2

 

 

It was one thing for me to imagine going forth as a seeker and quite another to face my grieving family. Although Deepa was dead, I was the ghost in the weeks that followed, as I attempted to remain invisible while one of the worst monsoon seasons in years engulfed us, drenching the forests and pummeling the rooftops. Between downpours, pestilence-ridden white fogs crawled over the green-black hills, filling everyone with thoughts of death made worse by the dim haze of mosquitoes over the fields and a trickle of rot-smells from the nearby jungles. I was sure I haunted my mother, my presence reminding her of not only Deepa, but also my responsibility for how she had died. The last thing I wanted to do was inform Ama of my plans for a future that went against all she believed.

Ama continued to wear white—her hair tangled and her eyes bruised with sorrow—for a month. Then one day she appeared as her usual self, every gleaming hair in place, every fold in her sari the appointed width, every step and gesture precisely what it needed to be, no less and no more. She had decided that Deepa died because our family had been lax about offerings and sacrifices. Suddenly, double the usual number of chickens, goats, and tubloads of ghee went into our outdoor altar fire, and the priest appeared twice daily and stayed on and on, muttering prayers at our circle of black river stones flanked by a chunky carved granite statue of Bhaga, god of wealth and patron of marriage, and a polished curvaceous one of Adi Parashakti, the Divine Mother. To me, though, all gods now seemed no more than rocks and plants, like dolls who spoke only when I pretended they did. Yet I had no choice but to occupy myself by making florets out of palm leaves and other little sacrifices for the indoor altar fires, my fingers numb, my heart deep in the bottomless well of my loneliness.

The only hope for me was to ask the spiritual wanderers for advice and direction, but they were extremely rare, for the rains had turned the clay roads into mud rivers that sucked at my calves and slowed even the mightiest war horses to a stumbling crawl. Still, whenever the weather allowed, I’d crouch at the kitchen door, waiting. Midway through the season a holy man finally appeared, tall enough to pick his way through the mud quagmires. He was gaunt and naked, his withered body gray with pounded ash. His matted, dust-colored hair reached down to his knees.

I approached him with a banana leaf plate of rice mixed with dahl, which I hoped he would notice wasn’t moldy or stale like most of what he probably received. He looked to be a table-scraps kind of holy man, not one my father would entertain. I gestured toward the heavy clumps of mangos, which I normally couldn’t bear to look at, much less eat, since the accident, although they were now ripe as golden sunsets. “Take as many as you like.”

He bowed his musty head in thanksgiving, his scant beard brushing his upper chest like tree moss. A smile broke through the many crevices on his face. “You have gained much merit, little princess,” he said. Even though his legs were splattered with dried mud up to his emaciated thighs, and his manly parts were even more diminished and neglected-looking than the dog-duty ascetic’s, he seemed gregarious, his smile settling happily into the ruin of his face. “Perhaps you would like some description of how the young ladies are dressing in the towns these days?”

“I would like to know how to find people’s souls.”

The man’s smile vanished as completely as if I’d lifted up my shift and exposed myself. He looked down at his meal, which he had yet to devour. “Little princess, such topics are not for such as yourself to discuss.”

“Why not? Souls belong to everyone.”

“Of course. And if you fulfill your household duties on earth, you can hope to become a man in your next incarnation, where you can talk about the soul all you like.” He tipped his banana leaf into his mouth, finishing off about half his food.

“I don’t have time to wait for another life. My sister’s soul is lost, and I need to find it. I need to find her.”

“So, you saw her ghost and wish to contact it. Simply pray to the devas, you needn’t complicate your little mind with doctrine.”

“I’ve never seen a ghost, nor any devas either. I’m beginning to think they’re made up.” I could recite all the fables by heart, but for absolutely no purpose as far as I could see.

The man gobbled up the remainder of his meal not looking at me, perhaps hoping I’d leave. Finally, he spoke. “I had no idea females could be inflicted with this strange blindness.”

“I’m not blind! I see perfectly clearly.”

“I’m not talking about ordinary blindness. But why do you think the gods are leaving? It’s because men can’t see or hear them. I’ve heard of some western lands whose prophets wander the deserts, imploring their gods to return, but these devoted worshipers perceive nothing.”

My heart sped up. What was wrong with me? Or the whole world? “Tell me about this blindness.”

The man regarded me with a kind of squinty fear. He tossed his slick-clean banana leaf into the underbrush. “Little princess, I have to leave. It’s not appropriate for me to discuss such things with a female, let alone a child. It violates the ancient order and allows the devil Mara to sneak in, corrupting both our minds. Such a thing could cost us many incarnations.”

Of course I knew about Mara, the god of death and the realm of the flesh, tempter and creator of ignorance—yet another unseen deva I was supposed to believe in. I wanted to shout that I cared nothing for devils or incarnations, just my sister, but I knew such an outburst would only work against me. “But I’m not an ordinary child, as you pointed out,” I said. “And maybe if you teach me about the soul, you could cure my blindness. Surely, this would win you merit with the gods.”

I willed my eyes to look as non-ordinary as possible, and stared into his, a wilderness of broken veins crawling around two shiny black disks. Something passed between us then, like a god or a spirit, whether I believed in it or not. I held my breath.

