Badhai Ho

 Imagine. You are at gender reveal party. No one knows if it is a boy or a girl but it doesn't matter, right? The parents will love it because it is THEIR baby. As the sun bakes your head, it gets hot in Bombay at this time, you wonder what happens if they bring out the blue balloons but also has images of tiny otters printed on it. It is a boy-Otter!

Or it is pink but it has an armadillo on it.

"Didn't armadillos cause the Covid, a frenemy pipes up and someone shuts him down, no it was a relative pangolin who did that, armadillos are good, just don't eat them up. Don't eat any of them up. They are your friend's babies"

Or maybe the balloons reveal it is a boy white-rhino.

"The same one that went extinct?"

" Yes exactly that."

"

Badhai

ho! You brought back a lost species to this world," you say to the parents.

"The government is going to give you a subsidy on everything. You also have to get yourself a park so the baby rhino can frolick around and have the best childhood possible. I mean look at what the Gills did for their baby giraffe. They moved to Africa so he could have a better life. And they have become real helicopter parents, they hover over him in an actual helicopter to keep an eye on him. "

Wouldn't be so much more suspenseful if we could extend the spectrum from just human boy, human girl to across species at this gender reveal parties, they would be so much less boring.

Hail Bitches!

In Eastern Bihar a lizard is known as a Bitchkutiya. What's the probability that a creature gets called Bitch twice over in two different languages, when it's not canine and sometimes not even female?

But the bitchkutiya shouldn’t take any offence to this tautology of a name, because Bitch is the most colloquially bendy, gender and species agnostic name. It’s a noun but stands in mostly for an adjective.

It’s also a little confusing because one might throw it as an insult but the other party might decide to take it on as a compliment. Women are well aware of it. In the hierarchy of abuses, as I have repeatedly maintained, Bitch is right at the top.

When a man calls you a Bitch, very often it shows a state of frustration or powerlessness, where he knows that there’s not much he can do, and he is dropping the cudgels. Language/Semiotics is all about signifier and signified. But then Bitch is the word that subverts this system totally. For a lot of us Bitch translates into a Sledgehammer. You must have been totalled to call us that. Because one knows otherwise you would have called us a Slut.

Bitch implies testosterone and power. You don't get called a Bitch and own it easily. You need to climb a ladder, clear the Obstacle race, reach right at the top to finally claim the status of the Bitch.

So I would really like to know how the lizard got there. And not once but twice over with the word BitchKutiya. All hail Bitchkutiya.

When she married a Peepal Tree... 

“Can we not get her married to the dog?” asked Binti’s father.”After  all that is what Haldhar Jha suggested for Balram’s daughter”

The dog stretched its body in languid acquiescence. Binti the seventeen year old didn’t mind the dog at all.

She preferred the dog to the one she was betrothed to marry. She had been promised to Rambhar. Rambhar was at that age where a marriage contract would just get him a girl, he had to relinquish the right to a dowry.

“These weddings are quick.  No tantrums from the boy’s side of the family for dowry etc. No high drama from the bride’s side where the father threatens to kill himself if the groom’s side left without marrying the daughter.” The pandit scratched an itch on his belly. In an ideal world that is how weddings would be.

He looked at the dog. The dog who was busy licking Binti’s feet looked up at him beseechingly enough. “The dog would do his part. And then be happy with a bowl of food.” The Pandit was having second thoughts.

When he looked like he might relent Bhajan piped in. “I consulted with the Pandit from the temple. He agrees with me.”

No Pandit likes to be challenged. And Bhajan had done so by quoting a rival Pandit.

“Binti’s curse is a potent cocktail of Mangal Dosh and Sarpadosha. It will annihilate the village as we know it” He banged his hand on the horoscope.

 Mangal Dosha  was complicated by the curse of the serpent - Sarpadosha - that he spotted through the middle parting of Binti’s hair.

“A snake coiled ready to strike at the world.” He gesticulated the strike with his hand.

Binti’s mother covered Binti’s head and shielded the world from the serpent.

Binti looked up. Suddenly she was no longer a boring reality, but a fantastic problem to be dealt with. A frisson of excitement ran down her spine.

“You need to donate a statue of golden Ganesh to the temple” the pandit upped the ante.

“Can’t we just get her to fast on Tuesdays” wailed Bhajan piteously.

“That is mandatory but she needs to do more”. The Pandit was in no mood to relent.

“Okay how about getting her married to a tree? That is what the usual remedy is, isn’t it?” Bhajan was a scrooge and a rationalist.  And if he didn’t make the Pandit see sense soon he would lose all the money he had saved to buy a new thresher.

“Her Dosha is not the usual kind” the Pandit put his point forward.

“But this is all we can afford” Bhajan laid his cards on the table.

