Hardly anything ever happened in the city of Himavat. Sometimes a ṛṣi would stop by—and soon set off again. No wars, no uprisings. The roads had an unnatural shine to them. Parrots, cranes, and swans were painted on countless palace walls. With all the fountains and canals, the sound of gurgling water was everywhere. The city spread out like a quilt over a plateau of the Himālaya. The gods gazed down covetously, as they always had. They knew that in its bowels, beneath cellars full of spices, was hidden, lined with rock, the greatest store of gems in all the universe: the heart of the mountain. A halo of that dazzling, concealed light seemed to seep upward to the surface. It provided a soft backdrop welded to the sharp outlines that dominated the landscape, indifferent to the slow decay of everything that is. It was here that Pārvatī grew up, she had seen nothing else of the world: this nature at once too sharply etched and too clear, metallic almost, was the only nature she had known.
The first time Pārvatī heard Śiva’s name, it was from her playmates. The little girls would stifle their laughter, and sometimes they blushed, when they chanted rhymes about him. “Lord of ashes and oil,” they would say. But what did the words mean? Or they would say: “Snake among snakes, goad of the bull.” Pārvatī loved it when she didn’t understand. What attracted her most was obscurity. Otherwise the world that surrounded her would have been too transparent.
Her old father, Himavat, old as the mountain itself, was made of rock, as she was, and they understood each other without speaking. Her mother, Menā, seemed to have lived her whole life between palace and gardens. Her worries and anxieties seemed futile to the small, severe Pārvatī. Only very occasionally would Mēna loosen up a little and mention a voyage of long ago, to a “white island,” where, like a princess on a world tour, she had gone with her two sisters, Dhanyā and Kalāvatī. Something had happened there, a serious offense, a lapse on the part of those cheeky princesses. But at whose expense? There was always some ṛṣi or other who was upset. But Pārvatī never managed to get to the bottom of it, however stubbornly she questioned her mother. It was as if that story belonged to another, unmentionable life. Even Himavat sometimes seemed to be talking nonsense, spoke of himself as the “Guardian” and came out with incoherent remarks about a time when everything was still “closed” and only he, Himavat, had known what “fullness” was and had protected it. But whatever her parents’ past may or may not have been—thought Pārvatī—they certainly led a childish life now; they didn’t suffer, they had no knowledge—and she, the little Pārvatī, eager as she was for change, already felt older than they, who perhaps had lived thousands of years.
Tāraka shook the world. He had already stolen the gods’ wives. He rode on a lion, strangled his enemies with ten thousand hands. He was an Asura. A powerful ascetic, on a par with so many other demons before him. But this time, faced with the havoc he was wreaking, Brahmā let slip an unprecedented admission: only Śiva’s son would be able to kill him. But how could Śiva have a son? The gods felt impotent as never before: Indra’s thunderbolt, Varuṇa’s noose, Viṣṇu’s discus lay scattered about like forgotten toys. Tāraka plundered the gem reserves of sea and sky. He broke into the celestial homes of the Apsaras. Out tramped long lines of girls, their eyes on the ground, like prisoners of war.
The gods fled: but Tāraka came at them from every side. At their wits’ end, they turned once again to Brahmā. The god smiled. “It is my will that Tāraka flourish. It is hardly likely that I will destroy him. He can only be killed,” the gods had to hear for the second time, “by the son of Śiva.” “But Śiva has no time for us, or for the world,” said the gods, gloomily. “He’s always wrapped up in himself.” Brahmā answered: “Śiva’s seed rises and goes around in his body. No one has ever seen it. No one has ever received it. But now a woman has been born capable of making that seed squirt. Seek out Pārvatī, daughter of Himavat.”
“To seduce Śiva,” thought Indra. “Who can help us? Only Kāma.” He went to see the old friend who had goaded him on so often in his adulterous exploits. Kāma’s welcome was both gentle and proud. “We’re about to be overthrown,” said Indra. “The time has come to show that you’re my friend. Only you, Desire, have the weapon that will do it.” Kāma didn’t bat an eyelid. “I can overthrow gods and demons with the sidelong glance of a woman. Brahmā too, and Viṣṇu. The others aren’t even worth mentioning.” Then he fell silent a moment and added, solemnly: “I could even overthrow Śiva.” “That’s what I came to ask of you,” said Indra.
Kāma stroked his bow and his five flower-arrows. Just brushing that bowstring was enough to fill the air with a hum of bees. “First of all,” he thought, “we need spring.” He looked at Rati, his beloved, who followed him everywhere, the way Pleasure will follow Desire, and sent her a nod full of complicity.
That spring came out of season. It surrounded and invaded the mountain where Śiva was sitting, motionless. It crept into the Forest of Cedars, where the ṛṣis were practicing tapas. They had the sensation of an acute and unbearable torment. They felt their resolution crumble. Stubbornly, they stuck at it, but secretly they were floundering. Beside Śiva, Nandin, the white bull, lifted his head just a little. And the Gaṇas, the Genies who surrounded him as though in a gypsy camp, sniffed the air, intrigued.