He brushed grains of rice out of his scraggly beard and straightened his spine, needing, I guessed, to assume the role of wise man, perhaps to protect himself against the blindness I embodied. “I’ll tell you a few basic things, eternal truths the world has forgotten, for even the followers of the old ways live in an age of decline. They, too, have mostly forgotten that there is one eternal Soul and we are already united with it. But we must work hard to remember this, because the Soul is vast beyond pictures or words—a great mystery that periodically destroys Being itself, while remaining immortal over the great cycles of the universe.” He lifted his face, as if to bask in his own speculation. “True remembering requires many physical and mental exercises, leading to abandonment of the body even while it remains alive.”

“What exercises? Can you teach me?”

He shook his head. “Women, who are in love with their bodies, find such practices disagreeable, if they can do them at all.” He smiled in a satisfied way, as if the enjoyment of his own wisdom had banished his discomfort with me. “And you, little princess, will soon be a very beautiful woman.”

I recognized this denigrating flattery—I’d seen my father and other male relatives pour it over all sorts of women, from my mother to Cook. “I’m not a woman yet,” I said, letting my anger show. “And I’m not in love with my body and I never will be. My family is overstuffed with beautiful women, and I hate the idea of becoming one more of them.”

“You’ll change. And you will enjoy the change. Trust in the devas, even if you can’t see them.” He turned, as though to leave.

But I wouldn’t let this arrogant so-called holy man brush me off that easily. “Maybe you really don’t know the exercises,” I said. “Maybe all you know are silly performances, like the animal-duty ascetics.”

The man turned back toward me, his face a battlefield. Then he exhaled sharply as if acknowledging to something inside him that his pride had won and required to be appeased, even with a child. “Of course I know the exercises, which take many years to perfect. You must learn to still all thoughts by concentrating on a single object, like a lamp’s flame or the breath. You must fast for days and remain awake for weeks. But you need to find teachers who will help you learn to do these things correctly, or the devas will punish you, whether you believe in them or not.”

With that, he turned his back and, on his mud-splattered stilt legs, strode away.

At least he’d said “you.”

 

Nevertheless, he’d left me with more questions than I’d begun with, and my encounters with other holy men over the next couple of years didn’t help. They had all sorts of opinions. Some, similar to this first man, insisted that all beings were already happily ensconced in a common Soul, which for me seemed like a gigantic, bland pudding, expanding until it popped—inflating and exploding, over and over again. Others told me the Soul didn’t exist at all—nor did anything else, because all is impermanent. Meanwhile, I had yet to broach the topic of “going forth” with my mother.

 

I was almost fourteen when an opportunity arose. By then my mother’s prayers to big and small gods had changed from repentence to thanksgiving, for my father had married off my two elder sisters and had just arranged the most coveted match of all for my third sister, Kisa, who at sixteen had the reputation of being the most beautiful girl produced by our clan—never short on beauties—in generations. Kisa’s looks were more an enhancement of perfection than anything unique: her eyes brighter and more expressive; her hair longer, thicker, and sleeker; her waist smaller; her fingers more tapered; her lips more full and curved; her cheekbones more exquisitely sculpted. Overall, these features, on the borderline of exaggeration, endowed her presence with such intensity that when she walked into a room it felt even to me as if she brought with her the realm of the devas, increasing the significance of everyone’s life. Young men, after setting eyes on her, had a way of improving their performances in athletic contests as well as fights, whether or not they had any chance to court her.

Most importantly, she had attracted the attention of Suddhodana Gotama, my mother’s half-brother. Suddhodana was not only the richest member of our clan but also its current leader, elected by the elders. Although Suddhodana’s son, Siddhartha Gotama, didn’t seem eager for marriage any time soon—preferring to spend his nights with musicians and dancing girls and his days with feasting and sporting events—my sister’s beauty apparently had persuaded him to settle down. Our family ignored the rumor that he was spoiled beyond redemption—the result of a vision, shortly before Siddhartha’s birth, that the gods supposedly had presented to his father. Suddhodana’s mystical experience—full of revolving wheels of fire, streams of rainbow devas, and other celestial excesses—had announced that his unborn son’s destiny was either that of a world-turning monarch or some kind of ultimate holy man. To prevent his son from ever considering the latter option, Suddhodana had made sure his son enjoyed earthly life to the maximum degree.

I could think of nothing worse than marriage to such a man.

But it was my sister, not I, who was the bride in question, and my mother was both ecstatic and exhausted with the prospect of preparing for such a grand wedding. I hoped to use both her reactions to my advantage. One day we were alone in the women’s quarters folding altar cloths and pillow coverings, my sister having gone off with her many cousins to the market to price bangles. The grated windows were open wide, letting in light and the sweetness of the forest. Outside, fat clouds nudged each other in the eastern sky, far from the afternoon sun. It was another monsoon season, but much milder than the one after Deepa died.

“You’ve borne the burden of marrying off so many daughters,” I said. “Not to mention all those dowries. I hate to think of putting you through this again.”

“Burden?” Ama looked perplexed, then smiled and patted my hand. “Yasi, this is our life as the devas have ordained.”

“But maybe the devas have ordained something different for me, to ease your burden. Perhaps I could go forth as a seeker.”

“Yasodhara!” My mother’s dumfounded gasp and exhale made her earrings jingle wildly. “Has your mind been deranged by demons?”

“Ama, I have to confess something. I’ve never seen a demon, or a deva either. I’ve heard talk of a certain blindness that some people have. According to some of the seekers, the only way to cure this blindness is to go forth and find the right teachers to train one’s mind.” This, granted, was a loose interpretation of what they’d actually said.