“Can you donate a cow then?” Pandit was on the backfoot.

“She is marrying someone twice her age because we had to refuse the guy who wanted a scooter” revealed Bhajan.

“Okay, go find a Peepal tree” said the Pandit.

“Can’t it just be a banana tree? There is one in our backyard.” Bhajan was a tough customer.

“It HAS to be a Peepal tree” The Pandit now dug his heels in.

“The Peepal tree is in the village chaupal. If we get her married in the middle of the village there will be a crowd. That many people to feed” reasoned Bhajan.

“Then find one in the jungle.” Sighed the Pandit.

Bhajan had browbeaten the Pandit. The wedding would amount to nothing. The Pandit was sure that the girl would bring curse upon the world, and the least he could do was provide a placebo.

Bhajan looked for a week and he couldn’t find a peepal tree. It proved to be as difficult as finding a real groom for her. He really didn’t believe in the picture of the lurid apocalyptic future the Pandit had painted. But Binti was manglik and no one would marry her till they had been convinced that she had been cleansed of the dosha. The wedding needed to happen.

And as if the tree in front of him read his mind.  When he had bumped into the tree it didn’t look like a Peepal Tree. And then it did.

A Big handsome Peepal tree, its roots a baroque weave skimming the earth. It’s branches taking center-stage in the sky above all the other trees. The leaves that willed themselves to dance rising above the dependence on the breeze.  The rest of the forest was absolutely still.

How could he have missed it?

Binti was married off to the tree. Not the dog, not the banana tree but the Peepal tree.

The Peepal tree, a natural abode for serpents, bowed it’s branches graciously, when Binti with the Sarpdosh, the curse of the serpent, approached it.

The air stood still and heavy as she tied a red cloth around it. And then she hugged it.

Thin, waif-like, wispy Binti. Binti dressed in red lehenga and red dupatta.  The silhouette of the embrace reminded one of a creeper, a dappled snake wrapped around the huge peepal tree. Almost as nature had designed it to be that way.

A boy goes through childhood, pre-pubescence and adulthood. A girl is born a miniature woman. Her life on earth finds fruition in the act of getting married.

As the Pandit chanted the mantras, Binti hugged the husband, simulating the act of copulation by which he would absorb her doshas and she would be free of them.  The Peepal tree, a social hermaphrodite, taking on the role of both man and woman. As man providing her protection as woman exorcising her of bad energy and taking it all inside him.

He would be a better husband than any she could find. Then Binti remembered the man she was supposed to marry and she wept a little.

When the wedding party of 10 left for home the pandit whined a little. “That the tree didn’t exactly look like a peepal tree.”

Binti knew she had a tree growing inside her when her mother swore that she had seen tentative tendrils, green and delicate peep outside her mouth.

There was going to be a scandal now. A girl married to a tree is technically married, but for all practical purposes still on the marriage market. Who would marry someone who was carrying a tree inside her.

Bhajan was furious with Binti, but since the situation was quite unique he didn’t know how to form the terms of je’accuse.

Binti was not sure what had happened. Her younger sister had hazarded a guess.

“It’s the hug. You just didn’t seem to let it go. After all what could be more parturient than a woman’s body.”

The story had the right amount of absurdity to take a life of it’s own.

The long thin ends of the root sometimes tickled her toes from inside which made her laugh. Sometimes felt an urge to be at one with the earth. Her human body just a chrysalis to bring forth something rare and beautiful. She often dreamt of the Peepal tree.

Her parents spent a lot of time looking for the pandit, who had disappeared. They didn’t notice Binti who was pining her life away.

Nobody had noticed, but she had. The tree had disappeared too! She was a little dour about that. Like it was beneath the tree to let her down like this. She expected more of it.

She brought it up with her parents.

“How can a tree move? Maybe we got the location wrong?”

The curious case of the ambulatory tree and the rogue pandit was a mystery that fascinated every one.

But the visits to the village doctor were more secret.

“There is no way to get it out.” The doctor mumbled.

The symbiotic synchronicity of the large intestine and the branches had him so excited he took a picture of the ultrasound and instagrammed it.

It was a rare day he had come to the clinic, and Binti’s visit had made it worthwhile.

The Instagram was spotted by a botanist. He was equally excited. He took a sample of the leaf and told Binti that she was host to an extinct species. Almost extinct.  They called it Ouroboros. No one had spotted one for thousands of years. And she was bringing one to fruition.  She was special.  She was unique.

A curious role reversal in the evolution, Binti was like the tree that makes peace with the ape that has decided to make it home.

After Binti made peace with the tree that had decided to resurrect itself inside her she realized it was not all bad.

She didn’t have to get married. Bhajan didn’t mind her frequent visits to the forest as long as she was not in the public eye.