Out of the thick foliage came Pārvatī, with two of her maids. Little girls, adolescents, women? Who could say? Kāma crouched down behind a bush. He was studying Śiva’s chest, solid and upright as a column, looking for some point his arrow might pierce. Pārvatī had some flowers in her hand. As she was placing them at Śiva’s feet, her tunic came open a glance. Śiva lowered his eyes and fastened them on Pārvatī. Then he spoke to her, in a whisper: “Lotus, moon, Kāma’s bow, water drop, cuckoo, flax, corolla: all is within you. Upon your hips is laid the sacrificial offering.” Śiva stretched out an arm toward Pārvatī. He was stroking her clothes, and already a hand slipped inside. Pārvatī blushed, stepped back. “Just looking at you is such an immense pleasure,” thought Śiva. “What on earth will embracing you be like?” And immediately he plunged back into his tapas.
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 attentive, 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, Gaṇgā, 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 Gaṇas 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 Gaṇgā, 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.”
Pārvatī was stubborn and wild, but that didn’t mean she had given up on being a princess, or that she didn’t want everything to happen to her just as it should happen to a princess. If Śiva really meant to be her husband, the first thing he would have to do was ask—or have somebody else ask—her father, Himavat, for her hand. And as far as the wedding was concerned, Pārvatī left no one in any doubt that she expected a magnificent ceremony, scrupulously faithful to the most ancient customs. Mildly smiling, a patient Śiva called together the Saptarṣis at the Mahākośī waterfall. They would be his ambassadors. They went down to Oṣadhiprastha, where Himavat received them at once in the presence of Menā and Pārvatī. While Aṅgiras launched into a speech of great and characteristic eloquence, solemn images spouting from his lips like drops of crystal, Pārvatī concentrated on counting the petals of a lotus flower, like a little girl playing in a corner and pretending not to listen to what her parents are talking about. Menā couldn’t conceal her anxiety. Himavat looked at her to ask for her consent. Menā’s nod turned into a prolonged shiver.
When Śiva’s retinue passed through the second gate of Oṣadhiprastha and the procession behind found themselves up to their ankles in flowers, wind ruffling their standards of Chinese silk, there was a sudden, unanimous movement, like a beating of wings, among the women hidden away in the palaces. One dropped a garland she had been fixing in her hair; another took her henna-wet foot from her maid’s hands and ran to the window, leaving red prints on the floor; another rushed over with one eye made up and the other not; another broke off in the middle of tying her robe and, pressing her forehead against the grating, had a bracelet cutting into her navel as she tried to cover her bare belly with her hand; another had been lacing a girdle of pearls and suddenly let go, leaving the pearls to fall and scatter. The procession pressed on through the empty streets, while behind a thousand embroidered screens bright splashes of light trembled like lotus flowers besieged by swarms of bees.
The city disappeared. The villages disappeared, likewise the travelers. The noisy escort disappeared. Nature thickened, withdrew into itself. Piece by piece, Pārvatī felt the world she had known fall away from her. She had scarcely left her parents’ house and already she had no idea who she was. A little girl? The Goddess? Both followed the footsteps of the man with the wiry legs as he walked ahead along the path that climbed slowly up Kailāsa, and never turned back to look at her. Behind them, they could hear the warm breath of Nandin the bull, carrying their few belongings, only witness to the scene.
Then they had fallen asleep, welded together like two metals, and Śiva had begun to move in Pārvatī’s dreams, then they had fought like two swords, then stopped, suspended in the air, then laughed, bit into fruit, drunk, blindly, oafishly, then left their supine bodies, looked at themselves from above, motionless while their bodies stirred ever so slightly, Pārvatī had begun to wander off, already she could see the lights being lit in her temples, except that the temples were inside her, they rose up everywhere Śiva’s phallus, like a quiet, inquisitive traveler, prodded and explored her, at which Pārvatī saw a name impress itself on the vast landscape around her—Yājñavalkya—and couldn’t remember who it might be, then she heard Śiva pronouncing those same syllables, as he recited the texts of the ṛṣis, and beside the name were some words she hadn’t understood at the time and had marked for later attention, because she sensed that one day they would be useful, and she had forgotten them, but now they came back like obviousness itself, the obviousness of the Self, of the ātman, which, according to that ṛṣi of whom she knew nothing aside from his name, causes us to feel like the man who embraces the woman he loves, the man who “no longer knows anything of without and within.” “No longer knows anything of without and within,” Pārvatī said to herself, muttering a knowledge that surpassed even her pleasure, which in turn surpassed everything else, and at the same time her eyes moved cautiously around those temples at once remote and intimate, but it was then that she caught a sense of something suspicious, insidious, something that disturbed her, and she found the eye of Kālidāsa, the poet, crouched on the steps of one of those temples, as if trying to blend in with stones—and instead he was watching her and writing. “This must not be,” murmured Pārvatī, assuming the terrifying shape she often played with. “A curse on you if you proceed, by so much as a syllable, with your description of Pārvatī’s pleasure.” But Kālidāsa had already melted away, crept back into the gloom of time.
