Swapna Kishore is an Indian author of short speculative fiction and has written numerous books on such diverse topics as software, management and care–giving, the last of which she has widely blogged about.
When we are in a village, time flies by as I help the women in their chores — drawing water, milking cows, stoking cow–dung fires and stirring simmering pots of payasam pudding, or even braiding jasmines in the hair of the young girls. By night, I am tired and fall asleep almost immediately. But when we are traveling, I lie awake below the open, unpolluted skies staring at the full moon and I often think of my Ambapur, oh, so far away, a blur across time and space.
My last evening with Mother is the most vivid of my childhood memories. I was five years old, and supposed to join the Facility the next morning, and Mother and I stood in our dome’s viewing tower, looking at the moon, my small hand in hers.
“You will never be alone,” she told me, “because when we both look at the moon at night, we can imagine we are standing together.”
I wasn’t consoled. “Why can’t I come home for holidays?” I cried plaintively. “What exactly is a futurist?”
Mother’s face seemed all shadows and sharp angles, and her hand stiffened around mine, hurtful. I realized with a shock that she didn’t know the answer.
“Futurists improve the fate of women everywhere, not just women in Ambapur,” she said finally. “Kalpana, learn whatever they teach you, and don’t be impatient.”
I am not impatient now, Mother.
Sometimes I pace, the wet grass ticklish to my bare feet, and absorb the sweet fragrance of parijata flowers. And I wonder — is my past true, if the future will not hold it?
Futurists, I learned at the age of seven, operated in two streams, the researchers and the agents. Researchers provided data while agents changed the future. The glory lay with the agents, though we trainees weren’t told what they did. I couldn’t qualify as an agent; I failed the profile tests thrice despite my through–the–roof IQ and my ‘A’s in every subject. I’d have fudged my personality profile, but I spotted no pattern distinguishing the accepted girls from those rejected — no discriminating levels of IQ, extroversion, assertiveness, nothing.
The shame of my failure struck me fully the day I was moved to the research wing and knew I would never see the agent wing or interact with an agent. I buried myself in work, barely smiling at fellow researchers at meal times, avoiding evening gossip sessions in the common room. If I was doomed to be a researcher, I’d be the best.
Over time, my work began fascinating me. My assignments involved analysis of the complicated social causes and scientific breakthroughs that preceded the initiation of the Ambapur experiment. How did mythology, history, and culture influence the emergence of Swami Sarvadharmananda? What made his rants against Ambapur so popular? Would the Hindu Religious Resurgence have grown without Nava Manusmriti? What triggered India’s splintering into multiple countries with the largest, most prosperous states forming Swamiji’s dream Navabharata? To me, that century–old partition of India was particularly interesting because it transformed Ambapur from an experimental district into a country, howsoever small.
On some days, though, as I unraveled and scrutinized critical forks in history, I wondered at the futility of such intense study, because the applicability of lessons from ancient history was limited, wasn’t it? Then I’d tell myself that my honed abilities would be used later for complex, contemporary scenarios.
My life changed the day Seniormost’s voice boomed from my contact port, taut, curt. “Kalpana, report to Room 455 immediately.”
“Pardon?” My stomach crunched. Why would the country’s most powerful woman summon me?
“Hurry, Kalpana,” urged Seniormost. “This is an emergency.”
I raced down the corridors. Momentum and panic carried me through an open door, but I skidded to a halt before grim–faced senior women ringing a screen showing an abstract low–res animation — red, yellow, brown splotches, moved in weird patterns. Grainy and coarse and scary, though I could not understand why I felt so queasy.
“Kalpana?” Seniormost frowned at me. “We want you to replace an agent.”
“I’m not qualified,” I stuttered, embarrassed.
“You are the only Series K clone available right now. We need someone similar enough to Kavita to replace her at a critical gender fork.”
“Gender fork? But those happened in the past.” They were events that determined major trends in gender equations.
“Futurist agents,” she cut in, “change the past so that the future changes.”
Change the past? I stared at her, trying to comprehend her words. I’d always thought agents changed the future. “But…”
“Pay attention, we have only fifteen minutes,” Seniormost said. “You know how important Sita was in shaping gender roles, right?”
“Of course.” Sita was projected as the ideal woman in Swami Sarvadharmananda’s Nava Manusmriti, which ended up as the final reference on Hinduism for Navabharata; Swamiji used Sita to justify the strait–jacket gender laws binding millions of Navabharata women. I had often done what–if analyses of related mythology.
