The gold went missing from a secret locker only the family knew about. This is not a whodunit. They already knew who. They begged the big pandits, higher-ups of the Brahmin patriarch, who drew symmetrical shapes with rice flour and chanted in Sanskrit in front of a hellish fire. The truth thus directed took up residence in the eight-year-old granddaughter, who straightened up one midnight, eyes lotus petals, hair long and sinewy, and uttered the name of her aunt and daughter of the house.
She lived in a different city, this mother of two, wife to a reckless impossibility. Hid from her in-laws under their very noses. Confronted with her misdeed, she took to the hospital bed, a fistful of pills in her gut. When she recovered, her birth family was gone.
The patriarch told his daughter-in-law—the eight-year-old seer’s mother—that she was now the only daughter of the house. His son thanked the stars for this good wife, who regarded with pride her proxy-goddess child, who was back in her gold chains and rings. The patriarch’s wife took out a bunch of keys from her waist and turned them over to the newly sworn-in daughter. I want no part of it anymore, she said. Here, you keep this. Don’t be silly, said the other. There’s place enough here for two women.
Akhila Pingali is a research scholar and freelance translator based in Hyderabad, India. Her work has appeared in SoFloPoJo, trampset, Defunkt Magazine, boats against the current, Tint Journal, Contemporary Literary Review India, etc. You can find her on Twitter @AkhilaPingali.
No comments:
Post a Comment