The gifts of the poor were far greater in relation to what they had to give. Yet Agastya would eat none of the millet bubbling in the kettle over the little iron brazier, a gift from the tanner Rama, or the pine nuts that Mitu, the outcaste woman who took the night soil from the chief’s hall, had gathered. “It is impure. I will be reborn as a maggot,” Agastya said.
Sakhi quickly tossed aside qualms about whose hands offered food. At first, she felt disloyal to Bhrigu, but she decided to ask his forgiveness. One night when Agastya went to sleep early, she offered some of Mitu’s pine nuts to her father at evening puja. She broke off a tiny piece of sandalwood incense from the chunk he had kept in a little chest along with a small brass singing bowl and a teak mallet that had belonged to his father and his father’s father, Bhrigu’s most treasured possession. It rang soft and sweet when he struck it, and he would chant the sacred om to its vibrant note.
“If it is tainted, Father, leave this offering,” Sakhi whispered, lighting the incense. “But if you take it, I will know that your blessing will purify any food we receive.”
The next morning she rushed to the family altar. The nuts were gone.
Her father’s blessing didn’t make the food any more abundant. They had one goat to give milk, but when winter came she would need fodder, and the gods alone knew where Sakhi would get enough to feed her mother, much less the goat, for four long months. She was hurt that Dandapani did not help more.
One day, Nara the woodcutter arrived with his handcart loaded with firewood from the chief. Dandapani had sent a supply to Bhrigu every year as long as Sakhi could remember. Wrapped in an old shawl, she watched while Nara unloaded barely enough to cover the bottom of the wood crib. It wouldn’t last through the first few snows.
“Thank Dandapani for his gift, Nara,” she said as he finished unloading and turned to leave. Dandapani was father to her heart’s sister, and this is all he gave. Nara gave her a short nod. He would have given her father a deep bow. He seemed in a hurry to get away.
“But… but for my father, Dandapani always had the crib filled full… ”
“Just two of you. Don’t need as much.”
“It won’t last.” She clamped her hands together to keep them from shaking. “We always used a full load. Sometimes the chief sent more if there were late storms.”
His face was impassive. “Takes less to cook and heat for two.”
“Very well, then.” She wouldn’t cry in front of the woodcutter. “I will ask Dandapani for more when he returns.”
“No need to do that,” Nara said quickly. “Shouldn’t disturb the chief with your complaints.”
Why would Nara care if she asked Dandapani for more?
He put the handles of the cart down and rubbed his chin, looking her up and down. “If you want more.” His meaning was clear. He leered, showing a few jagged, yellow teeth.
She felt naked under that leer and tightened her shawl. It was unthinkable that it would come to giving herself to Nara. Unthinkable.
He laughed and pushed his cart up the path to the chief’s hall, humming tunelessly.
Nara had stolen wood meant for her and her mother, Sakhi felt sure. Dandapani couldn’t know. He was away, patrolling the borders; times were dangerous. Both Sakyans and Kosalas had been sighted in Koli territory. In the meantime, Sakhi would have to get more fuel somehow.
The next day she dragged Agastya to the pasture to gather dung. Someone had always brought it for them, and it made Sakhi feel dirty and ashamed. In silence, Agastya sat on a rock, not making any attempt to help. The pasture had been picked clean, and Sakhi found very little to take back.
During an early snow that kept them indoors for several days, they used a large part of the wood and all the dung to keep a small fire burning. The weather turned fine for a spell afterwards. To replenish their depleted crib, Sakhi took her mother into the forest to gather fallen branches and small logs. The snow was wet and melting; more like a spring thaw than winter’s onset, the sky was so blue and the air so fresh. Squirrels whose cheeks were fat with seeds watched from the dripping branches. Birds that had not fled for warmer places sang with mad abandon, knowing the cold that was coming.
Necessity overcame Sakhi’s reluctance to leave her mother, and she went out alone for a whole day to bring as much as she could to fill the crib. Several of Mitu’s children came to help, and Mitu herself when she had taken away the bucket of soil left outside their door.