“My child. What you speak of is not blindness, it’s the devas’ despair over our degenerate age, which these self-appointed seekers themselves have caused. If you want to see gods and spirits, you need to perform the correct prayers and carry out your duties, and most of all you must listen. Do you think I am always in the company of the gods? No, I must beg them to come to me, and then listen with all my heart and soul. We no longer live in the times of your great-grandmother. The devas sang to her constantly.” My mother suddenly looked older, and I noticed for the first time that grief and accumulating years had dulled her hair (but only to the shine of ordinary women half her age), and imprinted the faintest of mushroom-colored crescents under her perfect brown eyes. “My grandmother lived her whole life inside their songs.”

I wondered if that was true, or if it was just another story about the past, full of prodigious beings and titanic gods who nobody had actually ever seen. “But I’ve listened for these voices,” I said. “The seekers taught me how to still my mind so my thoughts wouldn’t block the way. And I’ve tried to do my household duties, and I’ve prayed, but I’ve yet to see or hear anything except a tingling in my ears.” I didn’t add that the tingling sometimes opened into a vastness that seemed to expand my spirit far beyond my small concerns—even my worries about Deepa’s soul—a state I wasn’t sure I wanted. “I need to find if somewhere there’s a teacher who can cure me.”

“But to go out all alone on the road!”

“Some women do,” I said.

“Very few, and those women are old. As a young girl, you would be attacked and left to die—or sold into slavery.”

“Times are different now. There are more women seekers, I think.”

“That’s how much you know! In this darkening age, things are getting worse for women, not better. Men have started calling themselves not only kings but emperors, whose soldiers regard females as spoils of war. In the cities we’re bought and sold like pet monkeys. And not far from here, I’ve heard that we can’t even own property anymore. If our husbands die, we are slaves to our sons.”

“All the more reason to go forth and defy these changes.”

“Haven’t you heard me at all? These changes mean far more danger to every young woman walking alone, let alone homeless ones.”

“So? I could get attacked or a lion could eat me in the rice fields just outside our house. I’m not afraid. Besides, I’d take care to walk with other mendicants and only in the day.”

My mother gazed at me silently. All at once she lunged toward me, her bangles ringing loud as prayer bells, and pulled at my hair, worn in a knob like a boy’s, until it spilled out and cascaded down my shoulders and back. I gasped, too surprised to say anything as she plunged her hands into the whole mess and ran her fingers through it, easing out the major tangles and kinks. “Wait here.” She got up and left for her private dressing chamber, two rooms away. When she returned she was carrying a mirror, unlike any I’d seen before. We had a small one of polished obsidian, but this one appeared to be silver. “I traded for this in honor of my daughters’ marriages.” She held it up to my face.

I had no choice but to look at the bright reflecting silver. There was my face, unsettlingly like Kisa’s, with the same luminous features and emerging cheekbones, with darker eyes and a slightly sharper jaw. Curving eyelashes thick as feathers. I’d hardly glanced at my image before; I’d never even used the obsidian mirror. At most I’d glanced at myself in a pool or a ceramic bowl of clear water.

Ama kept holding up the silver mirror. “Do you want this beauty to shrivel away under some patched and malodorous mendicant’s robe? Do you want to become an old woman, never knowing the joys that young womanhood has to offer? Never to lie with a man? Or to feel the love of a husband? Or to be celebrated in a wedding, surrounded by the love and joy of all your kin?”

The mirror image stared back at me, rose-hued lips curving with innocent sensuality, dark eyes shining and full of depths I didn’t know I possessed, skin smoother than the silver that reflected it. A tiny thrill jolted my belly and spread through my chest, softening and brightening me inside and out. Yes, I was falling in love with myself. And what better way to fulfill this self-love than by marrying? Looking every day into the eyes of a living mirror, a husband radiating love and admiration for my beauty.

Except that in next to no time I’d be a droopy-nosed old woman mourning this beauty and knowing nothing beyond the vanity it engendered. And then I’d die and turn into a Thing. And I would have deserted Deepa.

Panic sent me stumbling backward.

“Ama, I can’t stay here.” I could barely speak.

My mother stared at me.

“I visited the charnel ground,” I said. “I tried to rescue Deepa right after she died. I promised her spirit, even though I couldn’t see it, that I would find her. And do whatever I could to make her happy.”

“You visited the charnel ground? Oh, my dear baby, why? The dead are dead; you must have faith that their spirits are with the ancestors.”

I shook my head. “I don’t have that faith. And I promised! If not for me, she never would have climbed out on that branch! She would be alive!” I buried my head in my hands, my shoulders heaving with sobs.

My mother put her arms around me. “Dear, dear, Yasi. You can’t blame only yourself. I locked you up, after all, and tempted you both.”

She sat back up, looking over my head, staring out the window into the empty space where the mango tree had been, the one Deepa fell from, which Ama had ordered cut down shortly after. Finally, she spoke. “Perhaps to seek your own truth is your karma. And mine.”

She waited as I slowly straightened, my whole body filling with hope. “But I don’t want you wandering off like a crazy woman,” she said. “There are groups of female mendicants. When you’re ready, we can try to see if any of them are suitable for you to join. But you must promise me that until then you’ll start acting like a graceful young lady and not an orphan beggar boy. I want you to learn to be a proper woman, with all the skills necessary to be a wife, so you can recognize your true karma when the time comes.”

“Yes! Yes! I promise. Thank you, Ama.”

Both of us stood up from our mats, brushing off our saris, preparing to go downstairs and dust the altars. We didn’t hear my brother until he burst through the door.

