Kalyana

by Rajni Mala Khelawan

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Khelawan, Rajni Mala, author

  Kalyana : a novel / Rajni Mala Khelawan.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-927583-98-2 (paperback).

  —ISBN 978-1-77260-002-5 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8621.H45K35 2016 C813'.6 C2015-908406-7

  C2015-908407-5

  Copyright © 2016 by Rajni Mala Khelawan

  Edited by Christina M. Frey and Patricia Kennedy

  Designed by Melissa Kaita

  Cover photographs © iStockphoto

  “Kabhi Kabhi” written by Majrooth Sultanpuri

  © Published by Saregama Music United States

  All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  Published by

  SECOND STORY PRESS

  20 Maud Street, Suite 401

  Toronto, ON M5V 2M5

  www.secondstorypress.ca

  For my mother, Shanti Kumari Singh

  FIJI ISLANDS

  Red hibiscus and bougainvillea hedges

  My mother once said that everyone in this world is granted one beginning and one ending. Life is made up of what is in between: the connections, the discoveries, the triumphs, and the losses. Some of these inspire us, some mold us, and some destroy us. Yet no experience leaves our spirits untouched.

  Kalyana.

  One simple word, but its meaning carries the weight of the universe.

  Blissful.

  Beautiful.

  Blessed.

  The auspicious one.

  It encompasses all that is good, all that is pure, and all that is true. And all that is without suffering, without pain. Kalyana. That is my name.

  My mother had gifted me with my name long before I was conceived, she claimed. Although she never would tell me directly where the birds had met the bees, I once overheard her tell the story to my mausi, my aunt and her sister.

  It had happened in the middle of the day, at ten past the noon hour, in an old hut by the Pacific. The windows were open, my mother said, and the warm breeze blew in the salt of the sea. “Kalyana happened then.” Her voice was firm, certain. She sat calmly at the dining table, picking pebbles out of a bowl of uncooked rice.

  Manjula only rolled her eyes, pursed her lips, and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Yes, Kalyana happened then.”

  “And how would I know what happened, Sumitri? I am still without a husband.”

  “Yes, yes, Manjula. I know you’re still without a husband.” My mother smiled. “Kalyana happened after a brush of blissful, passionate embrace.” Then, turning sour, she said, “Unlike my son, who happened right after the burst of pain.”

  “Pain?” Manjula, wide-eyed, awaited her education.

  “Oh, Kutiya. There’s always pain the first time.” She paused for effect before continuing. “And blood.”

  “Blood?” squeaked Manjula.

  My mother eyed my aunt conspicuously before whispering, “It’s only a little bit of blood.”

  “Oh my God! Pain. Suffering. And blood. How can that be? Isn’t it supposed to be God’s gift of pleasure to mankind?” Manjula wrestled with her breathing, blushing as she whispered, “Do men suffer also when the birds meet the bees?”

  My mother playfully slapped her sister on the arm. “Manjula, have you lost your mind?” she smirked. “Only women bleed!”

  1

  My mother often told me that while suffering hides deep within, unnoticed and unseen, pain is marked by a release of blood. I did not understand how this pain and blood could ever end in a state of emotional bliss. But my mother was insistent.

  Blood and pain, she said, marked the passage of a woman’s life. It happened to a new bride on her wedded bed; it happened to a new mother in a birthing tent. This was something men could never share or understand. “It is this blood, Kalyana,” she would say, looking deeply into my eyes, “it is this blood that bonds one woman’s soul to another.”

  There was blood when I was born, she said, buckets and buckets of it. And pain, much pain. My mother would tell me how she had howled and screamed for the gods’ mercy, how she had begged to be reincarnated as a man.

  And yet some women, she said, had become like men without the assistance of the gods. On the day of my birth, she told me, the women of a faraway land called America had gone mad. They had taken off their brassieres and destroyed them in a bonfire in the center of the town, chanting and circling the flames like mad, ancient cavemen. Later, after all the brassieres had turned to ash, the women had stopped cleaning, cooking, and shaving under their armpits and rebelled against their husbands. They had buttoned up white shirts, strapped on belts over their khaki pants, and gone to work like men.

  My mother had heard all of this on a transistor radio, the same one that she kept tucked into her pocket. But this did not keep her from retelling the story, adding her own particular flavor. For extra effect, my mother would seal the tale by raising her right arm and pointing to her clean underarms with her left index finger. “The hairs grew out long enough for braiding, Kalyana,” she would say. “Eeeeww!” And she would scrunch up her nose.

  She would tell other stories, too, stories from our past. My grandmother, she said, was born on SS Sangola, a merchant ship of the British India Steam Navigation Company. She arrived in an unusual way: head first, like a bag of stones, with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. My mother would pronounce SS Sangola like the British, exaggerating each syllable for dramatic effect.

  This journey, she always claimed, had been the ship’s third time on the great oceans, bringing Indian laborers from the heat of Calcutta to the plains of Fiji. Just like the birds that migrate south in search of the warmth of the sun, leaving behind the harshness of winter, so the Indians came to Fiji with lotas filled with hope, fleeing the chill of poverty.