Pārvatī said to Śiva: “Please explain. Pleasure leaves no memory. I mean: during the twenty-five years of our first embrace, when I had just left my father’s house, I often thought, as though making a long journey: I must remember what happened just now, exactly how this moment was, how we got there and how we left it behind. I was quite determined—and everything seemed quite clear and sharp, but the way dreams seem clear and sharp while we are dreaming them, we decide to remember them and fasten on every detail—and the idea that we might forget something seems so ridiculous we almost smile, because it is all too real, but then when we wake up that thing evaporates along with all the rest. Try to understand: everything that happened is there inside me, just below the flux of my mind. But I can’t recall the sequence of it all, I could remember far better the sequence of something quite unimportant to me: how I dressed one day, what makeup I put on, how I went down into the palace gardens, how I walked along a particular path and how I mounted my dappled horse, my two maids behind me, and how the maids were dressed, and the first words we spoke to each other. Yet Kāma, Desire, is also called Smara, Memory. Indeed, it’s as if that were his real name. Or at least that’s the name I always use for him. And I saved his life, remember? For days I sat motionless before you, at a respectful distance, immersed in tapas. We didn’t know each other then, and I was just a girl. You kept your eyes closed all the time. When you opened them and saw me, you spoke, without even looking at me: “What’s happening?” you said, “Kāma is here.” Kāma barely managed to get to his feet—he was behind a bush—and to draw his bow with one of the five flower-arrows, before your eye had shriveled him up. Then you looked at me, as though this was the first time you’d really seen me, and invited me to ask a boon of you. I said: “Now that Kāma is dead, there are no more boons to ask. Without Desire there can be no more emotion. Without emotion men and women may as well ignore each other.” So you granted me this boon, that Kāma might go on living, but invisibly. When I was a little girl and used to invoke him, looking at the miniatures I’d painted of you, though I’d never seen you then, all I would say was “Smara, Smara …”
It wasn’t unusual for Pārvatī to fall asleep while Śiva recited the Vedas to her. The hymns made her impatient or drowsy. But she would soon rouse herself again, as if driven by a goad. There were only two things she never tired of discussing: theology and women, the latter insofar as they were—or had been—Śiva’s women. Pārvatī sat up in bed, bare-breasted, her skin moist and glistening. She gazed steadily ahead of her and spoke to Śiva, who was lying by her side: “Prakṛti, māyā, śakti: you see how, when we set off along the path that leads back to the beginning, we always come across this element that flaunts its feminine noun. Never existing alone, but always such that nothing else can exist without it. Nature, illusion, power: these are the words your ingenuous Western devotees will pronounce one day, though generally without realizing how each is the shell of the other. There is no nature without illusion, there is no illusion without power, there is no power without nature. As for māyā, rather than ‘illusion’ it would be more apt to call it ‘magic,’ that strange thing that those supposedly of sober mind are convinced does not exist, while actually it would be far more sober to say that nothing in existence can exist without it. But even that would not be enough, and this is what I want to talk about, that’s why I’m here next to you waiting for you to lay me down on that tiger skin, get rid of your Gaṇas and launch your liṇga on the vessel of my thighs, so that the māyā in me may cloak it in a liquid veil.”
Pārvatī said: “Your mouth comes to me like the unmanifest that rejoices in qualities. Then I feel I am flowing in you. But sometimes you look at me like a man who sees loose women going into an empty house and doesn’t so much as touch them. No less secret, at such moments, is our own contact. When we don’t touch, it’s as if I were putting my fingers in my ears. Then I hear the sound that dwells in the space within the heart: like a river, like a bell, like a chariot wheel, like the croak of a frog, like the rain, like the word spoken in a cozy corner.”
One day they went down to the sea, which Pārvatī had never seen before. On a beach not far from Kāñcī, Umā played with Śiva’s phallus, which was a column of sand. She didn’t notice the sea swelling up. Soon the waves came crashing down on her. Umā clutched the liṇga in her arms, like a doll, to protect it. When the waves withdrew, the column of sand was etched with the scars left by Umā’s bracelets and nipples.