“Ama! How could you allow such a thing, for my sister to go out as a beggar! I forbid it.” Jagdish, now taller than Suppabudda, our father, and with broader shoulders, stood before us in a black lungi, his naked chest glistening, his head thrust back, hands on his hips. He looked so much like our father, with his cleft chin, long nose and penetrating eyes—lacking only his stiff gray mustache.

Ama took a step forward. “A son does not issue orders to his mother.”

He raised his hand as if to strike her. I tensed. “You touch our mother,” I said, “and you’ll spend a thousand kalpas in hell.”

Slowly, he lowered his hand, but he kept his eyes strictly on Ama. “Our uncle Suddhodana will never approve of my sister wandering the roads like some fanatical hag,” he said. “Yasi will ruin the chances for Kisa’s marriage.”

My mother snorted, even smiling a little. “The marriage will have occurred long before the question of Yasi’s destiny comes up.”

“That doesn’t matter. She’ll be a laughingstock and bring shame to the family.”

“Not true!” I said. “A lot of people think going forth is the noblest thing one can do. What if a few pompous old men like Siddhartha’s father disapprove? What if some silly gossips laugh at me? But you don’t care about our family. You just care about yourself and how your self-important friends might see you.”

Jagdish continued to address only Ama. “How can you let her defy me? Yasi is not you! She’s five years younger than I am!” He was blinking rapidly; you’d have thought I’d held him up with a bow and arrow. “She’s probably doing all of this just to spite me.”

“What!” I couldn’t believe my brother was taking my actions so personally. “You are the most conceited person I’ve ever met.”

Ama smacked her hands together. “Enough! Both of you. The question of Yasi’s going forth won’t even come up for several years. Meanwhile, we must all meditate on our karma and hope that the devas will give us direction.” Her voice was a heavy knife, cutting through our anger and pride. “And that includes you, Jagdish. It’s not seemly for young men to listen in on women’s conversations.”

My brother’s complexion deepened with shame, and I realized how important it was for him always to perform perfectly; in that way he resembled our mother. “I had not intended—”

“But you committed the act,” Ama said. “Now go. And let there be peace between the two of you.”

Silently, Jagdish left the room.

Once he was gone, Ama turned to me. “Don’t be too hard on your brother. Your father has always taken him too seriously, while your sisters don’t take him seriously enough.” She leaned over and picked up the silver mirror, polishing it on the edge of her sari. “You haven’t been around your sisters and Jagdish enough to know how they’ve mocked and teased him over the years, even while your father wants to set him up as Siddhartha’s mighty general and heir to some throne yet to be devised. These conflicts have created an imbalance in your brother—if you want to speak of blindness, he’s an example. He can’t always distinguish between his idealism and his pride.”

“That’s true,” I said. “He often mistakes himself for a god.”

Ama’s small smile was almost mischievous. “You’ve never seen a god,” she said. “So how would you know?”

 

Over the following weeks, I noticed that Kisa and Jagdish seemed to be always quarreling, especially after competing for Siddhartha’s attention on his family visits. Jagdish definitely had dreams of being his second-in-command. “He’s marrying me, not you!” I overheard Kisa say. They stood at our iron-bolted entrance door, having just bid farewell to the visitors. My brother and sister were oblivious to my presence, which was understandable. I was a fixture by now, stationing myself as often as I could on the path in front of our house, hoping against hope for some female holy wanderer to happen by, full of advice for a fellow aspirant.

Kisa snorted at our brother and gave a little shake to her head with its glittering array of intricate black braids embellishing a gleaming bun at the nape of her neck. “Don’t think for one moment that you’re joining my household after the wedding.”

“That choice will be your husband’s, not yours.”

Kisa only laughed, her perfect white teeth flashing in the sunshine. “How could you ever think that a future husband of mine would risk angering me for the sake of a dolt with barnyard breath and the wit of a dung beetle? You bore him as much as you do me.”

Jadish stood for a moment, quivering, although from rage or shock or hurt I couldn’t tell. His reply seemed to crawl ominously from his throat. “You overestimate your influence, which you’ll learn soon enough after you marry.”

Kisa laughed all the more. “We’ll see.”

“If you don’t behave properly,” Jagdish said, his voice smoothing while his ominous tone remained, “the devas might not let you marry at all.”

I thought little of these exchanges. I was too busy helping my parents prepare for the grandest wedding they could afford. We planned to harvest all our marigolds and hibiscus and purchase more from traders; we also would bring in extra cooks to help set up the banquet and prepare the spices. My father employed his brother-in-law’s goldsmith to refine the precious metal and hammer out bangles and earrings, along with vases, platters, and other dowry gifts. Some of these were displayed at the family visits where my sister had finally met the nonpareil Siddhartha. He visited three times that season, accompanied by his father and the aunt who had raised him after his mother died shortly after his birth. This aunt, named Pajapati, supposedly doted on him even more than his father did. I hardly noticed her, my future enemy and ally, as everyone sat on newly dyed straw mats and our best patterned cushions—with Suddhodana, Kisa’s future father-in-law, occupying the largest one, woven with gold thread. I was given the task of demurely handing out almonds to the group, which now included my two eldest sisters and their husbands; I had to prove to Ama that I knew how to make myself attractive, braiding my hair neither too tight nor too loose and wearing a sari folded to perfectly display my navel, an important part of a woman’s appearance, as it represented the center of the universe. The purple and gold cloth of my garment also set off my new gold necklaces and earrings. In this way, I showed off my personal wealth as well as my sparkling beauty to prospective husbands.