“Because the Ramayana of Nava Manusmriti is not based on a single story but is a melding of several candidate stories,” and Seniormost paused for a beat, “we have several potential intervention points. For our correcting nudges, we have selected the ten most significant scenarios. In this particular one, the Sita equivalent assists her husband in his trade, cures her grievously ill brother–in–law, and manages the house and finances during an extended business trip which will later be called an exile.”
“Sounds an improvement on the stereotypical Sita,” I said.
Seniormost waved me to silence. “They returned home and rumors started, as in all Ramayanas. The husband did not ignore them.” A muscle on her face twitched as her gaze snapped to the screen.
I swiveled to see the display, my uneasiness growing as I tried to understand what those strange red and orange splotches meant. “What is happening there?”
“Kavita’s fire–proofing failed.” Seniormost’s tone was heavy.
The import of her words sank slowly into my mind. That scarlet dance was an inferno, licks of flame, and sparks and embers — fire seen by someone burning inside it. A chill crawled up my spine.
“That’s Kavita?” I whispered hoarsely.
“They call her Vaidehi.”
Vaidehi, one of Sita’s names. This is what the fire had made me suspect. What I was seeing on the display was the agni pareeksha, the shameful episode present in each of the over eight–hundred versions of Ramayana. An Ambapur agent was being burned alive, and I was supposed to replace her.
“But Seniormost,” I whispered. “I am not trained. I am clueless… please, I am not sure…”
“I’ve seen your records, Kalpana. You are brilliant and capable of extraordinary mental focus. All the assignment needs is focus. Let them dress you and I’ll explain the rest.”
I barely noticed the women who surrounded me and the hands flurrying around me; I was numb, as if I’d been plunged into ice water. I was supposed to become Sita. Well, a Sita, if not the Sita. My legs wobbled. I think I swayed.
I tried to sort my thoughts as women peeled off my bodysuit and wrapped silk around my waist and chest. Capsules were snapped into my brain implant. A woman tried injecting something into my leg; I kicked reflexively, so someone held my arm rigid and plunged in the needle. A small wart appeared on my skin. “We don’t have time for a binding operation,” someone said. “Left to nature, it takes a week for the button to integrate properly, but it’ll be stable enough unless there is extreme trauma.” Jewelry clasps clicked, someone explained the hidden tools. A spray coated me with a golden haze.
“Thank you,” said Seniormost, and the women withdrew.
Before I could pour out my questions, Seniormost started speaking, so I focused on her words.
“Kavita was trained in essentials and sent out when she was seven years old,” she said. “We had coded the relevant cultural information in her brain implant, and we briefed her frequently using her sync button. We got periodic updates on her activity from the button; we have uploaded all information into your implant. Access is by using normal thought control techniques.”
She had not talked of Kavita’s death. I shuddered. “Kavita died in spite of her training. How will I survive?”
“That was an accident.”
“And what am I supposed to do there? How will I know how to behave, what to say, how to recognize people?”
“The implant has all the data and guidance algorithms to help you conform and stay unnoticed.” She smiled reassuringly. “Just stay low–profile for a day or two till we study the situation and brief you.”
It sounded tough, but manageable. I took a centering breath. “When will you replace me with a proper agent?”
Seniormost’s face softened. She patted my shoulder and strapped me in a chair. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I know you can do it.” She flung a lever.
The conflagration hemmed me in, intimidating in spite of my fire–proofing. Bile soured my throat as I tried to push away the horror of the situation. My implant flashed an instruction; I obediently directed a miniscule atomizer on the charred remains of my predecessor near my feet. No burnt human bones must be found in the ashes.
Again, impelled by the implant, I ran to the edge of the pyre where the onlookers were grey smudges beyond an orange shimmer. I stepped out of the fire. I must have looked impressive with my skin burnished gold from the afterglow of the dissipating fire–proofing shell, resplendent in silk garments, dazzling with jewelry. A woman certified pure by Agni Devata, the God of Fire.
“Jai ho!” A few scattered cries from the crowd.
I walked slowly, painfully, on the rough ground, trying to look calm and dignified. A pall of silence smothered the crowd. Some women, several men. I had studied about men, about their salty smells, their thick, coarse voices, their hairy bodies, but even so, seeing them made me shudder. Petals were showered at me — jasmines, roses, marigolds — soft touches against bare skin, a creepy feeling. A crone grasped my hands into her gnarled ones, and led me to a short, skinny man with male–pattern baldness and a bewildered expression. Sweat on his brows. And fear, sour, nauseous fear — I could smell it.
Curiosity overrode my fear. This must be the husband, the wimp who burned his wife to stop baseless gossip about her chastity. He looked so unimpressive. Most mythological interpretations described him, or the collective of men like him, as tall, broad–shouldered, muscular of body and yet sensitive of face, hair a silky curtain.
