The Selector of Souls (62 page)

After a short silence, the women around the circle nod agreement.

“I can give my umbrella to protect her statue,” says Damini.

“No umbrella,” says Goldina. “Only you women carry umbrellas.”

“She still needs a pot,” says Matki. “So boys and men remember where they come from.”

“Give her a leaf of madhupatra,” says Damini. “She has natural sweetness.”

“She needs bangles on all her arms,” says Kamna, jingling her own. “And a book, because she wants us to read.”

“She needs a drum.” says Supari. “To drum us into existence.”

“Or at least to drum you awake,” says Matki.

“Can she have a cow? She has to look after them.”

“How can she carry a cow in her hand? They call you Tubelight because you’re so-o bright!” says Chimta. “And she has to take care of brothers, fathers, husbands, mothers-in-law, fathers-in-law, sons, daughters, grandchildren, not only cows.”

“She needs a sword,” says Damini. “To show she can rise above the rank of major.” Major being the highest rank allowed to women warriors in the Indian Army.

“No sword,” says Goldina. “A sword means she’s for warrior caste women only. Her war is here. She needs a sickle to cut twigs in the forest.”

“Yes, a sickle,” says Damini. “That only makes nine.”

“One hand should be empty,” says Kamna. “It’s reaching for a husband’s hand.”

“Empty so that she can reach for whatever she wants, then,” says Tubelight.

“Oh-no-no-no!” says Chimta. “She’s reaching for her husband’s tail!”

“Achcha,” says Damini when the laughter has died down. “Now what shall we name her?”

“What is wrong with Anamika Devi?”

“Nothing, but it means we have not named her.”

“No, it means she is without name,” says Supari. “She names us, she named the gods—how can
we
name her?”

“All this time, nameless, has anyone paid her attention? We put her in a cave and left her there, gave her a rupee once in a while.”

“I’ve been given so many names,” says the Toothless One. “Never liked any of them. I say call her a beautiful name or none at all.”

“Yes, she should have a real name,” says Chimta.

“Do you have a real name?” says Kamna.

“Of course. But if someone called me by it, maybe I would answer, maybe not. I don’t even remember it. How does it matter what I’m called?”

“It matters,” says Kamna. “So everyone knows your story will be different from your sisters’, mother’s, and grandmother’s.”

And so the ideas and arguments for Anamika Devi’s name last till sundown, and begin again the next day when the women meet in the jungle to hack and gather firewood. Suggestions are shouted from terrace to terrace as they water beans, potatoes and onions in the gold light of mid-morning.

Damini hears Goldina shouting, “Calling Anamika Devi by some new name will do nothing. First, we should change our actions. If she wants a new name, let her name herself. But let the word for the goddess remain, and other goddesses—forgotten or to come—can call themselves Anamika.”

Damini feels an inner smile. Agreement is desirable but not required. If the Women’s Survival Society of Gurkot cannot find a new name for Anamika Devi, she who names the gods can remain anonymous.

I
T TAKES A MONTH
, D
AMINI TELLS HERSELF, ONLY
because important work should be done slowly, and it is after the Holi festival by the time Samuel finishes carving the ten-armed goddess. On Anamika Mukti Divas, the day the goddess will be freed, Damini leads the men and women of Gurkot to the cave.

Anamika Devi is brought out—how beautiful yet fragile is her pot. Mohan and Kamna hold it up so everyone can admire its roundness, its fullness, the specks and tints in its gradations of brownness. Damini keeps her gaze on its wide mouth and curving wholeness as the procession sets forth uphill, the goddess’s pot riding in a sari-sling on the shoulders of Mohan, Kamna, Leela—and Goldina. Shocked expressions, and whispers—
khuss-puss, khuss-puss
—break out at Goldina’s temerity. A few sarcastic barbs are launched till Damini says, “The goddess doesn’t object, why do you?”

Up the ghost-trail they climb, the pot swinging between them, then downhill to Leela’s home, heading for the peach trees on the lower terrace, near the cow’s room. The pot goddess is set down gently, beside her new ten-armed form and before the pink poster. Leela sinks to her haunches beside the little mound at the edge of the terrace.

The pujari does a puja of Anamika in pot, poster and sculpted forms, to show equal respect. He paints beautiful half-open eyes on
the stone goddess, and does another simple ceremony to waken her. The women break into song, Kamna enters the circle and twirls and sways, glass bangles chinking for joy—Anamika’s subterranean existence is ended.

But before the pujari can sweep everyone’s donations into his knapsack, Damini leans forward and hands him fifty rupees instead for his service. “From now on, I am her pujari,” she says.

The pujari and all the men and women gathered around seem amazed by her audacity—Damini is amazed by her audacity. She knows everyone is thinking, It’s bad luck for family members if a widow performs puja. They are thinking, She is doing someone else’s dharma, and that is never good. They are thinking, Who does Damini think she is?

But Anamika Devi came through Damini and no one else. No one can object or challenge her.

No one objects or challenges her.

So this will be her new role in the movie of her life.

But how should she worship Anamika? Damini enters trance, consults Anamika and receives the answer:
What has a Name exists; I claim all who are named
.

Name those Nameless who emerge from you. I will give you boys’ names, I will give you girls’ names. Sometimes I will say names you can use for boys or girls. I will give you new names you cannot say are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian. If a father refuses his, I will send you new family names and my blessings to any mother who bestows her family’s name upon her child
.

Worship the Name
.

Because the Name can be said—and if not said, then written, sung and danced. What is said and written, sung and danced alters everything, so powerful is the nature of the Name
.

