Of Marriageable Age Read Online Free PDF

of the jars and tipped a little of the powder into the water. Immediately, the water turned pink-red. Ma returned the cap to the bottle and picked up another one. The water turned lime-green. She did that six times and each time the water turned a different colour so that in the end Ma had six different shaped jars of six different colours.
    'So, Saroj, now you answer me. Are these people here all the same inside, or are they all different?'
    Saroj took her time before answering. She puckered her brow and thought hard. Finally she said, 'Well, Ma, really they're all the same but the colours make them different.'
    'Yes, but what is more real, the sameness or the differences?'
    Saroj thought hard again. Then she said: 'The sameness, Ma. Because the sameness holds up the differences. The differences are only the powders you put in.'
    'Exactly. So think of all these people as having a spirit which is the same in each one, and yet each one is also different — that is because each person has a different personality. A personality is made up of thoughts, and everyone has different kinds of thoughts. Some have loving thoughts, some have angry thoughts, some have sad thoughts, some have mean thoughts. Most people have jumbles of thoughts — but everybody's thoughts are different, and so everybody is different. Different outside and different inside. And they see those differences in each other and they squabble and fight, because everyone thinks the way he is, is right. But if they could see through the differences to the oneness beyond, linking them all, then…’
    'Then what, Ma?'
    'Then we would all be so wise, Saroj, and so happy!'
    M A TOLD Saroj it was wrong to hate. She said you should love all people, even Baba, even when he wouldn't let her play with Wayne and when he sent Parvati away. Every evening Ma ushered the three children into the puja room, and while they watched with folded hands she'd hold an incense stick into the tiny eternal flame till it flickered alight and a thin tendril of pungent sweet smoke rose to the ceiling. She'd gently wave the incense before the lingam, then gesture for them all to sit; she'd place the sruti box between her crossed legs and pour out her heart in song to her Lord, and they, huddled around her on the straw mat, would sing too.
    Singing seemed to unseal Ma's lips. She'd tell them stories of the great heroes and heroines of Indian myths and legends, Arjuna and Karna, Rama and Hanuman, Sita and Draupadi, men and women of the warrior caste who feared neither pain nor death and never flinched in danger. She told them a great secret, the secret of immunity from pain. Go behind the thought-body , Ma said. Enter the silence of spirit where there is no pain...
    Indrani listened with only one ear. She was the eldest, the sweet, obedient one. Ganesh listened with ears all agog, drinking in every word.
    At first, Saroj too had listened with both ears. But then Baba had done things for which she could not forgive him. He whipped her when she played with Wayne, and made those nice Camerons move out. He sent Parvati away. He tore her from the people she loved, and so she made up her mind to hate him. Baba was evil, a wicked demon, worse than Ravana or any of the Rakshasas, and there was no Krishna or Arjuna or Rama to conquer him.
    So while Ma told her stories of love and bravery Saroj brooded on Baba, and a little seed of ire surfaced in her heart. She watched this seed, and it sprouted. She nourished it a little, and it grew. He hurt me, she said to herself. One day when I'm big I will hurt him back.

CHAPTER THREE
SAVITRI
    Madras, India. 1921
    S HE WAS the cook's daughter, his youngest and dearest child, the apple of his eye, the spark to his funeral pyre. That long hot summer she was six years old, her hair falling over her shoulders in two thick black plaits fastened with bits of thread and twists of jasmine, and she was thin and brown and lithe and in spite of the long loose skirts that fell