By dark, the crib was half full of poorly stacked, wet wood. Sakhi was grateful to Mitu and her children, but she needed more. To get the wet fuel going, she needed fallen cedar and pine boughs. She gathered armfuls, broke them so they would fit in the brazier, and brought them inside. They filled the hut with a wonderful scent, like Dhara’s room in the chief’s hall. Sakhi almost cried.
Soon the deep snows would come, and when they did, the gods alone knew whether they would starve first or freeze.
The night Dandapani and his patrol arrived back in the village, Sakhi had no chance to go to him. A blizzard struck. In the morning, the snow was falling so thick and fast she couldn’t see the next house up the road.
Sakhi and her mother put on every article of clothing they had and huddled in the loft under a meager pile of blankets. The goat was stabled below next to a pile of wet straw. Sakhi wished she could bring the beast up to share her warmth. The only way to tell day from night was the dim light admitted by the smoke hole in the roof and by cracks the wind whistled through. At least the wet wood stacked near the straw-filled pallet that was their bed was dry. The small fire gave off little heat but much smoke that swirled on frigid drafts until it escaped through the roof.
Sakhi dozed. Whenever she woke, her mother was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Sometimes she was whispering something Sakhi couldn’t understand. Everything was like a dream, and often she didn’t know if she was awake or asleep.
The water jug froze solid and cracked. There was no point in getting out from under the blankets to get the iron kettle. The fire was so low, the ice wouldn’t melt.
The shrieking wind pulled Sakhi into a timeless dark vortex. She drifted. Strangely, the cold receded. Things grew lovely and warm, but somehow she knew it wasn’t real. She was watching from somewhere outside herself.
Then she floated down into her body again. She was not warm at all. They were freezing to death.
A yogi’s powers
“It’s chilly to do savasana outside, eh, my girl?” Mala shaded her eyes with her hand. The sun burned glorious yellow in a cold blue sky, but Dhavalagiri’s peak seized the clouds, gathering them to create a storm. “There’ll be a big snow. Maybe tonight,” she said, scanning the sky. “We’ll meditate inside.”
Mala could keep herself warm no matter what the weather, but Dhara was far from mastering that trick. She sighed, relieved.
Inside, they settled themselves. “Now,” Mala said, “recite the eight limbs of yoga.”
“You’ve heard me recite them a hundred times. I know them perfectly well.”
“It’s always good for the student to go back to beginnings. It’s the same in the martial arts, isn’t it?”
Dhara nodded. Her father’s weapons master Jagai often made the young warriors repeat elementary techniques over and over. Especially in open-handed combat, where no weapons were allowed, Jagai demanded endless drills in the ways of breaking an enemy’s hold or delivering a disabling blow. Dhara was very good at open-hand fighting. She would be even better at beating the boys now that she’d analyzed her movements through yoga’s lens. She understood so much more about her body now. She wondered whether one really must choose one or the other, warrior or yogi. In her mind, the two disciplines fit together well.
“Dhara?” Mala interrupted her thoughts.
“First, the yamas, the moral precepts; then the niyamas, the foundations of discipline; t
hen asana, the poses themselves. This gives mastery of the body.
“The next two, pranayama, the control of the breath, and pratyahara, withdrawal of the senses, give the yogi control of the mind.
“When control of the mind is achieved, the yogi uses dharana, concentration, to achieve dhyana, meditative calm, and may then reach samadhi, where the yogi becomes one with atman, the highest Self.”
“Today,” Mala said, “consider how your practice is an upward spiral, a continual round through the eight limbs, always striving for perfection.”
As soon as Dhara tried to concentrate, her thoughts started to wander. The rushing of the wind outside carried them down the mountain to her village. Had it been a month since she came to the cave?