“My chaste wife,” he muttered, averting his gaze.
Touch his feet, prompted my implant. Seek his blessing for a longer life.
But I couldn’t force myself to act docile to someone who had just killed his wife.
The man raised his hand as if blessing me. I walked past him; he scurried after me, annoyance flitting across his face.
A rickety chariot, lumpy seats covered by a threadbare spread. I settled down. The man sat opposite me, torso angled away, body rigid, too scared to bother me for a while.
Good. I had time, finally, to orient myself to the situation. A couple of centering breaths helped me focus. Then with my eyes half–closed, I began viewing Vaidehi’s downloads, filter set for salient personal facts. The husband was a local chieftain’s son. After his father called him good–for–nothing, he left his village in a huff, keen to prove his trading acumen. He dragged along his brother and Vaidehi for the business trip. They roamed from village to village, traded, earned gold and jewels. When they returned home, a washerman challenged Vaidehi’s chastity. Rumors, insinuations, and the demands of a fire test followed. Vaidehi expected the husband to ignore them. She knew him to be demanding and easy to anger, but assumed he valued her because of her hard work and loyalty during those years of travel. That was the status last evening, as per the most recent transmission.
I was soaking up the information when the chariot jerked to a halt.
No marble palace, no lush bowers, no gold fountains — only a simple stone building. Rice and lentil baras were drying on cloth spread out in the courtyard. Cowpats had been slapped on the walls. A naked boy wheeled a painted wooden cart. Women with their heads covered, some embroidering, others slicing yam. Men sprawled on rope cots, smoking something noxious.
The husband led me to a whitewashed room and closed the door behind us. He whipped out a dagger from his waistband. “How did you survive that fire? Witchcraft?”
My implant suggested I fall at his feet and plead forgiveness. Forgiveness for what, surviving? I had not integrated sufficiently with the Vaidehi persona to manage such acting, such false humility. I ignored the advice and readied myself for his attack.
He lunged at me. I twisted aside and hit his wrist sharply, making him drop the dagger. I kicked it across the room. Mouth agape, eyes round with shock, he stared at his empty hand.
I was utterly disgusted. “If you thought I wouldn’t survive, why did you agree to the fire test?”
His eyes darted from my face to the fallen dagger, and the wariness in his eyes transformed into cunning. He straightened up.
“They would have pushed you into the fire anyway,” he said. “By doing so myself, I retained my position as the chieftain’s son. I don’t know what witchcraft you did, but your emergence from the pyre has strengthened my place.”
Of such pettiness do orators make mighty legends. “They will weave from such incidents a story of Lord Rama, Maryada Purushottam, the exemplar of social propriety,” I said. “Temples will be constructed, festivals celebrated. The fire test will be touted as a righteous act of a king who valued even a washerman’s doubt.”
“King?” He frowned at me. “Who is they?”
Trust me to goof up. Why had I spoken my thoughts aloud? I was supposed to keep quiet and let the implant guide me. I sat down on the bed. “I must think.”
“A woman who thinks?” He snorted. “Now I’ve seen everything.”
This man had seen me emerge unharmed from fire. He had lost his dagger to me. Yet he mocked me. Had his fear and awe vanished because he sensed I would not attack him?
He came closer. “Since you have been proven pure,” he said, “I can taste you again.”
Revulsion swamped me. The thought of a male pressing on me, skin sweating over skin, reminded me too much of the modified Kamasutra that formed an essential part of female education in Navabharata, so that no man was “deprived.” We didn’t have any such training in Ambapur, of course, where we didn’t have men. Didn’t need them. Hadn’t needed them ever since several top women scientists and industrialists, sick of gender suppression and thrilled that science could render men redundant, bought land and funded enough politicians to kick–start the Ambapur experiment.
Yet now I was forced to interact with a man.
His hand grazed my breasts. I couldn’t hit him; that would contradict my supposed role. But every instinct in me shouted a protest. I had to think fast. I checked mental menus and located the required visualization trigger. The hormone release brought the relief of a cold shower. He jerked back, shock in his eyes. Then he rushed out of the room.
I sighed with relief. Thank Goddess for anti–pheromones!
After a few breaths to reorient, I pondered my position. I knew I should collapse the boundaries between the downloaded memories and my own, so that my responses matched what Vaidehi’s had been. But I wasn’t ready to surrender myself yet. This transition had been abrupt enough; I couldn’t handle more jolts. I tuned the implant for better response time and quick face recognition, but stopped short of merging with it.