I thanked whatever powers ruled the universe that Siddhartha had no brothers.

As for Siddhartha himself, I made a point of never looking at him. I noticed only that he was clean-shaven, unlike my father and uncle, whose mustaches occupied their faces like extended raptors’ wings. Otherwise, Siddhartha resembled the other men at these gatherings, wearing an ankle-length formal paridhana pleated in front and an uttariya thrown over his shoulder. He also wore the standard princely gold earrings and his thick hair in a high knot that to me seemed prouder than those of the others, except for another cousin, Devadatta—yes, that Devadatta, who became an object of such controversy in later years. At this point, he was just another relative, albeit one who seemed intent on outdoing his cousin Siddhartha in every respect. My brother, four or five years younger than these cousins, followed Devadatta around as much as he could, joining in the boring conversations—mostly about the grandness of Suddhodana’s establishment and the many projects that Siddhartha had undertaken to improve it, not only designing new mansions but also installing pleasure parks, including an artificial lake for fishing, boating, and growing lotuses. Did he have no notion at all that these pleasures led only to death?

Not that I could raise such an issue. To avoid seeming rude and also to keep my promise to my mother, I occupied myself with my eldest sister Chandra’s year-old baby—a son, which my parents hoped indicated the ability of our disproportionately female family to produce male heirs. I held him while Chandra flashed her eyes and bangles, eager to be noticed in the ways she had before vanishing into the role of married woman.

Looking back at myself then, so critical of others’ pride and arrogance—I certainly managed to overlook my own! Still, my snooty attitude helped me achieve my goal of avoiding attention. Although I wasn’t overtly sullen—Ama would have chastised me for that—I wasn’t the kind of girl Siddhartha would recommend to his male friends and cousins. I said nothing, showed no enthusiasm, and always kept my head turned away. As for the young men I met at pre-wedding parties and dances—including the pompous Devadatta—I became adept at scaring them off with conversational gambits such as, “What do you think comprises the universe? Does all emerge from fire, or is it water? Do the gods perish or not? Or are they some conjurer’s trick?” Of course I did this out of Ama’s earshot.

The young men would suddenly remember they had elderly aunts to attend to and hurry off.

 

The wedding was scheduled for one and a half months after the monsoon, and I congratulated myself that I had kept my promise to Ama while avoiding attracting any suitors, although of course at any time some family could swoop down and mark me as suitable for their son. Still, it hadn’t happened, and I allowed myself to hope that once Kisa was married, I could again bring up the topic of my going forth.

But as my mother would have said, the gods had their own plans.

The monsoon had ended, but on the night that everything changed, the moonless sky offered no more light than during the storms. I was dead asleep on my cot in the room I shared with my sister when something woke me into a greater darkness. Had Kisa moaned? I thought, she must be having a nightmare about being married—no wonder! Then she moaned again, this time followed by a strangled shriek.

“Kisa?” I whispered. “Are you all right?”

She didn’t reply.

In absolute darkness she crashed to the floor, gulping in air with broken yelps, her skull and heels pounding the planks. “Kisa!” I shouted, grappling toward her heaving shape and clutching the knobs of her shoulders as I kicked open the bedroom door to let in torchlight from the outer courtyard. All at once she vomited loudly, the throat-clawing smell filling the room along with my corresponding nausea and fear. “Ama, help!” I screamed. “Something’s terribly wrong with Kisa!”

Then came the lamps and clamor: Ama, servants, someone shouting an order to send a runner for the doctor, women screaming, my sister’s yelping and moaning, more shouts, and a storm of thudding footsteps down hallways. In the light, her skin was ocher as if her blood had turned to yellow dye, her eyes orange crescents cast back into her head. She was so close to being a Thing, moved not by her own will but by some alien force. Amid the pandemonium of priests, doctors, relatives, and panicked servants, I struggled to keep the blackness behind my eyes from taking over as I applied damp cloths to her brow and gave her over to the doctor. Kisa’s paroxysms were ebbing to a far more awful stillness. I held my mother in my arms, and she neither sobbed nor screamed but rocked back and forth silently. It was another instance in which time seemed jumbled. Dawn arrived as a shock. My sister Kisa was dead.

Apparently, a poisonous mushroom had been overlooked in the harvest of ordinary brown mushrooms. The two varieties were almost indistinguishable, although the lethal one was rare in this part of the land. We had all eaten the mushroom dish, but only Kisa had consumed the poison one.

 

The procession to the charnel ground was far larger than Deepa’s. It overspilled the road with hundreds of white-clad mourners, the crowd swelled by Suddhodana and most of his household, with the exception of Siddhartha. Suddhodana had forbidden his son to come, saying that his status, now of former fiancé, was unclear. (Here was another reason for me to dislike Siddhartha: I was sure that the real reason for his absence was that he couldn’t be bothered with such unpleasantness.) Anyway, but for its increased size, the procession was almost identical to the last one: led by the same elderly priest, accompanied by gongs, chants, cuckoo cries and monkey shrieks, clouds of choking incense, and the heavy tramp of grief. I followed not far behind the bier. Although I didn’t feel Kisa’s death as profoundly as I had that of Deepa, who’d shared my childhood, I mourned my spirited elder sister, her cleverness and passion, and I suffered the same sense of irretrievable loss as at my little sister’s funeral. Even the weather was similar, the day sunny and innocent as we made our slow despairing way between the green, monsoon-fed fields toward the territory of death.

Only my parents had changed.