• • •
They spun out the game of pleasure, ratilīlā, made it digressive, circular, rambling. At their feet, Nandin the bull slept, occasionally shaking his big head. White with ash, Śiva’s chest was crossed by two dark stripes: a cobra and Pārvatī’s arm. Śiva whispered to her: “Kālī, you Black One.” It was a name Pārvatī didn’t want to hear. She had always wished, stonily, for her dark skin to grow pale, to be like the skin of those princesses who lived beyond the mountains, whose miniatures people had sometimes shown her. She slipped out from Śiva’s grasp and hissed: “You are the Great Black One.” An argument began. Ever since they’d been alone, this had been their life: sex, dice, bhaṇgā, arguing, tapas. And erratic conversation. Each phase enhanced the others and came around again quite regularly. Śiva said: “You’re hard as a spike of the rock you were born from. There’s nowhere one can get hold of you, you’re like the sheet of ice around your father. You’re tortuous and twisting as a mountain path.” Then Pārvatī sat before Śiva, hugging her knees tight, shut up in herself, staring at him with furious eyes. “And the only thing you like is ash, you smear it over yourself the way my maids rubbed themselves with sandalwood oil. You’re only happy when there are corpses burning all around you. Your earrings are snakes. Why did you drag me away from my palace, from my family, if my body isn’t enough for you? Why do you make me live like a tramp, wandering about aimlessly? Why do you prevent me from having a child like any ordinary woman would? I’m only black because I’m part of you. If you see me as a snake, I must be the only snake you haven’t loved.” Pārvatī jumped to her feet, choking with rage, and went out. Nandin followed her, imploring her to stay. “Go away,” said Pārvatī. “The only thing you should worry about is making sure no other women come here. Your Master thinks of nothing else. Don’t forget to keep your eye on him through the keyhole. When I get back, my skin will be a golden apple, its down soft and light as the dawn. I’ll dazzle him. My tapas is strong enough to do that and more.” And the proud Pārvatī went off, her hand clutching Gaṇeśa, who, full of dark thoughts, lowered his big elephant’s head.
Nandin stood guard, never moved. But he was half asleep one night when a snake slithered up. It was Āḍi, the demon, who had long been waiting for a chance to get even with Śiva, who had killed his father. Sliding along in the dark of the pavilion, Āḍi assumed the likeness of Pārvatī. Motionless, Śiva watched her approach. He felt happy. He had always counted on her sudden changes of mood. And this time she had been away too long. Through the window casing, the moonlight fell on a magnificent, shy girl, with dark skin. “So nothing’s changed,” Śiva thought. The false Pārvatī was walking around him. It was a habit they had, before touching each other. Śiva began to undress her, slowly. He lifted her hair to find a tiny blemish she had, the shape of a lotus flower, on the nape of her neck, to the left. He couldn’t find it. He realized he was being tricked. The false Pārvatī had stretched out on the ground, arms raised in an arch above her head, fingers twining. From Śiva’s phallus sprouted the vajra, the three-pronged thunderbolt, flashing a moment before burying itself in the false Pārvatī. The vulva it penetrated concealed an adamantine tooth, ready to shred Śiva’s phallus. For a while the scene resembled a convulsive coitus. The two bodies arched. Then the false Pārvatī shuddered and stiffened, heat blazing from within. Then she fell back on the floor.
Just then Vāyu, Wind, went to the real Pārvatī, who was sitting on a mountaintop deep in tapas, and whispered in her ear that a woman was lying dead beside Śiva’s bed. Pārvatī smiled and didn’t move. She spoke to Night: “I know very well that when I was conceived you slipped into my mother’s womb and colored my embryo with a dark liquid. Even then I turned against you. Though I know that you meant it as a gift, because I partake of the Black. The gods wanted me to be born to seduce Śiva and with his seed produce a son the color of gold. That son is not yet born—and never will be from my womb. But the gold is mine by right. I can’t bear for Śiva to lose interest in me, as he did with Satī and with my sister, Gaṇgā, and all the others. Take back my veil of flesh. Make me pale as a foreigner.” Even as the bold Pārvatī spoke, her dark skin fell from her body to lie in folds on the ground like a rag of cast-off muslin.
Nandin was curled up, all too aware of his shortcomings, when a radiant being with familiar features appeared before him. Pārvatī paid no attention to the guardian bull. She was longing for Śiva to see her. She sat before him in the same position as when she had last seen him. Śiva was silent as his eye took in the golden down of her arms shining from her white robe. Without a word he drew her into himself.
“As many as are the aeons, so many shall be the ways in which Gaṇesā’s story is told.” Many the aeons, many the stories. Only one thing is certain: Ganesā was born of Pārvatī “without husband,” vinā nayākena. Which is why they call him Vināyaka. He was often to be seen lying awake beside Pārvatī’s bed. He was her mild and thoughtful guardian, trunk curled up on his round belly and one tusk broken. To his right he kept a stylus and inkpot. Pārvatī couldn’t help stroking him whenever she passed by. “You are my son. You’re mine. I can’t say that of anyone else.” She remembered so clearly the day she had lain exhausted on her bed, every pore of her body drenched in sweat, Śiva’s and her own, and begun to fantasize quite furiously. Would she never have a child? Śiva was evasive when she beset him with her questions. Once he had said: “How could I have a child? There is no death in me.” The words were a dagger. “Then I’ll have a child to spite you,” Pārvatī thought. With slow strokes she spread a scented oil over her body, mixed it with her sweat, with the flakes of spent skin. The palms of her hands rubbed angrily over her belly, her legs, her breasts. She was almost scratching herself, so as not to miss the smallest speck. She gathered a lump of something, and Ganesā was born from that. He didn’t have his elephant’s head at first. He was a beautiful little boy who never left his mother’s side. Śiva pretended to be pleased, but actually he was annoyed. Expert as she was in jealousy, Pārvatī rejoiced to see Śiva suffering the torments she knew so well.