The door opened. The husband’s brother strode in, dragging, horrors, his wife, Madhulika. She was heavy with child.
“The fire test suits you.” His grin exposed stained teeth. “You look grander, and you walk straighter.” He released his wife’s hair, and whacked her shoulder. “Madhulika would survive no such test. God knows how many men she chased when we were away.”
That was lust in his eyes. Once, when fellow–drunks almost killed him, Vaidehi had healed him, and this was how he gazed at her while she tended his wounds.
Disgusted, I turned to Madhulika. She was so beautiful. Skin fair as the kunda flower, lips the red of hibiscus, eyes the shape of fish. Monsoon clouds of black hair spilled over her cheek. I brushed them aside and whispered, “Sister, take heart. I will help you.”
“He will be angrier if you sympathize,” she whispered back.
The brother–in–law pushed her out of the door. She stumbled out, the enormous swell of her child–heavy belly almost causing her to fall.
“Go cook payasam,” he yelled after her. “And add enough nuts or I’ll teach you.”
He turned to me. “Ignore her, beautiful Vaidehi. Her mango–shaped breasts do not smell as good as the golden pears behind your silk uttariya, or those juices I smelled when you cradled my head in your lap and brought me back to life.”
I thought of a cultural archetype to repel him with. “One who brings you to life is a mother. Respect me as one.”
“A child suckles at his mother’s breast.” He grinned. “O mother mine, drop your uttariya, and let me feast.”
“Brother?” The husband stood at the door. “I was looking for you.”
I slipped out of the room.
The women sat clustered in the courtyard.
“You survived,” the mother–in–law said to me, her lips pursed in disapproval.
I squatted near her. The vat on the fire was smoking hot. She slipped balls of batter into the oil, and I watched them splutter and puff up. A distant aunt chopped green chillies. Another woman sliced onions. A small girl fed cowpats to the fire in the mud chulha.
“Do it properly.” The mother–in–law rapped her hand. She turned to me. “Too arrogant to help, are you?”
I hadn’t merged my muscle memories with the implant and such medieval cooking tasks needed skill.
“I’m tired,” I murmured.
“Vaidehi Aunty,” piped the young girl. “Did Agni Devata talk to you?” She was a chubby–faced seven–year–old, her eyes wide, a tentative smile on her face.
How I wanted that smile to grow with admiration for me! I yearned for this innocent girl to be spared the bitterness and resignation of the women around her.
“He spared me but said women should refuse such insulting tests,” I said. “Women number as many as the men. If we unite, no man can hurt us.”
“May God pull out your evil tongue,” snapped the mother–in–law. “You dare sow discontent in a child’s mind and spoil her future? Besides,” she snorted, “gods speak to priests, not to women. Uttering such falsehoods is a grievous sin.”
The girl’s smile wavered. She blinked as if she’d been woken up. The soft wonder on her face morphed into disgust directed at me.
I should have kept quiet. Seniormost had cautioned me to listen to the implant and stay unnoticed. This is what my failed profile tests probably said: Candidate does not obey instructions. Is not cautious. Shoots off her mouth.
“I wish the fire had consumed you,” said a cousin sister, her eyes ringed with dark circles, a bruise ripening on her jaw. “My husband threatened me with agni pareeksha. He says, Vaidehi survived, so why be scared if you are chaste?”
Her hostility dismayed me. I couldn’t think of a reply.
“If Vaidehi had died, the men would declare her unchaste,” said someone. “Now that she’s survived, they’ll hold her up as an example. Either way, the moment Elder Brother–in–law agreed to the fire test, we were doomed.”
Shard–sharp words, and true, as history showed. I turned to face the woman who’d spoken: Madhulika.
She continued, “We should keep men so happy that no one can sway them. They have so much work to do; we women can support them.”
“Hear her well, Vaidehi,” said the mother–in–law. “You are swollen–headed because you accompanied my son on his trip and survived the fire, but it is women like Madhulika who truly inspire young girls.”
I pressed my lips tight so that I wasn’t tempted to retort.
“Vaidehi!” A voice from behind. I looked up — it was Shanta, the husband’s elder sister. She crooked a finger.
I stumbled slightly as I stood, and Madhulika stretched her arm to steady me. Her finger curled around my forearm, clutching me where the sync button was.
I winced.
She released me immediately, gaze fixed on the wart. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. What was so unusual about a wart?
But Madhulika was staring at me as if seeing a vision of sorts. An understanding came into her eyes, and dread filled me. She suspects. But what can she suspect?
Shanta grabbed my shoulder. “Your husband wants you to visit me for a month. I will leave in an hour. Be ready by then.”
