Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana (16 page)

Basra had always been nimble-witted, able to sort through her options within seconds between what she
had
to accept about reality and what she could push into place to suit her needs. Even before Mandodari -”Call me Mandy!”—had fully downloaded her mortal frame, Basra had (a) recognized that her guest really was a supernatural entity, (b) had the potential to provide
viewer-cocaine for at least a couple of weeks and (c) would undoubtedly be a monumental pain in the rectum for the duration. In the short term, the house was big enough to provide space for the goats. Lal and Renu’s silence could be bought at the rate of one gold bangle per day. The maid would be a problem and would have to be sent away. The drivers were naturally laconic and wouldn’t talk
about anything they encountered in the course of their work.

In the long term? Well. She’d have to wait and see.

An hour later Basra and her guest were sitting in the patio.

“All right,” said the professional TV anchor. “Let’s get started on why you’re here, what it means for our viewers and what it means for our country.”

Mandy said, “What is means for
world.
Silly.”

The divine
was facing out towards the hedge that screened the care fully tended lawn from external views. The seasoned journalist, veteran of four general elections, a woman in her early forties who had been called everything from “hard-boiled
idealist” to “crypto-fascist” faced towards the glass-fronted sliding doors behind her guest. She could see her own reflection: short hair, tawny eyes and the type
of smooth, wrinkle-free skin that signalled good health and an even temper. She was attractive in a friendly, street-wise way and her viewers trusted her because she looked like one of them. From where she sat, she could enjoy the play of sunlight falling through the slats of the wooden trellis overhead and a back-view of the crimson silk kimono she had given the demoness to wear.

Though at
first glance Mandy could pass for human, at second glance it was impossible not to want to recoil away from her. It wasn’t just that her dimensions were several centimetres larger than life-size. It was also the peculiar hue of the skin: pearly white—not blue, not brown, not even green—but nacreous, echoing the sea, not the land. The hair was black but with fiery streaks that sizzled on and off unexpectedly.

The eyes weren’t merely dark, but impenetrably so, with no discernible pupils. The mouth was lush and warm and curved upwards. But when she smiled—which was often—her teeth were all identical, very white and a tad larger than was comfortable. Behind them flickered a long black tongue.

So she was beautiful, yes. In a repellent way.

She was talking animatedly, holding the gorgeous silk kimono
around her full, extravagant body. “Until two months before,” she said, referring to mortal time, “I am invisible to mortal world. I am waking up and sleeping and waking and sleeping, but there is nothing for me to do. Nothing for me to
be.”
She tried to explain what it was like to live outside the four dimensions of the mortal sphere. “We is not die. So there is not wear, not tear. Not today,
not tomorrow.”

Then suddenly, the change began. Variations appeared in the routine pleasures and events around the Iron Palace. “My peacock is dancing for me, for instance: he is not do it since
the time of my marriage. Which is many mortal centuries past. It is wonderful that I am see him. Maybe you is too simple to understand? You must not try.” Mandy’s speech was fluent but contained anomalies
of grammar and syntax. Basra could not tell whether her own grasp of Sanskrit was too weak to make sense of her guest’s speech or whether the divine’s knowledge of mortal language was too outdated.

The thing Mandy most wanted to talk about was the reason she had appeared in the physical dimension. “You is not know it, I am sure?” she asked Basra, who shook her head politely, knowing it was
expected of her. “I am looking, looking, looking for long times, before I did work it out. It is the high court in your country. There is some case about land. About property. A temple.”

While trying to tease out meanings from the mass of information available in the physical world she had accessed the internet. The one really significant technological breakthrough that had occurred since the
early days, she said, was the proliferation of electronic media. “I am not idea how it is works,” she confessed, “but it is works. My husband is have fast connection. So I am return home to palace, I am go online and I am Google my name. And by clicking, clicking, clicking, I am begin to understand what is change, what is happen in some very near months that is make different for every of us. Not
just Them—” she meant the royal couple whose names were synonymous with the epic to which she was so intimately connected “—but even me also, even my husband also and all mortals also.” She stopped. “What is problem? You is frown.”

“Oh!” said Basra as if caught by surprise, though this was one of her standard ploys for adding variety to an interview, the carefully positioned frown. “I was just
wondering, you know— you’ve mentioned your husband several times already—and the fact is, I mean, I hope you’ll excuse me if what I ask seems impertinent or…or…you know,
rude
—”

“You is mean his so-called
death?”
cut in Mandy. She held both her hands up with her fingers curled over, making the sign for air-quotes. Apparently she had spent more than enough of her spare time watching mortal television.
“Pooh! I am just
told
to you: we is not die. It is like you mortals enjoy playing battles—you is call them sports?—you know, like kicking head made of cow-leather from one side of battlefield to the other, for example—”

According to her, engagements between divines took a form similar to football, but with less good will. “My husband is never agree to lose. He is always great warrior, he is
always great genius. There is not ever doubt he will win.” The features of the beautiful face knotted together in a fierce sneer. “So of course he is not die.”

“What are you saying?” said Basra, leaning forward with her eyes all agog. She was so practised at feigning emotions in order to get her subjects to talk that she could do it now without even noticing that she was putting it on. It was
a shame that all this amazing raw footage was being lost in a private conversation. She was recording it, discreetly of course, on her DingleByte, so that she’d have evidence to take to her CEO. But an audio transcript would have no news value. Besides which, she was starting to worry that Mandy’s version of events was too far removed from the popular one. “Are you telling me that the battle—the
one that’s been the high point of every version of the epic since it was first written up—that battle was
rigged?”

