Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

‘Devi, are you not one of my own children to me?’

I waggled my head, not wanting to say yes.

‘Devi, have I ever, ever given you anything but my best?’

Like her counterpart a season before, she drew a plastic pillbox from her sleeve, set it on her palm. I sat back on my chair, afraid of it as I had never been afraid of anything Tall Kumarima offered me.

‘I know how happy we all are here, but change must always happen. Change in the world, like this snow – unnatural, devi, not right – change in our city. And we are not immune to it in here, my flower. Change will come to you, devi. To you, to your body. You will become a woman. If I could, I would stop it happening to you, devi. But I can’t. No one can. What I can offer is… a delay. A stay. Take these. They will slow down the changes. For years, hopefully. Then we can all stay here together, devi.’ She looked up from her deferential half-bow, into my eyes. She smiled. ‘Have I ever wanted anything but the best for you?’

I held out my hand. Smiling Kumarima tipped the pills into my palm. I closed my fist and slipped from my carved throne. As I went to my room I could hear Smiling Kumarima chanting prayers of thanksgiving to the goddesses in the carvings. I looked at the pills in my hand. Blue seemed such a wrong colour. Then I filled my cup in my little washroom and washed them down, two gulps, down, down.

After that they came every day, two pills, blue as the Lord Krishna, appearing as miraculously on my bedside table. For some reason I never told Tall Kumarima, even when she commented on how fractious I was becoming, how strangely inattentive and absent-minded at ceremonies. I told her it was the devis in the walls, whispering to me. I knew enough of my specialness, that others have called my disorder , that that would be unquestioned. I was tired and lethargic that winter. My sense of smell grew keen to the least odour and the people in my courtyard with their stupid, beaming upturned faces infuriated me. I went for weeks without showing myself. The wooden corridors grew sharp and brassy with old blood. With the insight of demons, I can see now that my body was a chemical battlefield between my own hormones and Smiling Kumarima’s puberty suppressants. It was a heavy, humid spring that year and I felt huge and bloated in the heat, a waddling bulb of fluids under my robes and waxy make-up. I started to drop the little blue pills down the commode. I had been Kumari for seven Dasains.

I had thought I would feel like I used to, but I did not. It was not unwell, like the pills had made me feel, it was sensitive, acutely conscious of my body. I would lie in my wooden bed and feel my legs growing longer. I became very very aware of my tiny nipples. The heat and humidity got worse, or so it seemed to me.

At any time I could have opened my palmer and asked it what was happening to me, but I didn’t. I was scared that it might tell me it was the end of my divinity.

Tall Kumarima must have noticed that the hem of my gown no longer brushed the floorboards but it was Smiling Kumarima who drew back in the corridor as we hurried towards the darshan hall, hesitated a moment, said, softly, smiling as always,

‘How you’re growing, devi. Are you still… ? No, forgive me, of course… Must be this warm weather we’re having, makes children shoot up like weeds. My own are bursting out of everything they own, nothing will fit them.’

The next morning, as I was dressing, a tap came on my door, like the scratch of a mouse or the click of an insect.

‘Devi?’

No insect, no mouse. I froze, palmer in hand, earhook babbling the early morning news reports from Awadh and Bharat into my head.

‘We are dressing.’

‘Yes, devi, that is why I would like to come in.’

I just managed to peel off the palmer and stuff it under my mattress before the heavy door swung open on its pivot.

‘We have been able to dress ourselves since we were six,’ I retorted.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Smiling Kumarima, smiling. ‘But some of the priests have mentioned to me a little laxness in the ritual dress.’

I stood in my red and gold night-robe, stretched out my arms and turned, like one of the trance-dancers I saw in the streets from my litter. Smiling Kumarima sighed.

‘Devi, you know as well as I…’

I pulled my gown up over my head and stood unclothed, daring her to look, to search my body for signs of womanhood.

‘See?’ I challenged.

‘Yes,’ Smiling Kumarima said, ‘but what is that behind your ear?’

She reached to pluck the hook. It was in my fist in a flick.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ Smiling Kumarima said, soft smiling bulk filling the space between the door and me. ‘Who gave you that?’

‘It is ours,’ I declared in my most commanding voice but I was a naked twelve-year-old caught in wrongdoing and that commands less than dust.

‘Give it to me.’

I clenched my fist tighter.

‘We are a goddess, you cannot command us.’

‘A goddess is as a goddess acts and right now, you are acting like a brat. Show me.’

She was a mother, I was her child. My fingers unfolded. Smiling Kumarima recoiled as if I held a poisonous snake. To the eyes of her faith, I did.

‘Pollution,’ she said faintly. ‘Spoiled, all spoiled.’ Her voice rose. ‘I know who gave you this!’ Before my fingers could snap shut, she snatched the coil of plastic from my palm. She threw the earhook to the floor as if it burned her. I saw the hem of her skirt raise, I saw the heel come down, but it was my world, my oracle, my window on the beautiful. I dived to rescue the tiny plastic foetus. I remember no pain, no shock, not even Smiling Kumarima’s shriek of horror and fear as her heel came down, but I will always see the tip of my right index finger burst in a spray of red blood.

The pallav of my yellow sari flapped in the wind as I darted through the Delhi evening crush-hour. Beating the heel of his hand on his buzzer, the driver of the little wasp-coloured phatphat cut in between a lumbering truck-train painted with gaudy gods and apsaras and a cream government Maruti and pulled into the great chakra of traffic around Connaught Place. In Awadh you drive with your ears. The roar of horns and klaxons and cycle-rickshaw bells assailed from all sides at once. It rose before the dawn birds and only fell silent well after midnight. The driver skirted a sadhu walking through the traffic as calmly as if he were wading through the Holy Yamuna. His body was white with sacred ash, a mourning ghost, but his Siva trident burned blood red in the low sun. I had thought Kathmandu dirty, but Delhi’s golden light and incredible sunsets spoke of pollution beyond even that. Huddled in the rear seat of the autorickshaws with Deepti, I wore smog mask and goggles to protect my delicate eye make-up. But the fold of my sari flapped over my shoulder in the evening wind and the little silver bells jingled.

There were five in our little fleet. We accelerated along the wide avenues of the British Raj, past the sprawling red buildings of old India, towards the glass spires of Awadh. Black kites circled the towers, scavengers, pickers of the dead. We turned beneath cool neem trees into the drive of a government bungalow. Burning torches lit us to the pillared porch. House staff in Rajput uniforms escorted us to the shaadi marquee.

Mamaji had arrived before any of us. She fluttered and fretted among her birds; a lick, a rub, a straightening, an admonition. ‘Stand up stand up, we’ll have no slumping here. My girls will be the bonniest at this shaadi, hear me?’ Shweta, her bony, mean-mouthed assistant, collected our smog-masks. ‘Now girls, palmers ready.’ We knew the drill with almost military smartness. Hand up, glove on, rings on, ’hoek behind ear jewellery, decorously concealed by the fringed dupattas draped over our heads. ‘We are graced with Awadh’s finest tonight. Crème de la crème.’ I barely blinked as the r’sum’s rolled up my inner vision. ‘Right girls, from the left, first dozen, two minutes each then on to the next down the list. Quick smart!’ Mamaji clapped her hands and we formed a line. A band struck a medley of musical numbers from Town and Country , the soap opera that was a national obsession in sophisticated Awadh. There we stood, twelve little wives-a-waiting while the Rajput servants hauled up the rear of the pavilion.