  The laborers, my mother said, were numbered carefully: 1,151 set sail. Yet 1,152 laborers landed on the Fiji sands on February 1, 1909, and my mother insisted that my grandmother had accounted for the extra number. She was sure about this detail, too, as she was sure about everything else.

  My grandmother had tumbled out of her mother’s womb onto the grimy wooden decks. It happened on the darkest night of the century, twenty-three days before the ship reached the Fiji shores. To conceal my great-grandmother’s nakedness and suffering from the curious eyes of the men, all of the women on the ship had gathered around her in a circle, fat penguins holding up great veils of saris. Only my great-grandmother’s screams of agony had pierced through the thin material, followed by the women’s shouts of joy. My grandmother’s small head, covered with thick black hair—a trait of all Indian women—had emerged like a turtle’s head out of its shell.

  Upon hearing the sounds of joy, the men had hopped on the decks as the steamship parted the seas. A pundit on the ship blew the conch shell amidst the jubilation; its reverberation echoed across the waves of the Pacific Ocean, causing the small creatures living below the seas to dance and swirl. Even the Surgeon-Superintendent, the most important man on the ship and the Indian people’s protector and boss, had come out of his cabin with his hands on his hips and a grin planted across his thin, pale face. He had stood and watched the celebration, though from a necessary distance.

  My mother also said that, on those same decks where my grandmother had taken her first breath, the Surgeon
-Superintendent had killed an immigrant snake. It had happened like this: When the Indian men and women were boarding the ship from the docks of Calcutta, a naag, a king cobra, had followed their scent and the sound of the conch shell and crept aboard the ship like a hidden stowaway. During the voyage the passengers would occasionally catch a glimpse of the black, slippery creature making its way from one corner or hole of the cabin to another, slithering in and out among the barrels of food and water stacked on the decks.

  The Surgeon-Superintendent had received the news of this extra immigrant, one whose potential as a hard-working laborer was limited. He had not believed that the snake had followed the scent of the laborers or the sound of the conch shell; rather, he was convinced that it was the snake charmer who had smuggled the snake on board in the round wicker basket that he kept carefully covered with a red loincloth. The Surgeon-Superintendant would spend his days afflicted with worry. What if the snake were to strike one of his laborers dead in the middle of the night? Every uninjured head delivered safely to the shores of the Fiji Islands entitled him to an additional payment.

  The yellow-haired man had set out to capture and destroy the unwelcome guest. This to the horror of my ancestors, who had stood there shuddering in their dhotis, shaking their heads. They had worshipped the very presence of the king cobra, a garland of Lord Shiva. Its company on the ship would have been taken as a blessing, a symbol of good fortune.

  The snake charmer was summoned and made to sit in the middle of the deck and play his pungi. The sweet melody attracted the snake to the deck. It coiled up in front of the charmer and, mesmerized by the tune, swayed gracefully.

  At this point I could caress fear with my fingertips, for I well knew what would happen next.

  The Surgeon-Superintendent had grabbed a blackened steel pot by its handle and beat the snake on the head, smashing it into the ground. Venomous blood splattered the decks and the Surgeon-Superintendent’s white shirt, staining both. My mother would look me in the eye confidently and insist that even the king cobra wasn’t beyond the wrath of pain; the snake had hissed in agony under the hold of the pot for nearly a minute before its spirit evaporated into the dark waters of the universe, releasing it from suffering inflicted by man.

  As the king cobra lay lifeless, its yellow belly up in the air, the laborers gathered around it. They chanted verses in Sanskrit and prayed for the light-haired man’s soul until the strike of his whip sent them sprawling to throw the snake’s remains overboard. Two days later, the distraught snake charmer followed his beloved snake into the depths of the sea.

  Later that year, a big steel pot had fallen on the Surgeon-Superintendent’s head, cracking his skull in a hundred places and killing him instantly. It was more than a few days before his body was discovered, my mother would insist. His face was unrecognizable because of all the dried blood, and he stank like cow’s dung.

  Of all the stories my mother told me when I was young, this one alone stirred recurring nightmares. I was transported back to the SS Sangola, in the middle of the ocean. The ship was swarming with countless king cobras, slithering all around me. I could hear low growls under their hissing calls. They were coiled in front of me, wearing red maharajah crowns, while others held back, draped over the barrels, hanging on the masts. Trapped, I shivered, chanting prayers, my knees clutched to my chest. I stayed huddled in a corner of the deck as the sensation of slithering serpents crawled up my legs and across my body.

  Then my mother would miraculously appear. She would hit the snakes on their heads with a blackened steel pot. Black blood and gore would paint the walls and decks of the ship as the pitiful snakes collapsed belly up, one by one, until a stream of yellow carpeted the ship’s floors.

  The nightmare would end as my screams awoke the house. My mother would pick me up from Manjula’s thin mattress and take me to hers, placing me in the center and tightly tucking around me the white mosquito net that hung from the ceiling. My father would rise and go to our small kitchen to boil milk on the green kerosene stove.