In a couple of months there were lumps that started forming over her body. When poked, they yielded. Pliant. But firmly came back forming contours all over her body.  She started regurgitating fruits. Unripe. Green.

In spirit most women are against auto cannibalism. But Binti got an unsuspecting victim to taste the fruit. Her younger brother complained it was bitter.

After all, aren’t we a sum total of our state of being. Binti was definitely bitter. She missed her husband. The Peepal tree.

And then one day she just didn’t wake up.

The Pandit was back. He refused her the cremation rights. He accused Bhajan of creating this abomination.

Later they took her body deep in the jungle and buried it.

In a couple of days a sapling sprang out from Binti’s body to lap up the air and take in the sun. It became a beautiful Peepal tree.

The fruits turned sweet yellow and dropped off from the trees.

And that is when Binti felt damp, wet earth again.

After all what could be more parturient than the earth. Binti was resurrected from the dead.

The fruits that dropped from the tree and the seeds that had scattered from it produced a fully formed Binti.

A lover that consumed her only to regurgitate her back. But give back more than what it had consumed.

An intertwined fractal existence. Woman in a Tree. Tree in a Woman. Self replicating.

A dozen Bintis looked lovingly at the large Peepal tree which stood tall between them. The canopy of the trees, deep in the wood was a Seraglio the kind the world had never seen. Of lovers, of parthogenesis of sorority.

 They also discussed the state of the saplings they  were carrying inside themselves.

All women. Born fully formed who didn’t need men to procreate and loved who they married. The Peepal tree. And gave birth to who they loved. The Peepal tree.

Becoming Amma

I spent a lot of time running away from Amma. So when I shifted to Bombay I thought I could breathe easy. Only to realize that the noose wrapped around my neck was the umbilical cord. Amma was not going to let me go.

Maybe that is why when Kavi proposed to me, I said yes. He was the one who would storm the Bastille and rescue me from my mother.  

Kavi was 40 - about 20 years older than me. He was so perfect that he could have been fiction. Something women conjure up to garnish their dreary existence. Impossibly good looking, terribly mean, intermittently warm, and with eyes that held the promise of the perfect man he would become - once I was done working on him.

He also seemed to be fascinated by me. Everything I did was performing art for him and he showed his appreciation by not ratting me out. When I was at war with the head of HR, I had graffitied his car, Kavi had walked in right then but he kept my secret. The first overture had been his. And how could I turn him down.

He had a string of bad relationships, and then he had found love. A little digging up on his past and I realized that he was a man who loved deeply. His wife had died in an accident a while ago, and he just couldn’t get over her.

The wife was a player and was probably on her way to meet her lover when her car crashed into a truck. He was seeing a Shrink for his inability to trust women.

“You healed me Saloni” he had said. And slipped on a ring on my finger.

I called up Amma. I needed to tell her. Was I scared that Amma would be jealous?

“ Are you ashamed of calling me Amma ? You are calling me Mom because you are with someone? Am I on speaker? Is he with you? He is going to betray you, just come back home. In time for the festival”

Amma didn’t like me have boyfriends. Amma was not puritanical or a prude. She had a string of lovers after the death of my father. She was plain selfish. She didn’t want me to have anyone else apart from her. She didn’t even want me to move out of our village. We were locked in a time bubble of pubescent war between parent and child. I hated Amma.

That, possibly, was why I accompanied Kavi to his ancestral house, without even telling her about it.

10 kms from Jalpaiguri was Naharpur - a world that seemed to have fallen in between the tectonic plates of reality and myth. And the beautiful house that Kavi’s ancestors built. He wanted to get married to me right away. We would go away to the US after this. He even had applied for the visas. But then Amma happened. Like an act of insidious inception Amma destroyed my faith in Kavi. Why didn’t I resist? Because I was just a haunted house possessed by Amma’s strong will.

The Betrayal

Two days into the vacation I saw some lingerie lying around. There must be an explanation I told myself. By the time I decided to confront Kavi it had disappeared.

Then I started getting paranoid. The food tasted weird. The water left a metallic taste in my mouth. I suspected I was being poisoned. Amma had gotten inside my head.

“We women of Puthur Village are unfortunate in love, when we chase it we hurt ourselves” Amma had conditioned my response towards love from the time I was 6. So was Kavi more distant since we had come here or was I working a self fulfilling prohecy?

That night I woke up to hear a woman and Kavi speaking in low whispers.

“Why go for someone like her?” The woman said.

“I am tired of the women you find for me. “ Kavi protested.

“Will this one last?” The woman was very cut up.

In the morning I wondered if it was just something I had dreamt.

After all I was Amma’s daughter. Amma was a paranoid schizophrenic.  I wondered if I had hit genetic lottery. I really didn’t want to grow up to be my mother.