“But why?”
She glared at me. “Do you question your husband’s commands?”
Shut up, screamed the implant inside me. Just obey for once.
After Shanta strode off, Madhulika lay her hand on my arm and unobtrusively led me to an isolated corner. We reached a window opening to the yard where cows grazed.
“You are a replacement Vaidehi,” she said. “The earlier one had no wart on her arm.”
No, she had hers on her leg, I almost said, remembering the injection I’d kicked away.
“You are an agent?” I asked. Seniormost had not mentioned having another agent here.
She nodded, and lowered her uttariya slightly to expose a wart on her breast. “My coordinator didn’t mention another agent. He should have—”
“He?” I cut in. “A man?” I gaped at her, the import of her words sinking in slowly.
She paled, too. “No,” she said softly. “You are too normal. Arrogant, maybe, but not… but you must be… an Ambapur abomination.”
I would have reacted, but my implant flashed a warning twinge of pain, and by the time I’d recovered my breath, Madhulika had rushed away.
Shanta did not speak as we sat side–by–side in her cart. I welcomed the silence; realizing that Madhulika was a Navabharata agent had shocked me. I had not expected to find agents from the “enemy camp,” much less a woman. Madhulika didn’t fit my stereotype of Navabharata’s docile, suppressed women. I had been taught those women were dumb, incapable of independent thought, insipid, exploited, their personalities molded to the Sati–and–Sita image. They were pitiable objects compared to us — strong Ambapur women, free and independent and living in our own country.
Besides, why would Navabharata need agents? Seniormost had said, “Futurist agents change the past so that the future changes.” Why would Navabharata want to change anything? That country had no simmering discontent regarding gender roles. Men were the hunters, gatherers, doers. The scientists and rulers. They commanded. They demanded. Women accepted men as superiors. Women bred, supported, obeyed. They listened, they supplied. Genetic selections encouraged this. Society rewarded it. Political systems, economic systems, were based on it. Why change it?
Or had Ambapur exaggerated the docility and dumbness of Navabharata women? Madhulika seemed intelligent enough, even though she had a different value system.
And she had called me an Ambapur abomination. What lies had their government fed them about us?
The cart jerked to a halt. “Get off, Vaidehi.” Shanta’s voice was whiplash–sharp. “My brother told me to get rid of you.”
Stunned, I looked around. We were on a lonely road skirting a forest. No farms nearby, not a single hut, nothing. I looked at Shanta; she was frowning at me and gripping a thick stick as if ready to attack. I took a few moments to gather my words. “I have been your brother’s wife for years,” I said. “I helped him when we traveled.”
“That was your duty, so what’s great about it?” she retorted. “Now you have resorted to evil ways.”
“But—”
“No one can survive fire without witchcraft.”
“Then why did he agree to the fire test?”
“A woman who dies to save her husband embarrassment dies a worthy death.” Shanta threw my bundle of clothes on the ground, then pushed me off the cart.
“What will he tell the villagers?” I asked.
Shanta shrugged. She made a sign of warding off evil, and instructed the cart driver to proceed.
The sun was low in the sky, barely visible behind the dense trees. I wanted to sink onto the ground and cry, but I couldn’t afford to. Then I thought of the implant, and queried it about the surroundings. Luckily, it turned out that Vaidehi had spent part of her childhood nearby, something neither Shanta nor her brothers had known. Her records showed a cave some distance away, hidden in the forest.
I started walking.
The forest grew thicker with mean clusters of trees. I wended my way, brushing the branches apart, depending on my predecessor’s memories. Once, I spotted eyes peering at me; I drew on the hope that Vaidehi often frequented the forest as a child, and so there would be no wild beasts here. I would be safe.
I reached the cave before dark, glad, almost, for the cold stone to sit on. The implant initiated the daily transmission. I added to it a request for an audience with Seniormost the next morning. I was exhausted. I stretched out on the hard floor. Sleep descended mercifully quickly.
“We reviewed your download,” Seniormost said as soon as she’d established contact. “You ignored the implant’s guidance several times.”
“I did my best,” I said, though I knew I could have tried harder if I’d set aside my ego.
“You don’t understand these dynamics. Using anti–pheromones on your husband and antagonizing him, really! You know story–tellers will twist your eviction to claim that Rama banished Sita because his subjects remained skeptical after the test.”
Frustration made me snap back. “If story–tellers decide what gets sung about, you should influence them. Get a wife to distract Tulsidas. Make him compose a Sitayana instead of Ramacharitramanas.”
Seniormost sighed. “Child, calm down.”
She did not understand the reality here, this bright woman running the tiny women–only country millennia away.