She was homesick. At this hour her father and a few of his best warriors might be brushing down their horses in the stables after riding the Sakyan border or chasing the Kosalas, who were always intruding on Koli territory. Her mother would be shouting at the cook because the evening meal was late. Sakhi’s family would gather in front of their altar in the rickety old house that Atimaya always said was a disgrace—not that she would have offered to help build a new one. Bhrigu would chant the evening hymns in his beautiful voice, while his wife and daughter bowed their heads. Soon the whole village would be sitting around warm home fires, eating, talking, laughing.
Her stomach grumbled. It was time for her evening meal, too, but the yogi had not given her permission to stop meditating. It was too long. Mala couldn’t possibly have dozed off. Or had she? Dhara cautiously opened one eye.
The yogi was gone.
Mala had never failed to end meditation with the soft command to Dhara to raise her head and open her eyes softly and bow over her hands. That she would get up and leave was puzzling, indeed. More puzzling still, Dhara hadn’t heard a rustle.
She stepped outside. No sign of Mala. The two golden eagles that nested in a dead tree nearby were gliding above in huge arcs, up and down, with the lowering sun’s rays playing on their enormous outflung wings. Mala had said it was late for them to be here, that they would fly away south soon. A strong gust made the dark cedars and hemlocks sway against the sky, which was turning to the dark blue of her mother’s lapis ring. “Go!” Dhara called to them. “A storm is coming.”
They shrieked back, as if warning her of something. The wind that held them aloft tore at Dhara’s clothing. She admired their aerial performance for another moment before she began to head back to the cave, but she halted in mid turn.
The white tigress padded into the clearing. The tigress sometimes followed Mala to the cave after a hunt, sometimes even sleeping next to the yogi, who played with Rani as if she were a kitten. Dhara didn’t dare. “She won’t hurt you,” Mala would say, but Dhara wasn’t convinced.
Rani padded past her in silence without a glance to the side and entered the cave. She never went in without Mala. Curiosity overcame caution. Dhara followed.
Mala was there.
She sat by the fire on her deer skin, eyes closed in meditation, legs crossed one over the other in padmasana, hands resting on her knees. With a rumbling growl, Rani settled herself behind the yogi, blinked her blue eyes, licked a paw, and started washing her ear.
Anger and astonishment, then wonder, curiosity, jealousy—what trick was this, and when could she master it? Dhara’s head whirled. “Where were you?” she spluttered at last. Her other questions died on her lips at the familiar disapproving glare.
Mala ignored the question and frowned. “You did not have my leave to end your meditation.”
Their eyes met. Dhara did not need special powers to see the yogi’s displeasure.
They ate in silence, the tigress watching without interest. Dhara was aching to understand Mala’s vanishing trick. Except for her ability to keep herself warm, Mala hadn’t displayed any of an accomplished yogi’s powers. And where had she gone?
Ghosha had told Dhara something of how a sage could do these things: “Take old Asita, who lived in the cave before Mala.” Asita hadn’t visited the village often, but sometimes he appeared like magic out of thin air for a feast. He was kind and had a ready smile, unlike Mala, whose glance could terrify. “He stills his mind so that there isn’t a ripple of thought,” Ghosha had said. “Then form vanishes, and only its meaning remains. With this understanding, he can see past and future, understand the speech of animals and humans, see the movement of the stars better than Bhrigu, manifest an elephant’s strength or make himself as light as a feather and fly.”
Dhara hadn’t understood the explanation for this ability—that form vanished but its meaning remained in the sage’s mind—or how it could bestow invisibility or strength or any other power. Ghosha had continued: “Asita didn’t think much of me or my Garuda, but I admired him. Many claim to possess these abilities; few do. And those, ah, well, they get seduced into using them wrongly. Asita knew that true freedom comes only from renouncing the very powers the yogi acquires through his ascetic practices.”
Perhaps that’s why Mala didn’t use her powers very often. Dhara wanted to ask but didn’t dare.
The silence endured the whole evening. Mala curled up next to Rani. Dhara prepared for a restless night with the tigress so near, but she fell asleep as soon as she lay down.
In the morning, Rani was still there. Usually she was gone by the time Dhara awoke, but the storm had begun. In this blizzard, the tigress’s presence was comforting rather than frightening.
