Rebel Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

to go on forever. After the priest finally stopped chanting, he turned to me. “Have you seen your mother’s body?” he asked.
    I shook my head.
    “The child should see her mother before the body is taken away,” he announced. “When is the cremation?”
    Since Father couldn’t respond, it was Grandmother who told him.
    “Tomorrow. My son will go today to make the necessary arrangements.”
    We followed Grandmother into the spare room. Mother was laid out in a new yellow sari, her litter illuminated by a ring of oil lamps. Women from the village had scattered marigolds at her feet, and when the priest kneeled above her, he added roses. Then he spread sandalwood paste across her forehead and intoned another mantra. I glanced up at Father, but his eyes were focused on some distant point, like a sailor who’s seen the ocean for so long that he’s lost all hope of spotting land.
    The priest handed me an orange carnation. It was my turn to lay a flower on Mother. I approached the litter as slowly as I could. She looked cold and lonely. In life, I had rarely seen Mother sleeping. She had always been in motion; if her feet weren’t moving, then her arms were moving—as well as her lips, since she loved to sing. I laid the flower in her hands, then stood there and waited for her to move. It was childish, but I believed that if I concentrated hard enough, Brahma would take pity on me and bring Mother back to life. But no such thing happened, and I wondered yet again what I had done to so offend the gods that they would take my mother away.
    We moved into the front room to eat rice and lentils, then the priest finished interpreting my sister’s Janam Kundli, which was favorable.
    “Tell me,” he said as he was about to leave. It was only Grandmother and me at the door. “What arrangements has your son made for this girl?” He looked down at me, and I immediately looked away, so he wouldn’t think I was shameless.
    “Now that there’s two of them, there’s no money for a dowry fortune,” Grandmother said, “if that’s what you mean.”
    “She’s already eight, is that right?”
    “Nine,” Grandmother corrected.
    “And very pretty. But if there’s no money for a dowry—”
    “We are dedicating her to the temple,” Grandmother said. “She will become a devadasi.”
    At the time, I had no idea what a devadasi was, except that it meant “god’s servant.” Now, of course, I can understand the horror on the priest’s face when she said this, since a devadasi is really no different from a prostitute. Many years later, I came across an English translation of a poem written in the fifteenth century about devadasis, “sacred servants of god”:
    I’m not like the others. You may enter my house.
    But only if you have the money
    To step across the threshold of my main door, it’ll cost you a hundred in gold. For two hundred you can see my bedroom, my bed of silk, and climb into it.
    But only if you have the money
    To sit by my side and to put your hand boldly into my sari: that will cost ten thousand. And seventy thousand will get you a touch of my full round breasts.
    But only if you have the money
    Three crores to bring your mouth close to mine, touch my lips and kiss.
    To hug me tight, to touch my place of love, and get to total union, listen well, you must bathe me in a shower of gold.
    But only if you have the money
    The priest stared at her for a moment, and his mouth opened and shut, as if he had lost the words he’d meant to say. “Does her father know this?”
    “Not yet. But it’s the sensible thing to do with two girls and no heir.”
    The priest looked at her in a way that would be of great comfort later on when I was able to think back on these events with a clearer mind. I wasn’t the only one who recognized Grandmother’s cruelty.
    Late that afternoon, Father found me in the garden, twisting the wildflowers into a crown the way Mother had taught me. He sat on the grass and waited for me