“Gender–imbalance is deeply ingrained already,” I said. “Both in men and women.”
“That’s why we need agents.”
“Then choose a different intervention fork. How about the Mahabharata era? Kunti and Draupadi didn’t get bullied. Radha held her own.”
“We can’t identify representative Mahabharata time–streams,” Seniormost said. “From the candidate historically–correlated episodes, Ramayana offers the maximum gender ‘inflexion’ points.”
“Did you know about the Navabharata agent?”
“No,” she said. “But that is part of the challenge. Now here’s what I want you to do today. Study the implant’s data and complete your integration. Don’t get discouraged. We’ll talk tomorrow.” She disconnected before I could quiz her about how long she’d take to find a proper replacement.
Seniormost was right about my need to study, though. I had gazillions of questions, and the fastest way to proceed was exploiting my implant. Discarding my reluctance, I collapsed my boundary with the implant and integrated the old Vaidehi’s memories into my own.
Then I was Kalpana, and I was Kavita, and I was Vaidehi, and it was evening by the time I recovered my balance and sense of orientation.
I was almost asleep on the dry grass apology of a mattress when I heard steps. Someone was approaching. I opened my eyes a peep. A woman stood at the cave entrance, and a shaft of moonlight fell on her face. Madhulika.
I sprang up and assumed a defense stance. Crouched, ready to spring, I asked, “How did you find me?”
“I came to warn you,” she said, pulling her shawl tighter around her. “My coordinator knows your location. He may try to harm you.”
I had no reason to trust her. “Explain.”
“I asked him about you last evening. You see, we have been told things about Ambapur women.” Madhulika peered at me, as if deciding what to tell me. “You are supposed to be ugly and malformed, and incapable of womanly emotions like love because you women are genetic freaks and clones who pleasure each other instead of men, and oppose the natural order of humanity to the extent of using intelligence to compete with men instead of supporting and serving them. But you showed sympathy to me, as did the Vaidehi before you, so I began to have doubts.”
“You don’t look the way I expected a Navabharata woman to look, either,” I conceded, marveling that we were discussing the future while living a past supposed to change it. I stayed crouched as I spoke, though. Madhulika’s presence here could be a Navabharata trick.
She nodded. “My coordinator laughed and said your predecessor died because he sabotaged her fireproofing by jamming some signal. He’s the washerman who taunted your husband for the fire test. He claimed you were now hiding in a cave in the forest and he knew your location by tapping your sync signals. He downloads all data you transmit.”
My stomach felt heavy, like a weight had sunk in it.
“Till yesterday,” Madhulika continued, “I believed that I must be a role model — an ideal women who complemented men in accordance with our basic nature, our true gender role. Last night, when I realized that what I’d learned about Ambapur women was exaggerated, I wondered whether I’d also been fooled about other things.”
Ditto here.
“So, I came here,” she added.
“Well,” I said. “Right.” I lowered the stone.
She sat down. She looked very tired. The walk here must have been exhausting for her, given her advanced pregnancy.
“What’s your plan?” she asked.
Her mission was to nudge history in the opposite direction. I said nothing.
“Who is your coordinator?” she asked.
I kept my lips pressed tight. I wasn’t willing to expose myself yet.
“My coordinator may try to kill you,” she said. “He tried to kill me.”
“Kill you? Why?” I stared at her.
“When he realized I was rethinking this whole Ambapur–women–are–abominations business, he got very agitated. He threatened me. He even kicked me. But I shouted out, as if I had just spotted some thieves, and he slunk away.”
Even across the years, I remember Madhulika’s grimace at that memory, her closing her eyes for an instant.
She sighed then, a tired sigh. “That’s when I decided to leave home. I don’t want to live in fear of my coordinator. My husband means nothing to me; I lived with him only because of my mission. But I don’t want to bring up my child in a place like that. I am so confused.”
She tilted her neck back and looked at me. I didn’t know what to say — we were opposites, weren’t we?
I stuck to practicalities. “He’ll trace you using your sync button.”
“No.” She removed her shawl.
The wound was obvious despite the thick slathering of herbal paste. The right breast was tattered where the sync button was gouged out, and rags of torn skin hung from it.
I shuddered.
“I threw the button down the river. I also threw in blood–smeared clothes. They will drift back to the shore downriver, and people will assume I fell in the water.”
Night owls cried raucously, crickets chirped. I spread the grass thinner to make another place. Moonbeams lent silver highlights to her night–dark hair.
“Sleep,” I told her. “We can talk tomorrow.”
After a while, her gentle snores filled the night. But I could not sleep.
