Roberto Calasso - Ka

Then Kāma went into action. He loosed an arrow that would have transfixed anybody else. But it did nothing to Śiva, who knew desire too well. With the three petrified girls watching, Śiva sent out a blaze that enveloped Kāma. His ashes whirled in an eddy with the dust, then settled. Stepping backwards in silence, a pale Pārvatī retreated into the forest with her two maids, vaguely aware of Rati’s sobs as she madly tried to recover some crumbs of ash from the grass, desperate for a relic of her vanished lover. Shoulders bent, she stumbled off, clutching a knotted rag of gaudy cloth, packed with ash. Flowers, bees, mangoes, cuckoos: it was into you that Desire dispersed when Śiva’s blaze consumed him. Henceforth a humming or a birdcall, a flavor or a scent, would open a wound in those far from their loved ones. And many were wounded. if it is true that “upon seeing things of great beauty or hearing sweet sounds even a happy man may be seized by a fierce nostalgia.”

On returning to the palace, Pārvatī felt she was a new person, born again. She said not a word. But the maids told the tale, dissolving at last into tears of terror. Old Himavat, Lord of the Mountain, took his daughter on his knee. He realized that Pārvatī was crying, but not in the way she had cried as a child. She took no notice of her father. She was crying because she was away from Śiva. Even in the days that followed, she still said nothing. Her eyes were gloomy and vacant. Sometimes the maids would catch her whispering the same name over and over: “Śiva, Śiva, Śiva.”

A guest came to stay in the palace, Nārada, the ṛṣi who loved to meddle in others’ affairs. Pārvatī hid in her rooms. But Nārada wanted to see her alone. He was the first to address her as an adult, without embarrassment. “Pārvatī, I know what you’re feeling. You love Śiva, but you aren’t ready yet. You must transform yourself by practicing tapas . Otherwise you’ll never be able to get close to him: he would just burn you up. His fire must shoot up in rapture with the flame you learn to unleash. Not to worry: to look at, you won’t be any different from any young girl with rounded thighs. Now let me teach you something: repeat these five syllables after me.” Thus, tense and attentíve, fever in her eyes, Pārvatī heard Śiva’s mantra for the first time. “There’s no other way. But I’m telling you that Śiva will be your husband.” They were the last words Nārada spoke to her. Then he left like a man in a hurry.

Now Pārvatī was radiant. She immediately spoke to Jayā and Vijayā, her maids. She told them they were about to part company. Then she told her father that she was going to the forest to practice tapas . Himavat gave his assent. Nārada had spoken to him. Then Menā arrived, alarmed, breathing hard. “If you want to practice tapas , do it at home. We’ve got altars to all the gods in every corner of the palace. We’ve got temples. There are images and to spare. Who ever heard of a little girl going off into the forest to practice tapas? Don’t be so pigheaded.” Then, running out of breath, she stopped, and sighed: “Oh, no!” ( u mā). Thenceforth Pārvatī, who already boasted many names, would have another: Umā.

But nothing could change Pārvatī’s mind. Carefully, she removed all her princess’s clothes, chose an antelope skin and a grass girdle, cut out a bodice for herself from a fabric made of tree bark. Once alone in the forest, she went straight to the place where Śiva had burned up Kāma. She found an empty clearing rustled by a breath of wind. There was no trace of either Śiva or his entourage. Looking down at the ground, Pārvatī tried to find some trace of ash. Then she followed Nārada’s instructions. She chose a point in the middle of the softly wafting breeze, crossed her legs, and immersed herself in the heat of her mind. From a distance, she might have looked like the stump of a tree.

Pārvatī knew almost nothing of tapas , but she discovered it without even realizing. Soon she had eliminated father, mother, maids, garden, and palace from her mind. Eliminating her elder sister, Gaṅgā, was not so easy. Her image continued to flit around Pārvatī for a long time. She decided she hated her.