My father, who had headed Deepa’s procession in a manner properly grave and stiff, now trailed near the end of Kisa’s, leaving Jagdish to handle Suddhodana up front. Father straggled along with my surviving sisters and their families, displaying little of his usual upright dignity, clutching alternately at his elbows and cheeks and swinging his head around like an abused donkey looking for someone to rescue him. He’d paid far more of his own fortune for this aborted wedding than he could ever expect to recover. No doubt that was part of his distress.

My mother, on the other hand, had turned herself into stone, at the molten center of which was a rage with the power to demolish all in its path. She wore her same white mourning sari, but had yanked her hair back into an angry bunch, as though she were forbidding every part of herself to choose grief over fury. She marched behind my sister’s bier, not once looking at the priest. Since Kisa died, she had refused to go anywhere near our house altar, and the night before the funeral procession someone had toppled the deva statues in our banana grove. I strongly suspected it was Ama.

As the march continued, I drifted through the crowd, back and forth between my parents, fearing something bad was about to happen. More than halfway to our destination, my father noticed Cook and her family behind him, a dozen children and adults all wearing white and weeping copiously. “How dare you walk here!” he shouted. “I should have all of you driven into the jungle!” He had already dismissed the mushroom gatherers, even those who were relatives. “I should have you put to death!”

“I checked those mushrooms three times!” Cook stood tall, her belly quivering above its white wrap. “I sampled them at all stages of the dish.”

My mother appeared, her face unmoving, her eyes shooting flame. “Husband, you will not speak to our cook in such a way. She’s innocent of all charges. I checked those mushrooms as well. The fault belongs to our wretched gods, who hurl us to our doom as a matter of sport.”

My father stared at her. “Woman, it is you who are speaking out of turn. You should be on your knees praying for forgiveness for such blasphemy.”

Shockingly, my mother turned her head and spat at my father’s feet. “I’ve prayed enough to compensate for a thousand blasphemies. I’ve followed every one of the devas’ pointless rules, blistered my fingers making offerings, and served them up perfectly good dishes we could have used for our own table or at least given to the poor. And look what they dished out to us in return! It was they who hid the poison mushroom among the others—or else temporarily blinded us all, including the mushroom gatherers, to its presence. I curse all devas! I only want that they join me in the hell they’ve created.”

My father, I guessed, was stunned into silence, fearing his wife’s impending madness. I didn’t blame him. I was desperate to help Ama, but there was little I could do in this crowd. I headed toward her, thinking at least to put my arm around her—or to try.

Iron fingers bit into my arm, whirling me around. I knew even before I saw his clenched face that it was Jagdish yanking me aside, his grip making my arm tingle with pain as the crowd passed by. My anger was mixed with concern. Why had he abandoned his duty as head of the procession?

Still holding on to me, he nodded at the mourners. “Let them pass.” He waited until the last of them were out of earshot. “You know how much Father has invested in this wedding. He will never have this opportunity again to ensure that we have control over our own estate for the next generation. At best, our family will become vassals to our uncle.”

He drilled his eyes into me. “Only you can save us.”

Could this be? Had my brother finally accepted my holy path? “I give you my most sacred promise that I will not rest until I learn how all our souls can be saved from the darkness of ignorance.”

“What?! Stupid girl! This has nothing to do with your absurd fantasy of becoming a beggar. I’m talking about the family fortune.”

I swallowed my hurt. “Then what—”

“Suddhodana and his son have noticed your resemblance to Kisa. True, you’re taller and thinner, but at times I’ve seen Siddhartha gazing at you.”

I yanked my arm from his grip, hardly able to believe what he was implying. “Are you saying I take Kisa’s place? That I marry that pampered peacock who couldn’t even take a day off from his fan dancers and trained elephants to grieve our beloved sister? I intend never to marry, but if I did, I’d choose a pack of rabid dogs over him.”

Jagdish played calm. “Don’t be selfish, Yasi. Think of Ama. She may not survive this loss. She hasn’t had anything to eat or drink since it happened.”

This sobered me, but not enough to accede to Jagdish’s outrageous demand. “You talk about replacing Kisa the way we might buy a goat to fill out the herd. The prospect of such a thing would make Ama worse.”

The tendons twitched in my brother’s jaw, but he kept his voice steady. “You’re letting your own concerns cloud your vision.”

“What about your concerns? It seems the person with the most to lose is you—your opportunity to become Suddhodana’s second son.”

Jagdish brought his fist to his forehead. “I can’t deny I’ll lose a lot.”

It was then I remembered the argument he’d had with Kisa, and a forbidden thought exploded inside me. Jagdish also had the most to gain. He’d lost a hated sister who mocked him and thwarted his ambitions, and now he saw a way to avert the disgrace of his other sister going forth as a wanderer. “Brother,” I asked, “what do you think caused Kisa’s death?”

The outrage in his eyes and hung-open jaw almost completely allayed my suspicions. “I have no idea. Perhaps the gods saw fit to take her. Perhaps they were offended by your plans—which defied them.”

“You wanted her dead.”

Tears sprang into my brother’s eyes. “How can you say that? It’s my duty to protect my sisters! Are you accusing me? What would that do to our parents? To Ama?”

“I haven’t accused you of anything.” I felt the breath sucked out of me. What had I been thinking? Even if there were any remote chance my accusation was true, I had no way of proving it. Voicing my suspicions would only shatter our family.

My brother’s tears glossed his cheeks. If he was lying, I feared he was lying to himself as well. “Please, Yasi,” he said. “I beg you. For Ama’s sake. Offer to take Kisa’s place. Only you can lift our mother out of hell.”