The Navabharata coordinator could locate me. He was accessing my messages to Seniormost. Yet I needed to tell her about this development.
After much thought, I encrypted my message using a code based on the Ambapur literature not available outside our country. The agent would know where I was, but would not be able to decipher my message.
Seniormost’s encrypted message came back fast enough, but brought no cheer.
You cannot switch off the sync signals, I decoded. The device sends out signals every few hours, whether or not you transmit a message, but you cannot control that. You will have to mislead the Men’s agent.
I pondered the information while staring at the culprit wart. It seemed to me that our country’s approach of Futurist agents changing past gender forks was doomed to fail. Navabharata, a country several hundred times larger, was flush with resources. If they wanted, they could send multiple agents to hunt down and sabotage every Ambapur agent. They could flush every gender fork with required role models. They could keep the past favorable, because a favorable past had made them rich enough to manipulate the past — historical inertia closed the loop.
They could kill me.
As soon as it was dawn, despite the risk of being traced, I initiated contact with Seniormost. She had probably expected it, because she was present in the control room.
Again, I used encryption. As I completed my explanation, my voice broke. “They will destroy me if I stay here.”
“Just hold on tight, Kalpana. The tech team is working to find a solution. Give them time.”
And live under such hostile conditions in this primitive world? “You are only thinking of the mission,” I said, my tension too sharp to hide. “So what if it fails? It’ll just be status quo, it’s not like you will die.”
“No, we will not die if the mission fails,” Seniormost said, her voice low. “It was our fault we sent you without training. We did not explain things.”
“Trained or not, at least credit me for finding out valuable information,” I snapped. “And send a trained replacement for me.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” she said. “We are considering alternatives to keep the Navabharata agents at bay. I will call you back by evening.” Seniormost broke contact.
I was very restless after talking to her. Why weren’t they finding a replacement and recalling me? Then it struck me — maybe recall was not possible. Maybe that was why we never met agents, because sending an agent was a one–way trip, and this was a secret. Seniormost had been evasive about replacements when I had asked. We may not have the tech for it. Or maybe it was impossible to travel to the future, which is what my present was when I was in the past.
Maybe I was stuck in this primitive world, homeless, and being tracked by the Men’s agent.
I fought my panic and went through every sentence Seniormost had uttered, looking for information I might have missed earlier.
Like that part when Seniormost had looked sad and said, No, we will not die if the mission fails. Almost as if proposing a corollary: the mission’s success meant their death.
The thought stunned me.
In the rush of the past few days, I’d not thought about anything other than survival and fitting a role. Not pondered the concept of how changing the past affected the future, for example. Which future did it change? Were these alternate realities, parallel worlds, or just one world? If these were alternate worlds, why bother to change a different world? And if this was one world, and if the past changed, agents could alter history so that India continued as a jumble of cultures and conflicts and did not splinter into Ambapur and the right–wing Hindu Navabharata, and other nondescript smaller countries. Where would that leave my Ambapur and all of us who peopled it? Were Ambapur agents knowingly working on missions they would not return from, missions designed to kill our own country, like suicide bombers and jehadis a few centuries ago? No wonder I failed the psych profile; I lacked such suicidal conviction.
The moon was but a pale sphere barely visible in the dawn sky, and I remember seeking it out and staring at it, remembering how very far Mother was. I had looked at the wart, my link to my world, and also my betrayer. I looked at Madhulika, who was possibly not the enemy I had assumed her to be. Maybe no one was an enemy.
I was tempted to plunge into action that would make me safe. Attack the washerman, kill him. But Navabharata could send more agents and coordinators; it was a large country with plenty of resources. I would be safer if they thought me dead.
After peeping into the cave to make sure Madhulika was still sleeping, I walked to a rock overhanging the river. I removed my necklace with its miniature toolkit, and snapped it open to expose a tiny cutting blade. I prayed for strength, knowing that I was about to close the doors to my past, my people, my support. Then I began working out the wart from my forearm. Lucky for me that they’d not performed the binder operation.
Our journey upriver exhausted Madhulika and induced premature labor. I used every bit of knowledge my implant held to try and save her. I may have succeeded in a normal pregnancy, but she was carrying twins. As she tried to smile at the feeble cries of her newborn daughters, I stroked her hand.
“You will improve,” I consoled her. “You have to bring up your daughters.”
Our interactions on our long walk upriver had been gentle and companionable. We had splashed our faces using water from the stream. Sometimes, I would notice a strawberry shrub and pluck the fruit, and Madhulika gathered it in a fold of her uttariya. Or she would spot a gourd growing on a creeper, and I would split it open with a sharp stone so that we could share the sweet, juicy pulp. We had not discussed our contrasting credos — I assumed we would have enough time later.