One day, after a fight, Ganesā went so far as to bar Śiva from Pārvatī’s room. Śiva hacked off his head. And immediately, with Pārvatī dumbstruck before him, a huge wave of affection for that lifeless body rose within him. He told Nandin to tear off Airāvata’s head, Airāvata being Indra’s elephant. In times past, when Indra was the indisputed sovereign of the gods, the idea would have seemed absurd. But the Devas were a spent force now. One day Nandin returned carrying Airāvata’s noble head on his back. One tusk had been broken in their ferocious duel. With a craftsman’s skill, Śiva fixed the elephant’s head on Gaṇeśa’s neck. Pārvatī looked on, eyes full of tenderness. She saw how deftly Śiva was performing the delicate operation. And at once it crossed her mind that only now would her son be truly himself. From that day on she was no longer afraid of being alone. When Śiva set off on a journey and she had no way of knowing whether he meant to practice tapas on his own, or to seduce an Apsaras or a common woman, or to destroy or give life to some part of the world—whatever the reason his absence irritated her—Pārvatī would stretch out on her bed among heaps of cushions and dictate one long story after another. Stories of the world she had never seen. Curled up at her feet, Ganesā wrote them down. He was a fast and tireless scribe. As soon as she had finished, Pārvatī stroked the broken tusk and kissed his broad and wrinkled forehead.
Nothing attracted Pārvatī so much as that huge blue stain that shone through Śiva’s neck, even from beneath the ashes. When she was a child, they had told her the story of how Vāsuki the snake had vomited poison into the ocean and how Śiva had swallowed it up. It had gathered like a lake in his throat. On the surface, the color made one think of sapphire, or the ringed eye spots of a peacock feather. It looked like the mark a bite leaves, many, many love bites, and an ornament too. Pārvatī’s hands circled the stain like a noose. “Why do you like pyres and jackals and bones and vultures and ghosts so much? And when you move around, why are you followed by a procession of disfigured and terrifying creatures, why do you treat them like your oldest friends? In the palace where I grew up, I never saw such things. Yet I always loved to invent songs full of words that made me shudder, because I was told you partook of such things, and my friends looked at me as if I were daring them to do the same. Horror and pleasure must have been born together. That’s how it was for me. I know they live one inside the other. That’s how it has to be. Otherwise they would be dull. But now that we’re alone, and will go on being alone, with only the whines and wiles of the gods to bother us from time to time, tell me: why do I always suspect that you get more pleasure from your ashes than from my body?” Stubbornly, brazenly, Pārvatī went on and on asking these same questions. Then Śiva would smile, would laugh, would say nothing, change the subject, shift his grip on Pārvatī’s body, turn her this way and that in his hands. But one day he looked Pārvatī straight in the eyes and said: “Daughter of the Mountain, since you reproach me with my love of ashes, I shall tell you a story, the story you have always wanted me to tell you. You know that when I met you I was a widower. I would still rave wildly from time to time thinking of her death, of Satī, of She-who-is. Before Satī was born, reality was less real …”
Even when he retires to remote mountain peaks, when he is rapt—in thought? in tapas? or in something that is both thought and tapas?—Śiva is never alone. From his long hair, so black it is almost blue, drips the Goddess, now Gaṇgā. They rarely speak to each other. But Gaṇgā is witness to everything Śiva does. She is present at his embraces that have no end. Yet she is never jealous. She flows—that’s all. But it’s enough to drive Pārvatī wild. Majestically, she sits beside Śiva on Kailāsa. All creatures bow before her, none sure of attracting her attention. Sometimes Pārvatī looks anxious: she casts a sidelong glance above Śiva’s ear, at his temple.
“Who is that damn woman hiding in your hair?” said Pārvatī. Once again she couldn’t stop herself. “The sickle moon,” said Śiva, as though thinking of something else. “Oh, so that’s what she’s called, is it?” said Pārvatī, in a tone that would one day be the model for all female sarcasm.
“Of course, you know that perfectly well,” said Śiva, more absentminded than ever.
“I’m not speaking about the moon, I’m speaking about your girlfriend,” said Pārvatī, snarling.
“You want to talk to your friend? But your friend Vijayā’s just gone out, hasn’t she?” said Śiva. Pārvatī went off, white with rage.
Śiva and Gaṇgā met as two excesses. Śiva allowed the celestial river to break over his head before touching the earth, which otherwise could not have survived the impact. And in ever bathing the motionless Śiva’s head, ever flowing in streams down his face, Gaṇgā stopped the scorching god from withering up the whole world. This beneficial and ever-renewed equilibrium was also a secret love affair. Of no other woman was Pārvatī so jealous as of Gaṇgā. No sooner did she come close to him than she saw her sister in the quivering drops on Śiva’s face. Even his saliva smacked of Gaṇgā.
