

  Here, you’re a princess.

  Ayah doesn’t have to tell you to sit still while she tugs through the tangles; gratitude means that princess, playing her role. Mama is too frail for disappointments.

  You dream of falling into dark earth soft as Mama’s arms.

  2. Swayamvara

  Sita’s father held a competition when she came of age, a grand event to which all her hopeful suitors were invited. The princes and kings, great archers all, were challenged to string a bow infused with divine power.

  Perhaps Rama and Sita met in secret and fell in love, and she prayed for him to succeed. Perhaps she prayed for the perfect man.

  Perhaps he was just strong.

  After every other man strained to lift the bow a finger’s width, struggled, and gave up, Rama picked it up one-handed and strung it. He drew back the string, and broke the bow in two.

  Arranged marriages are not so very arranged these days. Mama doesn’t want you on anything as vulgar as a marriage website, but you get to choose your groom from the eligible boys that she and Papa’s cousins know.

  The first boy won’t stop bragging. The second only wants to know what you can cook. The third is engaging till you tell him your degree is in performance arts. Then he says, “I thought you went to a real college.”

  You dream of running from princes armed with ladles and calculators, of pulling banana leaves over yourself and hiding in damp, summer-smelling earth.

  Ram’s auspicious name brings you out of hiding. His statistics are encouraging: MBA, in charge of his father’s restaurants in California, green card holder.

  Emailed pictures tell you he’s tall, with an easy smile and Bollywood charm. The hint of grey over his ears adds distinction. He’s wearing a kurta, blue-green as banyan leaves, over jeans. The photos do look a bit lightened, but darkness hardly matters in a man. You wonder what he makes of your pictures, whether he’ll get in touch. You wonder how American he is.

  He emails.

  He asks what you think about the different dance forms you’ve studied. He says he’s glad you wear traditional clothes; nothing can match their elegance. He asks if you’d be willing to leave Mama and Papa behind to go into exile with him; to come home, as they did, only in old age. He doesn’t ask if you can cook.

  You talk on the phone. His low voice, his foreign vowels, make your toes curl.

  You’re scared of a decision made too soon, and he’ll agree to wait. But Mama and Papa are old now, stooped and translucent, and Mama says plaintively that she wants to hold a grandchild before she dies. And how, after all, could Ram and Sita go wrong? He flies in for a visit.

  At dinner, you talk over candlelight. He tells stories that make you laugh, and grins when you do: “Arrey, she threatened to sue because she thought the chilli was a tomato!” Candle shadows dance across his face. “We’re not entirely pakka; one of our best cooks is Pakistani. But the only thing he terrorizes is the paneer. He’s a good guy actually.”

  You’ve set a date before the candles sputte
r out.

  Wedding preparations whirl you through the next months; they set you down on the divan three days before the wedding, with henna-covered hands stretched into a patch of hot sunlight and time, finally, to fret. The swirling patterns smell of wet earth. Hidden in their perfect shadows, drawing your eyes, one man’s initials mark you.

  Ayah, silhouetted, dabs sugar water on your hands and tells you not to scratch.

  Mama reads out loud, voice quavering. She reads the stories she used to tell you at bedtime: Sita following Rama into the jungle, Sita keeping patient house for Rama and his brother. Sita obeying, Sita turning aside arguments with a gentle smile, Sita’s staunch loyalty.

  Ayah sighs. “Never underestimate those virtues in a marriage,” she murmurs. You wonder, too late to ask, how she knows.

  3. Exile

  Rama was the eldest of his brothers; but one of his father’s junior wives, wanting her son to be king, prevailed upon her husband to exile Rama for fourteen years.

  Ever obedient to all his parents, Rama left. His brother Lakshman would not part from him, so they and Sita lived together in the jungle. The princes learned to be hunters, the princess to keep a house.

  You join your prince in California, land of pink-skinned people and red-skinned trees and green card applications, to live in a golden house in the hills; burned yellow stucco, bamboo floors, golden tones in Persian rugs and Ravi Varma prints. It even smells lemon-gold; citrus fresheners are plugged into electrical outlets in every room.

  The front windows look onto a spill of iceplant, unnaturally green. In the back grow colors of tarnish—rust and verdigris clawed with old-silver branches, sage soft and white as oxidized lead. Swimming pools sprouting, copper sulphate blue. You polish every figurine and oil lamp before they turn into the hillside.

  When Mama phones, you describe the house. “What about Ram, beti?” she asks.

  The bedsheets are creamy, soft as rich soil, but your first night under them was painful. Worse, it was awkward; Ram too anxious to laugh at the absurdity of it, trying too hard for you to relax, gone when you woke. He’s been working late, most nights, too tired when he gets home to do more than cuddle. You say, “He has a lot to catch up on.”

  You don’t say that you’ve mostly been relieved.

  “It takes time,” Mama says, “and work. Love is the result of a successful marriage, not the cause.”

  Carven rosewood is scattered through the house, the images familiar, beloved, absent only in the kitchen of flat glass and steel. You dust battles out of myth, running pink microfiber over maces, demon tusks, four-armed gods. Like the maids do at home.

  You pull out your old Ramayana comics, the ones with pages falling out. Ram finds one on the bedside table. “I used to love those when I was a kid,” he says.

  “They’re not bad for adults either,” you tell him.

  “They made me think I’d turn blue someday.” He picks one up, traces a line with one fingertip; his smile is half embarrassed, half wistful.

  Ram warns you of a party next weekend. “Just another type of work,” he says. “Schmoozing. Ranjan’s always are. I’m sorry we won’t get the evening together.”