Now she was dying.
“Bring up my daughters, sister Vaidehi,” she whispered.
“I don’t know your way of thinking,” I said. “My world was different.”
“Do whatever seems right, sister.” Her life ebbed out.
In the initial days, I was often tired as I adjusted to the sudden role of nurturing the girls. A secluded cave formed our base. Using implant triggers, I induced my breasts to produce milk. Luckily, the forests abounded with fruit trees and berry shrubs. Chores filled my days — collecting water, finding fruits, cleaning the girls, feeding them. Yet as life acquired a rhythm, I found time to soak up the forest’s poetry, its flowers and animals and the sunlight–dappled wings of butterflies. Fire kept away beasts at night; I sometimes stayed up late, enjoying the texture of the night with the owls screeching, the soft descent of dew, the scent of the parijata that bloomed all night and carpeted the grass at dawn.
Sometimes, I looked at the moon and thought of Ambapur.
Years passed.
I often missed Madhulika. She held a key to a view that would have complimented and enriched mine, and now I had no way of learning it. I wondered which value to bring up her daughters with — mine, or what I knew of hers, or the values typically inculcated in women in this era.
I finally chose a mishmash, something not warped by politics and power games. My memories and imagined extensions emerged as lullabies sung to the girls. Over time, the isolated episodes formed a rich tapestry, till one day I realized I could well be a bard singing a Sitayana, not an Ambapur version, nor, indeed, a Navabharata version, but one where Sita was a fun–loving person, even naughty at times, and where she shared a playful and rich relationship with her husband.
The girls thought I was their mother; it was simpler that way. When they were old enough to travel, I led them by hand from village to village. I talked to village women about life and its problems, and enacted fragments of what could have been Sita’s story.
In one village my daughters, now twelve, chattered about twin boys they had met. “Their mother tells stories like yours.”
I felt a flutter inside me. “What are their names?”
“Luv,” said one girl.
“Kush,” said the other.
I could not speak for a few moments. That Sita really existed, that she had twin sons… Emotion clogged me, thick, heavy, and I tried to force myself into thinking rationally. Sita was not a single historical truth, I told myself, though I had no way of confirming this theory of the construction of mythology. This woman storyteller could well be an agent of Ambapur or Navabharata.
Should I meet her? No, I thought, let me move away and continue my Sitayana. The world allowed hundreds of versions.
I busied myself all day, but that night, with no distraction possible, I found myself recalling Seniormost’s sad look during our last conversation. What had she thought when she lost contact with me? Did she think me dead? Or had she hoped I’d survived and assumed that, untrained though I was, I’d do what I could?
My gaze shifted to the moon. What remains fixed across time and space? What survives, what matters? Nothing, really. Yet one does what one should.
Forgive me if I succeed, Seniormost, I whispered. Forgive me if I fail.
Another new village, another day. We walk to the well, my girls and I, and women balancing water pitchers on their hips ask us, “Where are you from? Who are you?”
“I tell stories,” I say. “Would you trade lentil soup for entertainment?”
They nod.
By evening, women and children gather around the village center, where I wait for them with my daughters; some youths stand warily at a distance.
This is my life now, offering women stories that intrigue and stretch their world vision, yet fit within it. Listeners may wonder: did the story resonate because of its courage, hope, conflicts overcome? Should the mother–in–law have been meaner, the husband more righteous, the wife more chaste? Should the women in the story have laughed more, taken things more lightly? Could a woman rebel as the story claimed? Should she? Why not? Why?
“Once,” my story usually starts, “in a land not far from here, a king found an infant in a furrow, and he named her Sita.”
At this point, I pause to look at my audience.
I sometimes consider myself a vendor of silk to tapestry weavers. Listeners choose which threads they wish to weave into their own stories. They may chant them to insomniac children, use them to inspire or scold. Fragments of my tales will meander down generations. Of the tales sung by multitude of bards, which would live on to form the world?
My true story remains unsaid. I cannot speak of Ambapur or Navabharata, nor mention Seniormost, who may never exist in the new reality. I cannot tell my daughters about their real mother. Those would be anachronisms, threatening the fragile fabric that worlds rest on. Yet memories are slippery, and stories strung with their fragments more so, and I dread that when I am old, I will jumble up the past and the future with the present, sounding demented when I am being most truthful.
Then a voice usually pipes up, pulling me back to the reality I am creating.
“We have heard some versions of the Sita story before,” it says. “Tell us yours.”
And so I tell the story I think will fit.