A stream crosses the sky: a stream of souls, of waters, of the dead, of subtle substance. It is the Milky Way. It runs from one end of the sky to the other, then flows on upon the earth. Earth and sky are the two banks of one great river, and it would be hard indeed to find the place where that river passes from the celestial to the terrestial bank. Where is the meeting point? Where do the celestial waters plunge down to earth, with their tremendous mass, where do they carve out their bed? Such is the disparity of force, between heaven and earth, that it is perilous, rash, to pass directly from one to the other. The flow of the Milky Way headed down to where a mighty corrugation lifted earth to sky. It was the Himālaya. Thus, flowing down from the mountaintops, the Milky Way became Gaṇgā, Śiva’s lover, and daughter of the king-mountain Himavat. But if left to themselves, those waters would have flooded the earth. To avoid overwhelming life irremediably, the celestial stream came down on Śiva’s head where he sat motionless, deep in tapas. The impact shattered the mass of water, which then came on down to earth in a thousand small streams. That was Gaṇgā’s body, forever twisting around her lover’s head, streaming over his lips, pouring from his jet black tresses. When Śiva wore his turban, the waters hid among the folds, bridesmaids to their amorous play, then spilled over. Life on earth is possible because Gaṇgā’s body breaks unceasingly over Śiva’s. Śiva can be “Propitious,” as his name would have it, only so long as Gaṇgā’s cataract plunges constantly down upon his head, only so long as his secret, ever-exposed lover dribbles down his thin tresses, the way water drips down on the stone liṇga from a jug hanging above. The dry sign of algebraic equivalence must ever be drenched in the tongue’s lymph, just as coitus means swimming toward the recognition of those waters from which Word, Vāc, emerged.
Śiva and Gaṇgā were the first example of a perennial love, renewed at every instant by a stream that knows no end. But the beginning was rather different, closer to hate and war. Looking down from the height of what would one day be called the Milky Way at the bluish mass of Śiva’s head, where she had been told she would have to shatter herself before touching ground, Gaṇgā thought: “I’ll sweep him away like a straw.” In the end, what did a god mean to her?
Amid her waves the gods surfaced, then hid again. It was true of Agni, true of Soma. And likewise of Sūrya, Sun, every single night. They were a dazzle, a heat made manifest in her from time to time. But without her waters they would never have existed. That motionless figure on the ground, that taciturn god who was perhaps trying to look like a tree trunk, would be just one among many.
Gaṇgā plunged with a crash onto Śiva’s head. She was impatient to touch the ground, to taste this new flavor. She wouldn’t even see Śiva’s face, she thought, unless already swept off on billowing waters, far away. But no sooner had she brushed against that head than Gaṇgā felt lost. Śiva’s hair was a forest. And what was a forest? Her waters were constantly being diverted, divided, humiliated in tiny streams. They settled in huge lakes, surrounded by a thick darkness that was no longer the darkness of the sky. Huge, angry waves kept beating down on Śiva. And Śiva had gathered himself in one spot. From there, like silk from a spider, his māyā spun out, the sticky enchantment of his mind. Śiva held back the waters, wound around she who winds around all, multiplied the meanders that would soak her up. Like a spoiled princess used to having her every whim obeyed, Gaṇgā pounded down upon him, loathed him. “I’ll never see the earth if I go on wandering about in this stupid, frightening forest,” she thought. Gaṇgā didn’t know it, but her fury enhanced her splendor. Streaming down Śiva’s hair, she saw a corner of the god’s mouth lift, in a hint of a smile. That made her even madder. As she renewed her attack, boiling in obscure little ditches, a few drops of foam spurted out beyond the forest. For a moment they found themselves suspended in the void, astonished. Finally they tasted a sharp, dry flavor. It was the earth. Those drops formed Lake Bindusaras, the Lake of Drops. From there they flowed into a bed that seemed to have been made for them. Men called that river Gaṇgā.