  You start to smile at the prospect; you’ve hardly talked to anyone except for Americans so incomprehensible you’re amazed both of your languages are called English. But there are lines between his eyebrows. You finish the smile, say, “You’ll have to make it up to me.” The worry lines ease.

  You practice walking in heels till you’re confident that you won’t stumble or put a heel through chiff on. They’re for the beaded blue sari with the strappy blouse, and the long earrings heavy with sapphires, the ones that make you look like Aishwarya. You hope.

  You dream of heels sinking into damp soil. When you try to pull free, the tarnished ground shakes under you. You’re not sure, later, if you dreamed the quake.

  You can’t help tensing up in the car, though Ram knows what he’s doing. They drive on the wrong side of the road. It would be easier if you were in the back seat, with a driver up front. But normal people don’t employ chauffeurs here.

  And only fobs call them drivers.

  At the party you smile through the laughter at “Ram and Sita”, take the violently pink cocktail someone hands you. You’re fairly sure that refusing to drink is fobbish, too. You sip. It even tastes pink.

  The rest of the party is a happy blur. You’re never more than slightly tipsy—you know better—but that little bit helps. And it’s a respite from being a jungle housewife. You have missed getting to know people. You have missed having a chance to sparkle.

  Ram gets quieter, seems more tired, as you become central. You want to tuck him into bed; but at least you’re taking some of the burden off him.

  But he is frowning all the more on the way home, and his lips are one thin line. Eventually he says, “Was there a single man there you didn’t flirt with? Oh right, there was. Me.”

  You make naan bhaaji and pistachio mitthai as Mama and the cook taught you, sending smells of cardamom and cumin and chilli through the house. The calming fresh-earth smells of home, your spell to repair whatever went wrong. But by the time he gets back the naan is leathery, the bhaaji needs reheating, and the pale-citrus scent has taken back over. He doesn’t complain; he doesn’t say anything at all.

  You bite your tongue, tell yourself that Sita in the stories wouldn’t snap at a silent husband. And you did misjudge the timing; overcom-pensated for the help you’re used to at home.

  Except that this is home.

  You catch him before he leaves for work. He is heavy-eyed, the frown etched deep into his forehead. He reaches out a hand.

  “Sita…”

  Arms crossed, you say, “What did you mean, flirting?”

  His hand drops. He turns away. “You’d like a definition? Try the dictionary.”

  The door snicks shut behind him before you can respond, and you find yourself shaking in fury. Sita might not have lost her temper in the stories—but in the stories Rama never sulked. You want to knock the ground out from under his smug, his perfect facade of a house loose. You want him running home to the mess you’re feeling –

  And with a rumble too huge to hear, the world drops away.

  He bursts into the kitchen just minutes after the shaking stops, eyes wide and tie as crooked as his paintings. He says, “I came as—we were right at the epicenter.” He hugs you tight. “That was a big one. You must have been so scared.”

  You are one huge pounding heartbeat, but you’re not the least bit scared.

  You dream of kneeling in yellow dust, citrus-scented, trying to coax a banana plant to grow. Next to you, Lakshman builds a sandcastle. It slides into an undifferentiated hill each time his hands move away.

  A paintbrush lies between you, caked with paint; the tip is a single, unbending clump the color of dried blood.

  He turns up the next day; in the waking world he has a round baby face and an incongruous mustache. You offer him bhel, coffee, sweets.

  “So gracious a hostess,” he says, “but I need a nap. I’ll settle in my normal room, acha? You won’t even know I’m here.” He runs a hand through his curly hair and sighs. “Gods know Ram won’t.”

  You smile politely, wishing you could unhear that.

  He grimaces. “Shit. Blame it on the jet lag, okay?”

  At dinner he tells Ram, “I missed you.”

  Ram laughs. “Of course you did. You’re surely not here to get away from anyone.”

  Expression fades out of Lakshman’s face. He stares at the potato on his fork while he mushes it against the plate. “I ‘t justah, forget it.”

  Ram’s smile does not show teeth. “And yet. She’s our mother now.”

  Lakshman mutters, “Our mother wasn’t a—”

  “Don’t,” says Ram.

  Lakshman’s up early the next day. He’s not a quiet riser.
You stumble out of rice-paddy dreams into the hall as Ram says, “Where are you going?”

  “Coming in with you,” says Lakshman.

  Ram laughs. “As if I’m going to bore you off,” he says. “Sleep in. Have fun.”

  “I am here,” Lakshman says, “to help.” There’s a note in his voice that strangles yours.

  “And you’re helping by being here.”

  You find Lakshman, later, slumped in front of a Hindi film. His eyes are slitted, one hand holding his face up. Thinking he’s asleep, you back out.

  You’re pulling the door shut when he says, “Good thing we’re both decorative, isn’t it.”

  You replace all the room fresheners with sandalwood scented ones. You arrange huge red roses in a new vase and hope Ram will bring you their replacements.

  “So why not dance professionally?” Lakshman asks over dinner. His eyes start on you, but he’s looking at Ram by the time he stops speaking.

  In that moment you hate him. Because he’s poking at this, because Ram hasn’t, because the sweets he brought are covered in silver foil and smell of home. Because Ram is home early today. You focus on tearing your paratha into bits. “It hasn’t come up,” you manage.

  “You know what they’re like,” Ram says. “No respect for their own traditions, let alone ours. They’d think she was just an entertainer. They wouldn’t get it.”

  Lakshman snorts. “In San Jose?” he says. “You wouldn’t see three white faces in the audience.”

  “Think all Americans are white?” says Ram. “Plenty of them look just like us.”

  You say, “I’d rather not go on a stage, anyway.” You wonder if that’s true. Your paratha is a shredded mess. “But I might teach, sometime.”

  “Not that you’d have to,” says Ram.