What if my mother went mad or died of grief? I could never go forth into the holy life knowing I failed to prevent her death when I had the chance. I, who had contributed to her madness by my part in the death of her youngest child.

“I’ll go to Ama with the suggestion. If, and only if, the prospect of my marriage to Siddhartha will truly move her, bring her back to life, will I go through with it.”

“You need to approach her very soon, before Suddhodana starts looking for other candidates.”

“Jagdish! This is our sister’s funeral, not a matchmakers’ conference! I refuse to talk about this anymore today.”

Far in front of us, the crowd had stopped at the entry to the charnel ground. From here I could see the shapes of the gobbling vultures in the bright sun, even as a flock of parrots flew overhead, green as springtime. Jagdish took my arm. “I know what this is costing you,” he said, “even though I never approved of your plan. But you’ll benefit far more by your noble sacrifice.”

It would be many years before I revisited my suspicions about poisoning.

 

That night, I brought a lamp and a gourd of water to the little weaving room where Ama had retired after the funeral. She lay, a dirty white mound curled on the floor in the room’s far corner. The wooden storm windows and filigree blinds were bolted shut, and the room smelled of stale sweat and dark, female despair. I leaned over her. “Ama, you must drink something,” I said.

Her voice was muffled. “A dead woman doesn’t have to drink anything. Go away, child. Your mother has already left this world.”

I was surprised by the intensity of my hurt. “So, then, you’re going to desert your family because you’re piqued at the gods.”

She turned, crouching as if to slap away my gourd and lamp and drive me out the door. “You’re fortunate to be blind to the devas. Better never to have seen them than to hate them as I do.”

Her appearance shocked me. Her hair, a black mire, would take weeks to untangle, but the dull red tracks down her cheeks—she must have clawed them—and the voided-out expression in her eyes made me fear my Ama’s spirit had fled her body, even while she lived. Jagdish was right. To abandon her now would be to condemn her to countless lifetimes of darkness, gods or no gods. “Don’t hate the devas, Ama. It will only hurt you.” My words sounded as feeble as dead petals fluttering to the floor.

She looked away. “Just go,” she said.

I don’t know where my next words came from. Perhaps from the gods themselves, perhaps from my own unacknowledged soul, not that of a seeker but a schemer. “Ama, our gods were jealous. They knew you would leave them for the more powerful ones worshiped by Suddhodana. By killing Kisa, they thought they could stop you.”

“They’ve succeeded.”

“Don’t let them. If you want to punish them, make them bow to Suddhodana’s gods. Find a new priest. Don’t send yourself to hell!”

“It’s too late. Suddhodana is no longer interested in our family.”

I felt suspended in some strange floating numbness. “I could replace Kisa.”

Ama said nothing.

“Please,” I said. “You yourself acknowledged how much I resemble my sister. It would benefit all parts of the family, including Suddhodana, to have this wedding.”

My mother gasped, suddenly remembering the real reason for her rage. “Our beautiful Kisa!” She broke down sobbing, and I could only watch as grief finally overtook anger. Finally, she turned toward me, supporting herself with her arms, her ruined hair hanging down on either side of her shoulders. “She’s lost forever.”

I swallowed. “I can live her life. I can honor her beauty. My actions and my children will be dedicated to her. She will live through me.”

Ama sat up, leaning against the plank wall, breathing hard as if she’d summoned her spirit either to return to her body or to offer these final words before leaving it forever. “You plan to go forth. I don’t want you to ruin your life, child. One life is enough.”

“I no longer believe that going forth is my karma,” I said, torn apart by my own grief, not for my sister but for my lost future. Yet I was moved to know that Ama still cared about my plans. “We could arrange a meeting with my uncle and cousin for as soon as the mourning period ends.”

Ama patted at her hair, calmer now. “You did little to endear yourself to them, I fear.”

“I can change that. Let me try.”

Ama gazed at my face, lit by the little oil lamp; I could feel its heat. “I would be happy not to let your beauty go to waste,” she said.

I opened the windows, and the night flooded in, a cool breeze and the yowls of a catfight below. “All I want to do is make you happy.”

For I was certain that happiness was no longer a possibility for me.

 

A month later I stood with my parents in our main receiving room, with its patterned bolsters and cushions leaning against the teakwood walls, greeting Suddhodana. The weather had cooled; we all wore paridanhas with shawls, no longer white. My garment was midnight blue, worn with a gold cloth belt and earrings and bangles to match, an outfit intended to convey seriousness without being too somber. I now had to convince everyone that I looked forward to an event that filled me with dread: marriage to my coddled, worldly cousin Siddhartha, who had yet to arrive.

“You may sit,” Suddhodana said, as if the three of us were servants or children, and we seated ourselves on the floor, not knowing why my prospective father-in-law wanted to meet with us alone. He glanced approvingly at the platform altar, now dedicated to Durga, the Vedic goddess. There was no statue, only a simple conch shell and a half-bloomed red lotus. Ama wasn’t ready to overdo her new devotions. That seemed to be fine with Suddhodana, whose relationship to the gods apparently was a matter of keeping them at bay and paying them off when necessary.

Seating himself on our fattest pillow, he turned his attention to me. Compatible with the severity of his granite gray mustache, his long jaw was lean and his brown eyes watchful, those of an older brother needing to make sure none of his younger siblings were plotting against him. Next to him, my own father looked like a good imitation of a Sakyan leader, but an imitation, with a jaw consciously thrust forward to compensate for its narrowness.