A few days later, Leela directs Mohan to put a few planks over the unfinished feeding trough, to make a speaking platform for Damini. She expects her mother to see visions of the future, exorcise demons, foretell world events and heal by touch. Damini ascends the platform, and tries and tries. But the only vision that comes is for Goldina, because Goldina told Damini she and Samuel will be travelling south across the baking plains to Nagpur. There they’ll attend a commemoration rally for the conversion to Buddhism of Dr. Ambedkar, the same who wrote Goldina’s treasured book,
The Buddha and His Dhamma
. Damini predicts Goldina and Samuel will leave Jesus and the idols he carves to take the 22 vows and turn to the Middle Way. It may take Samuel years but he will overcome the belief that his conditions were ordained by the karma from his previous lives. He and Goldina will be called by Navayana Buddhist names—for a while. And she predicts they will move to a large city where sweepers get second chances and can rise above sweeping. There, Samuel will carve his name on his work and be called a sculptor, and be feted by those who can see past his bloodline.

Damini sees them standing before the flame of the unknown, unnamed soldier, and then at Vijay Chowk, the intersection where the Dancing Policeman dances. The pillared domes of the Presidential Palace and the two Houses of Parliament stand behind them. In her vision, the Dancing Policeman points forward—Go. And because “Chal Chal Chal Mere Haathi, Oh Mere Saathi” plays in her head, she is sure Samuel will become famous in all of Delhi, then Mumbai, then Kolkata and beyond for sculpting triumphal statues of Dr. Ambedkar for dalits to worship. And that Samuel’s patron will lead the new party for dalits and other backward castes, the party with the elephant symbol. And his patron will use money and donations from the poorest to build Samuel’s statues of Dr. Ambedkar before addressing the hunger of her constituents. Damini cannot say how she knows this but she does, that Samuel will return to Gurkot to buy one of Amanjit Singh’s villas, and no one will call him lowborn then.

“When?” says Leela.

“A few years before his atman recombines with the souls of others.”

“If it recombines with yours or mine, how will it carry his bad karma to the next life?”

“If it can’t, it won’t. Anamika Devi says this is how Buddha brings justice, each person starting out clean as soon as he comes into the world.”

“Achcha, never mind Samuel and Goldina, can’t you foretell what will happen to your own granddaughter?” Leela sounds exasperated.

“No,” says Damini, “I’m no astrologer who tells people only what they want to hear. We don’t know the future, so that we’ll work to shape it. My trances should help women any time, not only when they have a baby. They should tell their stories to their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons-in-law and sons. Men—and even some of us—will be surprised that we have stories. Then maybe they’ll see we are not cows just because we make children and milk, or dolls they can dress up and hit, or children for whom everything must be done, but insaan.” She repeats it in English for emphasis. “Peepals!”

“What if no men come to listen?”

“Then I will be a pair of ears, listening to women’s questions. And I will ask the goddess to answer in her voice, in other women’s voices, and in my own. And we will tell our stories to each other. In the end, our stories, not our children, are the only creation we possess in this life.”

Other than this one additional faculty, this one special endowment, the goddess has given her no further gifts. Damini cannot cure boils, barrenness, snakebites or the burdens of family expectations. She cannot lighten the weight of family honour that drives men and women to insanity. She cannot exorcise anger asuras—it will be difficult enough for her to manage her own demons.

Leela is disappointed. But truth is often disappointing—and sometimes cruel, and often ugly—but still a beginning.

“Will I ever find Kamna a match? Where will I find a dowry for her?” says Leela.

Kamna comes before them, her hands fisted as if ready to fight. Looking beyond her grandmother and mother, gazing at the roads etched on the far mountains, she says, “Don’t worry about arranging a husband or a dowry for me—I’m going to drive Papa’s truck.”

“Huh! A girl doing bijness?” says Leela.

“I can,” says Kamna. “If Papa were alive, I would drive with him.”

“I know who has taught you driving, and she is a good driver of cars … But this is a truck.”

“I can do it,” says Kamna.

“You need to know all the roads and maps,” says Leela.

“I learned when Papa was teaching Mohan.”

“But you can’t drive alone,” says Damini. “And that truck is old.”

“Mohan can come with me,” says Kamna. “He can change a truck tire. He can do easy repairs.” Her excitement is contagious and she will not be dissuaded.

And having recently broken from the known and taken her own steps in the direction of the unknown, Damini cannot chastise her granddaughter. To Leela she says, “Kamna should make her own story, a story different from yours and mine.”

“We’ll come home often,” Kamna says to Leela. “We’ll take you to see New Delhi, Ma-ji.”

After hours of remonstrating, Leela throws her sari-pallu in the air and says, “Go, then, but don’t come home crying every time you break a bangle.”

T
HE AIR SMELLS GREEN AND COOL THE DAY
S
HARAD
Uncle comes for Anu in his new white Contessa. He drove eleven hours yesterday, eleven hours on cratered roads and switchbacks, stayed the night at a “luxury three-star” hotel on the Mall Road in Shimla and is ready today to drive another eleven hours to take her back to New Delhi. She should be grateful.

But now that it really is time to leave, memories of the last few months—of accompanying the all-Hindi choir in the chapel; helping the NGO personnel navigate the bureaucracy and reopen the clinic; of working with Damini at the Women’s Survival Society; of helping Bethany prepare legal information camps and hold subtitled movie nights to help adults learn to read—all tug at her heart. And this sunny morning, Sister Imaculata shook hands rather than embraced her in farewell after her last meal in the refectory.

Sharad Uncle has retired from the bank with a “decent” Provident Fund. The hair that scuffs his collar is thinned, and salted with unruly strands of white. “Your salwar is too baggy,” he says, after greetings. “Your kameez looks as if it’s from the eighties.” He crushes Sister Imaculata’s mauve hydrangeas as he reverses. With a great crunch, he gears forward, around the rickshaw circle, behind the chapel and up the hill to the convent gates. Once outside he takes a hairpin bend.