For thousands of days Śiva was united to Pārvatī, and that contact transmitted a tremor to the earth. Their bodies were twined together, but all at once Śiva noticed that Pārvatī was cold, as if she were rejecting tapas. Her fire concentrated in a single point: her eyes, which were no longer staring into Śiva’s eyes, but at his tresses. In the dripping dampness of his hair, she had recognized her elder sister, Gaṇgā, still clinging to Śiva’s body. Every drop bespoke the delicate swaying of her generous hips. And the corners of her mouth upturned in a constant complicity of pleasure and mockery. Pārvatī thought: “So all the time Śiva has had me wrapped in his serpentine embraces, he was still carrying Gaṇgā on his head, still dripping with her body. How will I ever be able to show forth Devī, the Goddess who belongs to Śiva’s body, who is his body, how will I ever be able to immerse myself in pleasure if I’m forever meeting Gaṇgā’s eyes, as when we played together as children, if Gaṇgā’s eyes are forever telling me that she is immersed in a pleasure perhaps even greater than my own? So, while for years on end Śiva’s body has been glued to mine, at the same time I have been witnessing another of Śiva’s loves, which began before mine and is still going on, wrinkling his forehead and pouring down his tresses. How naive I was to think those signs were due to the heights of our pleasure …” Pārvatī was shot through by an overwhelming jealousy and anger. What did it mean, now, to have practiced tapas so long, for no other reason than to attract the god? What did it mean to have schemed with her father to distract the god’s mind and have it wander all over her body? What did it mean, if the truth was that Śiva’s head was still streaming with her sister, the loathsome Gaṇgā? Pārvatī turned her eyes on Śiva and said in icy rage: “You play with my body, but your head is still playing with Gaṇgā.” With a sudden animal move that made the mountain quake, Pārvatī wrenched herself free from Śiva’s embrace. Then she turned to the river Gaṇgā and cursed it: “May your waters be forever impure.” The god gazed at Pārvatī and thought that he had never seen her look so beautiful, as when they played dice and Pārvatī cheated. Then she would laugh, with a trill that concealed a similar and opposite fury.
When Śiva wiped out the world, all combinations of existence would flow within him, without needing to exist. The mind and the outside were not separate entities—perhaps not even entities at all. Penetrating each other, they lost all their shyness. The stream was one. The dreadful and the delicate surfaced together, in pairs, indifferent to each other, like distant relatives. Then they bid each other good-bye. Immediately something else took their place. An incessant migration. All forms, all forces: they were Śiva’s herd. That’s why they called him Paśupati, Lord of the Herds.
“For Śiva excess is the norm. An everlasting turbulence. None of his states can guarantee the earth peace and quiet,” thought the thirty-three gods, perplexed. If Śiva practices tapas and ignores the world, then creation grows dull, loses its fragrance, like a woman dressing up for a lover who doesn’t notice. If, together with the Goddess, or with a woman, he indulges in the game of pleasure, then it goes on for months and years, until the constant, exasperated contact between their bodies, its never-ending friction, infects the world like a fever and threatens to burn it all up. So the gods came to the conclusion that, however Śiva manifested himself, at some point or other he should be diverted, disturbed, interrupted, so that life might run its course, mediocre though that might be. They knew that Śiva was he who brings imbalance—and that even though it could never vibrate without him, the world could absorb only a tiny fraction of his turmoil. The only conceivable balance would be a sum of imbalances, all of them originating in Śiva.
When the Snake and the Turtle that the earth rests upon began to tremble, the gods got together again, aggrieved and grim. “Those two think of nothing but dice and sex. Tāraka could make slaves of us all, and they wouldn’t turn a hair. The world will have crumbled away beneath our feet before we know it,” said one of the Thirty-three. “We’ll go and ask Viṣṇu’s advice again,” they agreed. This time Viṣṇu didn’t try to reassure them. “Śiva might perfectly well wait another whole aeon before releasing his seed,” he said pensively. He acted as their guide on the road to Mount Kailāsa. The gods walked along the path up the valley like a caravan of ants, until finally they sniffed the breeze of the locus amoenus where Śiva dwelled. They didn’t deign to give its delights so much as a glance. Coming out of the forest, they suddenly found themselves among Śiva’s Gaṇas. Some were asleep, some playing dice. “Where’s Śiva? You must tell us, our distress is crushing us.” “There’s not much to tell. One day, a long time ago now, Śiva withdrew into Pārvatī’s rooms. He still hasn’t come out. We don’t know what he’s up to. We’ve been left here yawning ever since,” said one of the Gaṇas. Cautiously, the gods pressed on, until they reached what Nandin the bull referred to as the Nocturnal Pavilion: an enchanting, childishly embellished, polygonal structure that stood on thin columns and boasted a terrace where Śiva and Pārvatī gave themselves up to astronomy and pleasure. Viṣṇu had taken charge. It was he who dared to knock on the pavilion door, he who spoke, in a voice too shrill and tense: “Our supreme Lord, what are you doing in there? We have all come to seek refuge with you, oppressed as we are by Tāraka. Grant us your assistance.” From behind Viṣṇu’s voice came a buzz of praise and celebration. Each of the gods was murmuring something.