Amma had once told me “Men always betray. A man betrayed Goddess Mariamman. She cut off his head. Why put yourself in a situation where you are forced to kill?” Amma was turning senile. Was I turning senile too?

For the first time, I missed Amma. I wanted to be home. I hated small towns. But this was the first one that scared me.

….Amma is always right

I wanted to get out. I wandered around the huge mansion. The part of the mansion I had been warned off because it was decrepit and might collapse any day.

My phone was not working because someone didn’t want me to make calls? Or was it my mind playing tricks? But then I was smart enough to recognize a network jammer when I saw one. There was no other reason a box of that shape and size would be mounted upon a wall in a heritage building. Kavi liked the quiet. And he did tell me this was going to be a detox vacation. Maybe there was a point to it all. I just needed to speak to Amma.

I finally came upon a bolted room, and found that there was a feeble network signal right at the door. I just needed to inch a little closer. But the door to the room was shut. I unlocked the door.

I stepped inside. And made that call to Amma. I told her I missed her. And it was my birthday soon. And I had never celebrated a single birthday away from her. Amma was terse and monosyllabic in her response. She was upset with me. It made me feel better immediately. This was normal.

But as I turned to go, I saw the contents of the room, and it took me a while. It took me a while to form the shapes I saw into a coherent response in my mind.  It was a torture chamber, with implements of torture spread out neatly around the room. And then I heard the door shut behind me.

There was Kavi standing there, looking disapproving – and dark. And yet so handsome. More handsome than ever. Rage suited him.

“Why couldn’t you trust me when I told you not to come to this wing. Now look what you are making me do. Now you’ll die too, and I will be alone – and a year and a half behind on my therapy. My shrink warned me that you might cause a relapse. But I took a chance on you, because I loved you, why couldn’t you do the same with me. Why did you have to betray me”

It all made sense now that I discovered Kavi was crazy. He had killed his wife. And seemed very enthused to kill me too. He grabbed me, and pinned me to a chair, and tied me to it.

As he got the brain crusher ready, he explained the process to me like a professor. 

“Some of these are antique,” he explained. “The last one I had picked at Sotheby’s. It was used in World War 2 by German interrogators.”

It was my birthday tomorrow. I was going to die, one day before my 25^th birthday. Probably Amma would still cut the cake for me not knowing I was already dead.

The grid fitted snugly around my skull. He placed the nail in the groove and started tightening the screw. The nail started digging in the skull. Beyond the thin soft flesh of the scalp. It was drawing blood.

The pain was becoming unbearable.I could taste that metallic taste of fear in my mouth. My eyes hurt. My body hurt.

I screamed and screamed.

Becoming Amma

Struck by the primal fear of death, not mom, mum, mumma, mother, I called out for Amma. And in that one moment, I knew what I had to do. I felt a surge of adrenalin and power. I transformed from a helpless flesh into teeth, talons and a roar.

As I stood up, the ropes falling to the floor, Kavi looked terrified. I caught him by his neck with one hand. With the other hand, I grabbed his hair.  And I ripped his head clean off.

The tender tendrils of nerves that connected him to his body swayed gently.

I held the head up by the hair, staring into its lifeless, shocked eyes. I looked at myself in the mirror in front of me. There is something terribly beautiful about power. I was myself but eyes were glowing, my teeth where shinier and sharper and my nails were retractable.

I could smell blood. And I wanted to lick the blood off the dripping head when the door opened.

It was Amma.

“Throw that piece of garbage away”, Amma growled. Suddenly, I saw Amma as I never had before.  Her teeth feral. Her nails sharp. Her ears pointed. Her eyes glowing. Exactly like mine.

“ I am not going to let you push me around any more.” I growled back.

Amma roared.

All the fight went out of me. The mirror in front of me showed a fierce creature. But I was no match for Amma. I didn’t want to argue. I let the head drop with a plop on the ground. Kavi’s head bounced off the floor and rolled under the ankle slicer.

Later in the car, Amma handled Kavi’s mom who threatened to tell everyone that her daughter was a freak. She would drag her to court. A murderer. A monster.

“You talk about police and court, well take it to court, but who’ll believe you?  Now what if we tell them what we know about you? Your son was a serial killer. That can be proved in court.

And of course - there won’t be a single day you would be able to sleep soundly in your bed. You know what you saw.  That was just a glimpse. There’s much more to us”

Staring out of the window, I broke down. Amma whacked me on the head.

“Stop crying. I told you to listen to me. I told you that guy was trouble. And I told you to come home. If you had transformed in front of me I would have told you all the dos and don’ts. Mariamman protects us all.

Then her voice softened.

“I heard you calling out for Amma in front of that man. You aren’t ashamed of me anymore are you?”

I wasn’t. I understood her now. After years of resisting I had grown up to be exactly like Amma.