Meanwhile Pārvatī was seeing Śiva, exploring him unceasingly, as if climbing a mountain in comparison to which the mountain whose daughter she was, and which dominated all others, looked like a mere hillock far away in the plain. Time was a slow succession of scorching waves that flooded over her, then retreated. It was as though she were doing something she had always done, something she was more familiar with than her dolls. She felt Śiva’s sharp edges. She rolled and unrolled the carpets of the mind.

Pārvatī’s tapas grew so much that the gods began to notice. The ground under Indra’s feet was scorching, the seats where he sat boiled. He realized it was the work of Pārvatī. So he went to talk it over with the other gods. They decided to go and see Śiva.

When Śiva heard the story of Tāraka and the young Pārvatī, of how she was practicing tapas , he smiled that mocking smile the gods had always feared: “I thought you’d be grateful I’d burned up Kāma, spared you all the idiocies you’d have gone on committing every time he lifted a finger… I thought you’d be pleased finally to be able to meditate without having to defend yourselves from the snares of Desire. Not that it took much to distract you. And instead you come here in a procession, to petition me, it seems. You want to offer me, who know no bonds, the one bond that is stronger than any metal: a woman. All the Vedic masters could have told you: there is nothing in this world so greatly to be feared.” Śiva went on smiling while the gods were already losing hope. But then, almost without stopping, he began to take a completely different line, as though talking to himself. “In the end I can do anything. I am well-known for having kept the rules and broken the rules just as I like. In the end I love my devotees more than anything else. If they are so forward — or so desperate — as to ask me to do something that doesn’t suit me, like marry, why not?” Then he looked at the anxious gods: “As for you. didn’t I swallow the ocean’s poison to save you? Young Pārvatī will be my soma .”

Oppressed by the memory of Satī’s death, Śiva wandered about aimlessly. The Ganas went with him, but they were unusually quiet. Śiva thought he should start ignoring the world again. He looked for a place that was undefiled, while making a mental note of the existence of a girl child, born in a palace amid the mountains. For a long time he walked toward the source of the Gañgā, along the back of the Himālaya. Then he stopped. The Gaṇas spread out to stand a melancholy guard around him. Nandin crouched on the ground, looking ahead with mild and vacant eyes.

In the palace of Himavat they got word that Śiva was coming. Someone had run into his silent retinue. Himavat went to Menā and said: “Menā, you know how old I am, older almost than the world. You know that we have lived for years like leisurely sovereigns of a kingdom where nothing happens, if only because one day something must happen on which everything depends. Do you remember the night our daughter Pārvatī was conceived? That was a long, long night. Do you remember how you looked at me in fright? You said I was delirious, though I was performing the same loving motions you knew of old. You said your body seemed to enter mine, drawn by some powerful undertow. And at the same time you felt that I was far away, terribly far away, so that it almost seemed you had a stranger in your bed. The truth is that that night Devī, the Goddess who lives in Śiva, bound herself to my mind. I whispered to her — and spoke to you as you shone in the light of the Goddess. For once, that night, I felt invincible again, invincible as the fire in the forest. Just as I did in my past life, when I was guardian of the rock that hid the light of heaven. You almost wanted to escape from me, because what was happening escaped you. In the end, you fell asleep exhausted. I lay awake, still clinging to your body. And I saw Night come. She had a small box in her hand, like the ones you women use for your makeup. Without so much as a word, she crept into your moist womb. Then I saw that very delicately she was touching the embryo of the child who was to be our daughter Pārvatī, with a tiny brush she was painting a dark, glossy dye on her. Then she was gone. I fell asleep myself. It all got muddled in my mind, like something extravagant I couldn’t be sure was real, but then it all came back, with compelling clarity, when Pārvatī was born. I was euphoric at the news — so much so, do you remember, that on impulse I gave my ivory-handled sunshade to our dear steward — and then I saw the tiny body of my daughter for the first time, that wonderfully burnished skin she has. Now Pārvatī has grown up, now the moment our lives were planned for is at hand. Once again you must obey me and follow me. Nothing of what is about to happen must upset you.”