  Then my mother would stroke my back and tell me more stories, tales of Krishna, the mischievous deity. Krishna, she would say, was born in the dead of night in the middle of a jail cell, while the gods cried buckets of tears and the wind howled louder than a lion. The whole village of Mathura was in turmoil when Krishna was born to Devaki and Yasudev. The thunder rolled with an immense ferocity and the lightning struck the four corners of the world.

  “Why was Krishna born in a jail, Mummy?” I would always ask.

  “Because Devaki’s evil brother, the King Kansa, had imprisoned them for life.”

  “What was her crime, Mummy?”

  “She didn’t commit a crime. King Kansa was an evil soul!”

  “How can she be in jail if she didn’t commit a crime, Mummy?”

  My mother would pause thoughtfully. Then, in a measured voice: “That’s because life is sometimes like that, Kalyana. Life can be unfair.”

  As she spoke, a softness would come into her voice, and she would lower her eyes to the ground. I never understood the pause or the sigh. It was only later, much later, that I came to realize how well she knew the meaning of this, yet how well she had hidden it throughout most of her living years. Later, I came to understand exactly how life could be unfair.

  My mother would shake herself a little and continue the story. Evil King Kansa had been given a prophecy that his sister’s eighth child would bring him judgment in the form of death, ending his evil rule over the kingdom of Mathura. To defy this fate, King Kansa had imprisoned Devaki and Yasudev, killing every child born to them.

  Krishna was Devaki’s eighth child. Yet although he was born within the confinement of a cold, concrete cell, he came into the world wholeheartedly and mischievously, tickling his mother’s insides and sending her into quiet hysterics. He entered life twinkling like a star and smiling beyond understanding. The skin he wore was the shade of deep ocean blue.

  The exact moment that Krishna emerged from his mother’s womb, Yashoda, the Queen of Gokul, gave birth to a daughter. Unlike Krishna, this child plummeted into the world with a thunderous roar, shaking the earth and raising the ocean waters. People said she was born without blood and gore, in the comfort of her father’s kingdom. They said her skin glistened with a honey-like liquid, making her whole being shine like melting gold.

  At this moment, Devaki’s jail cell was illuminated with a blinding light. The guards succumbed to a hypnotic sleep as the cell door mysteriously unlatched and opened wide. Yasudev, following divine instructions, picked up his newborn baby, placed him in a wicker basket, and started a journey across the Yamuna River to Yashoda’s village.

  At this point, my father would return with a stainless-steel glass of warm milk and honey. He would untuck the mosquito net and crawl into bed. I would guzzle the milk, wishing for still more sweetness as I hung onto my mother’s every word.

  “What happened next, Mummy?” I licked the edges of my lips.

  “The Yamuna River raged and her waves threatened to swallow Yasudev and baby Krishna whole.” My mother would fix her penetrating stare upon me, and my heart would skip, the hairs rising on my arms. I knew what would follow: “And it was then that the five-headed snake from below the waters emerged.”

  “Five-headed snake!” I would shiver in the night air.

  “Sumitri, you are frightening her,” my father would say. “The child is scared of snakes and is ridden with nightmares about them, and here you are telling her stories about snakes with five heads!”

  “Rajdev Seth, it’s not snakes,” my mother would say. “There was only one five-headed snake. And it was a good one.”

  My mother would throw me a conspiring look and try to speak the next series of words as fast as she could before Father could demand that she end all stories for the night.

  “The snake’s five heads shielded baby Krishna from the wate
r, and the snake itself was Yasudev’s guide, allowing him to—”

  “Sumitri…”

  “Snakes are not to be feared, but to be embraced. They are your guides. Kalyana­—”

  “Sumitri!” My father would tell my mother to go back to sleep, bringing the story to an abrupt end.

  Even though I had no desire to wrap my arms around any snake, whether it was wearing a crown or had five heads, I desperately wanted my mother to go on and finish this story rather than leaving me unsatisfied and hanging once more. In an ironic way, it was the ultimate temptation: I simply had to hear the story again, even with its five-headed snake, just so that my mother could at last explain to me how the story had ended.

  My father would then take over the telling of tales, kissing my cheek and soothing me with funny stories. My favorite was the one about the elephant with the itchy back. The elephant would go and sit close to a large tree, so that he could rub his back on the thick trunk, shaking the tree so hard that it made a little bird’s nest fall to the ground, cracking the mother bird’s eggs. The elephant did this every week, to the bird’s anguish.

  My father would pause and ask me how the elephant would rub its back on the tree trunk. I would wiggle my back on the bed, shaking it. “Like this, Daddy?”

  Then one day, my father would continue, the bird came down from the tree and asked the elephant to stop shaking the tree and making her nest fall to the ground. The elephant, looking at the little bird, said, “I am much bigger than you. What can you do to me?” He went on scratching his back on the tree.

  Then the bird, screeching raucously, flung herself toward the elephant’s ear and pecked at it until the tormented elephant promised to never rub his back on the bird’s tree again.

  “And so you see, Kalyana,” my father would say as he tucked the blankets around me. “Even though the bird was little, she was not without power.”

  He would ask me again to show him how the elephant would rub his back on the trunk of the tree, and once again I would shake the bed and giggle. Eventually I would pull the blanket over my head, snuggle deeply beneath, and fall asleep, thinking about the elephant and the little bird.