Dhara pulled the skin aside to peek out, and a gust of cold wind stirred up all the dust and dead leaves in the cave and nearly whipped the flames off the fire. Outside was nothing but whirling white. Wet flakes flooded in before Dhara could fasten the flap. They hissed as they hit the fire.
“Trying to put out the fire, girl?” Mala raised an eyebrow but didn’t seem truly annoyed.
Dhara sat down. “I’ve never seen such a storm.”
“They’re always worse up here. Best get some wood in.”
They took turns dashing out to the woodpile and bringing back fuel until they had enough for several days. Then they retied all Mala’s arrowheads onto their shafts. Between the wood and the tigress, the cave seemed small but cozy. Like Ghosha and Garuda’s hut, except there, drying herbs hung from the rafters, while here, similar bunches hung from twisted roots emerging from living rock. Outside, the storm raged.
Chores done, they did seated poses that required little room to move. Then Mala said it was time for a headstand. “Your alignment is superb.” Dhara was proud of how long she could hold it, and gloried in the praise of her form. “Now, sarvangasana.”
Dhara lowered her legs and rested for a few moments, curled like a child, a position that felt wonderful after so long in “standing on the sky,” as Mala liked to say, although today it was standing on the cave roof. She exhaled heavily and sat back on her knees. “Shoulder stand makes me sick to my stomach,” she said. “Do I have to do it today?”
“You cannot do one without the other. Sirsasana is the king of poses, like the head is king of the body. But sarvangasana, the sages say, is the queen and mother of all poses. Like a queen advises her husband in the ways of peace or a mother strives to bring harmony to the home, shoulder stand brings harmony to the body.”
Dhara dawdled. Sirsana made her feel powerful, made her feel like she could take off and fly. It was truly a chief’s pose. But standing on her shoulders required submission to the feeling that her chest was caving in on her chin. It was difficult to breathe, to perform it with the “effortless effort” that Mala said was the essence of yoga. Dhara struggled with this. She did not like surrendering to anything. She would prefer to rule.
Even petting Rani seemed preferable to the dreaded pose. She reached a tentative hand to the prone animal’s head.
“Go ahead,” Mala said.
Dhara gave one enormous, pointed ear a hesitant scrat
ch. Rani raised her head, then rolled herself up, yawned and stretched, and went to the cave’s mouth. Mala opened the flap. Cold air and snow rushed in. The tigress disappeared into the storm.
“Oh, Rani! Come back!” Dhara called after her. “Did I chase her away, Mala-ji? She’ll get cold.”
“With that thick coat?” The yogi fastened the flap. “She’ll find something to eat and come back. Now stop stalling.”
Dhara reluctantly rolled onto her shoulders, supporting her back with her hands. As she took the pose, it occurred to her that Sakhi would love its aspect of surrender.
At the thought of Sakhi, loneliness pierced Dhara. She missed her father’s house, even her mother. Upside down, gazing at her stomach, her toes pointed to the cave’s roof, tears came to her eyes. For the first time, she relaxed into the asana. For a moment, her chest expanded and she could breathe freely. Then the tension returned. She was glad when Mala told her to stop.
Afterward, she sat cross-legged while the yogi boiled water to cook the last of their precious barley for their evening meal. “Soon we’ll only have what meat we can catch, and those pine nuts,” Dhara said. “And those horrible tubers.”
“Someone will come from the village with a sack of grain before the snows cut us off entirely,” Mala said.
Dhara shivered. Soon there would be no going to the village. It had been a little door in the back of her mind, an out if Mala scared her too much or yoga got too hard.
Mala emptied the sack into the kettle. “Let’s practice pranayama while it cooks.”
Dhara loved her breathing exercises. They were very simple ones, just sitting in the lotus pose, head bowed and chin resting on her chest, watching the breath. Mala said this was all a new student need do to quiet the mind and nerves. Deep pranayama led to advanced states of consciousness meant only for advanced students.
The Mountain Goddess Page 8