Suddhodana spoke: “My priests and diviners have agreed that the gods have given us your younger daughter as a gift.”

My parents nodded and smiled vaguely; I could hear my father attempt to swallow his sigh of relief. I tried to smile as well, hoping my despair passed for a mixture of shyness and ongoing sisterly grief. As for the divine support for my marriage, I couldn’t help wonder how much Suddhodana had bribed his priests to tell him what he wanted. It was clear that both our families stood to profit from this switch.

Suddhodana’s upper lip tightened a notch. “However, we are left with one question.”

The room seemed to shrink.

Suddhodana wasn’t smiling. “There are rumors your daughter has kept unsavory company.”

“Cousin!” my father said. “Are you impugning Yasodhara’s purity?”

Ama, still shaky after her ordeal, clutched her elbows. “That’s not what he means, husband.” My father’s benign indifference toward my life had resulted in his complete ignorance of my interest in holy wanderers.

“Well then, what?” My father flashed his eyes at me, as if my mother had kept me in hiding my whole life and now was about to unveil some gross deformity.

Suddhodana folded his arms. “I am not speaking of the purity of her body, brother, but rather of her soul.”

Ama’s eyes were cast on the floor, as if she expected me to speak for myself.

It was then I was tempted. Ama had resumed eating and presiding over household life, although not yet with her former vigor; still, it was possible she no longer needed me to keep my promise. I glanced over at her, but she wouldn’t look back at me. Did she feel guilty about my sacrifice? Was she giving me an out?

What if I just confessed outright that I was hardly the kind of worldly wife suitable for the temporal monarch Siddhartha was destined to be?

“Our family gets its share of spiritual seekers,” I began. “I couldn’t help meeting a few of them.” I hesitated. Now was when I was expected to laugh off my spiritual concerns and say that all I cared about were the visitors’ comical looks and stories of exotic places. Could I bring myself to speak such a lie? Surely telling the truth instead was justified, considering that my dedication to the holy life would benefit my family’s ultimate karma far more than the extra geese, cattle herds, and outbuildings a marriage to the son of Suddhodana would bring. Perhaps if I said nothing more, my mother would speak, either to condemn me to this marriage or to rescue me.

No one spoke.

I couldn’t lie, I decided. I prepared to confess who I truly was.

Just then the outside door opened and in rushed Siddhartha. “Father, I couldn’t wait any longer,” he said in a breathless voice, “to look into Yasodhara’s eyes.”

It was his face that undid me. I could go on about symmetry; the strong yet refined bone structure; the searching brown eyes lit from within; the full lips curving with sensitivity, yet firm enough to show strength of character; and all the other components of male perfection—but it was something else that melted my heart. His face, with its skin like concentrated honey, combined intelligence with a glowing innocence—something that even at fifteen I recognized. He also seemed to radiate a concern for all the world that I almost had to call love. And currently this love was directed at me.

Transfixed, I found myself believing, if not in devas, in their realm, where this man and I would live as divine mirrors of each other, reflecting each other’s beauty, celebrating our natural glory and offering it like star showers to the living and the dead. Already, it seemed we were in love with each other—and ourselves—and this love was one and the same.

Yet just a moment ago I had been convinced I could not and should not lie, and I had always despised personal vanity. Something inside me went tight. Had I believed in Mara, I might have wondered whether he was using Siddhartha to tempt me away from my true calling. “Why didn’t you come to Kisa’s funeral?” I asked him. “Did your father really forbid you?”

“Yasodhara!” my mother warned.

“He did,” Siddhartha said. His eyes beckoned me back into the exquisite universe of his gaze. “And I allowed him to, because I don’t believe that humans should dwell on death. I believe we honor the dead by serving life, and therefore I want to cherish your sister by serving you as long as I live. I promise to be the best husband I can be. This act I shall dedicate to Kisa, but I will belong to you and you alone.”

Essentially the same thing I had said to my mother. Only he meant it. And now I wanted to mean it, too.

Suddhodana cleared his throat. “We need to clear up this matter of your daughter consorting with vagrant holy men. My son cannot be distracted from his destiny by the pointless speculations of spiritual riffraff whose only purpose is to help Mara make mischief and disturb the divine order.”

Siddhartha broke his gaze from mine and looked mystified. Apparently, he had not heard the rumors about my wishes to go forth.

At that point, all I wanted to do was return to that mutual gaze between Siddhartha and me that had swept the clutter of my earthly life into its own heaven. Surely, I could learn about souls in some other way than by living as a celibate wanderer.

Forgive me, Deepa, I thought I heard my true self whisper. A self to be locked away in the proud palace of my heart.

I looked over at my future father-in-law. “As a child, I listened to the silly tales of beggars who stopped at our door,” I said. “But I stopped listening to them years ago. I have dedicated my life not only to Kisa but also to my youngest sister Deepa. I plan to serve as a wife in their names. Should I have other than sons, I shall name my children after them.”

My future husband’s smile filled my entire body with incandescence. “Father, we will marry,” he said.

I lowered my eyes, those of a devoted wife-to-be.

I can make no excuses for myself, but when I think back on what won me over, I can only point again to Siddhartha’s innocence. It had not only surprised me that a grown man could possess such a thing, but also in itself it was so beautiful that I wanted more than simply to preserve it. In my vague, fifteen-year-old way, I wanted to inhabit it, believing in the promise I had made to his father the same way he had believed in his promise to me. And for a time, I did.