That knocking on the door, the babble of voices, Viṣṇu’s shrill words: it all slid into Śiva’s mind like a splinter of some mineral whose composition he knew only too well. “The world again,” he thought, impatiently, slowly shifting the angle at which he was penetrating Pārvatī. Their coitus had been going on for some dozens of years. Initially it had been violent (they had just argued because Pārvatī was cheating at dice), then it had been like a liquid flow, then it had all dissolved like ashes in water, then it was all water, and the water trembled ever so slightly, as if it were feverish—and all at once Śiva had remembered how one day Pārvatī, the little-girl theologian, had appeared before him, self-possessed and resplendent, impeccably decked out in tree bark pulled tight with a belt of leaves at the waist, and announced in what was almost a rage: “How dare you presume to ignore the prakṛti you’re entwined to? How could your mind breathe if it didn’t devour your substance, myself?” Śiva had laughed. Then they had tried to touch each other using nothing but their teeth. For years Śiva had drenched himself in that substance, invading it, invaded by it, burning. But now, he felt, he was returning to a state not very different from the time he had stood fast in a motionless column deep in the waters, and shut the world out from himself. Yet from time to time he would feel nostalgic for that world. To go back to watching the sky and shooting his arrows or wandering around the forest with his animals, or going to the markets as a juggler or dancer, lost in the crowd. When would he be doing that again? It was the sign that Śiva was about to detach himself. He was only holding off because Pārvatī was still absorbed in her pleasure. And now this gaggle of gods. Śiva immediately crushed the profound irritation that had pricked him a moment before. He got up from his bed, opened the door, saw the gods’ faces, masks of fear and curiosity, their eyes not daring to meet his and at the same time taking advantage of the situation to sneak glances behind him, where they hoped to get a glimpse of Pārvatī in the half-light. Distracted by this ludicrous sight, forgetting himself for one tiny fraction of time, Śiva realized that his phallus was squirting out its seed. Quick as lightning, Agni darted forward and opened his mouth wide to take it. Regaining his composure, and likewise his mocking smile, Śiva said: “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Behind him a door opened, slowly. And as the gods crowded around like a bevy of dim-witted schoolchildren, Pārvatī appeared, her moist skin cloaked only in a thin and crumpled robe. The Mother of the Universe glared from furious eyes. She said: “I hate you and curse you all. It is you and the fear that consumes you that have stolen from me, from the Mother of the Universe, the happiness of giving birth like a normal woman. I shall be sterile, but likewise sterile shall be the wives that the demon Tāraka took from you and whom I hope he defiles, so that they may learn from him the pleasure that you were unable to give them. If they are sterile, then all the gods will be sterile. The era of these pusillanimous celestial families is over. There are too many of you, you are old and the world is impatient to be rid of you. Up there, where you live, there will be nothing but emptiness, and that emptiness will enchant men even more than you have enchanted them. Only Śiva shall be motionless, pervasive, intact, as he ever has been. I despise you.” Pārvatī shut the door. Without a word, the gods stepped contritely backwards and withdrew. Later they could be seen climbing down the mountain. On a litter, they carried a writhing Agni, his throat scorched by Śiva’s seed.
Śaravaṇodbhava, Born-in-a-reed-marsh: that was one of the names they gave Skanda, Squirt, the boy who was to save the world. Fire burned by fire, Agni spat out Śiva’s seed into a meander of the Gaṇgā. Still water, under moonlight. The Pleiades, the Kṛttikās who watch over from above, saw the scene. Then a glow in the water drew them irresistibly. Having conversed so often with sailors and helped them find their way, they were eager to know the earth. Only the ever punctilious Arundhatī stayed where she was, reluctant to touch the world. Six girls descended in line from the night sky. They hid among the reeds, as though behind screens. Śiva’s seed penetrated the pores of their pulsing bodies. They lay there, feeding it, six guardians of a single womb. Then the white torsos of the entwined sisters rose from the waters as they all gave birth together. There was a profound silence, but that was not to say no one was watching. Hidden behind bushes on the riverbank, impatient for a sight of the boy who meant survival for them, the gods gazed hard at that glowing swamp. The reeds rustled in a first breeze. They saw six pairs of hands lift and caress a child above the surface of the water. Pārvatī was far away, alone, shut up in the shadows, melancholy, despondent. Quite suddenly she felt the milk flow in her breasts. And at the same time a spasm more painful than any birth, because it meant that she would never give birth. The milk was a mockery. But it did confirm that Skanda was her child, even if he hadn’t been born from her womb. “Your flesh is made of my tapas and my pleasure. You exist because Śiva touched me,” murmured Pārvatī to her distant son. And already Skanda was laughing amid reeds and mud. Six women offered him their breasts. They looked more like playmates than mothers. The divine infant’s six mouths stretched out to suck the milk of the Pleiades.
The world was never so peaceful as during Skanda and Gaṇeśa’s childhood. The boy with the elephant’s head and the boy with six heads played unceasingly around Śiva and Pārvatī, who no longer bothered with their lovemaking, rarely spoke, sat for hours on a smooth rock surrounded by pastel-colored drapes. Nandin the bull squatted down and gazed into the void. Gaṇeśa played at wrapping snakes around Śiva’s chest. With the same movements she had once made to string pearls in her palace, Pārvatī was engrossed in lacing little skulls onto Śiva’s garland. Skanda helped by holding one end of the string. The other animals around them—a peacock, a mouse, a lion—kept quiet and slept. For once almost nothing was happening in the world. No tremor from the coitus of Śiva and Pārvatī. No threat of Tāraka rocking the earth from its foundations. Skanda had chased him off like an insect in no time at all. Even the gods were finally at rest.