“I am say it is
not happen at all.
You tell me: how else it can be for my immortal warrior to lose? And that too, when his enemy is a so-small hero king, so short, so thin and having only one head? Huh! It is a lie, a sham, a nonsense. That is why I am here. Your courts is talking
all the time about truth? Well! There is many sides to truth. Your courts is want see hero king’s birthplace? Is want to put mortal flag on mortal plot of land? Well!
One plot is lead to other plot. So I am come. To tell my story. To change the plot. At last.”

“But why now?” asked Basra. “Why you? Why here?”

“Because,” said Mandy with a smirk, “this is age of womanses free dom. This is
age when hidden womans is coming out from cupboard of past. When mistress is become master. When wrong is become right.” She narrowed her eyes. “I am have big wrong is done on me. Whole world is laugh on me. But who is take my side? When is anyone hear my pain? No-one. Never. Until now. World is change. And talk-shows is there. Truthshows is there. Everyone is listening all the time to everything.
Even to me.”

Basra’s mind was ticking, ticking, ticking as she listened to the divine ramble on.

Eventually, she claimed she needed a break from the information over load. She showed Mandy the room in which the goats were tethered and a few rudiments of using the facilities of a modern home. Then she left for work.

A hurried conference was called in the inner sanctum of ENDOTV. Basra’s
CEO was a grizzled power-house of a man called Ved Mentor, who had been in the news business for over forty years. He and the only other senior news anchor Ornob Gosh listened in silence to what Basra told them. Their expressions morphed from mild amusement, to disbelief and finally disquiet. By the time they were willing to listen to the recorded conversation, a silence had fallen over the
room.

Mentor was standing with his back to the other two, his hands on his hips, facing towards the picture window that showed him the urban sprawl of South Delhi. The jumble of roof-tops, satellite dishes and trees welled out as far as the eye could see. Several minutes ticked by. He said nothing. Then: “How long can you stall her?”

“A couple of days,” said Basra. “A week at most. I don’t
really know.”

Ornob, who was Basra’s contemporary in age as well as ambition and fervour, said, “It’s interesting how she locates the source of the ‘change’, as she calls it, to the birthplace issue.” He glanced up at the other two. “I mean, for us here in the so-called ‘mortal dimension’, it’s been about land and settlements, communal riots and cynical politicians. Meanwhile?” he shook his
head and raised his hands towards the ceiling. “Up there in the mythos?
An entire pantheon stirs to life!”
He ghosted a chuckle. “I don’t know about the two of you but I’ve…never had faith. In anything. Not gods, not devils, not four-leaved clovers. Along comes a court judgement and that’s it! The entire game changes! Suddenly, we’re battling the demon hordes with our little match-stick ideals.”

Mentor raised his shoulders high and spread his palms wide. He was a tall man, clean-shaven, with a square jaw and a quirk of hair that fell over his forehead. “Ornob—I disagree: you
did
believe in something. You believed in the courts and the rule of law. What we have here is the result of the courts ruling on something that had always remained outside their purview: the smoke and mirrors of
the realm of faith. For those who are true believers, every character in a mythology is as real and as physical as this desk, this carpet, this chair. They have no need of land records or certificates to know where their hero was born or the exact spot upon which he died. In fact, NOT having a precise spot makes it possible to locate him everywhere: on earth as well as within their own hearts.

“But once the courts mark one particular spot purporting to be a real birthplace, with a real X on a real map of a real city, ah! That changes everything. The stuff of pure faith is dragged down into the muck of who-said-this and I-said-that.” He raised his hands then plunged them down. “What was once mystical and
sublime tumbles into the lies and muck of human affairs. And we are left to argue
about how many demons can dance on the head of a journalist.”

He hauled upon the belt of his pants, a familiar mannerism of his. “Basra, for better or worse, that journalist is you. We’ll air the broad cast, but I suggest you take a week to prepare for it. There’s a Supreme Court decision coming up that could overturn the high court’s ruling. The fate of the Universe may depend on what you
can get your demon lady to say.”

“At my marriage,” said Mandodari, looking straight into the cameras as she spoke, “the path to the wedding platform is lit with one hundred living candles. It is a glory sight: one hundred slaves, chained inside iron cages, and set on fire. They is so happy to die for us. This is how they celebrate. This is how they show we are strong.

“Centuries is
pass since that time. Nobody is look in my direction. But here I am now.” The full red lips curved up in a feral smile. “My time is come,” she said, with no attempt at false humility, as she turned both her hands towards her full body. Though tightly encased within an outfit in green and orange cheetah-spot velour with fluorescent blue or gandie flounces at the elbows and knees, there were no unsightly
bulges. “I am tell the true story of the war against my people.”

Basra Dott drew in a breath, reminding herself to pace her questions carefully. “So…Mandy,” said the famous television anchor, “ever since you made your presence known to me— for which I must tell you, I am extremely flattered—the one question that’s been at the top of my mind is, Why now? You’ve had literally centuries in which
to make yourself known to the world of…of…”

“Mortals,” said the divine, nodding her head as if encouraging a child.

“…mortals,” repeated Basra, allowing herself a little smile which managed convey a sense of amazement alongside a dose of judicious scepticism. “So…why today? Why now? Has something
changed?”

Mandy blinked and flexed her shoulders. “I am want to set record straight. For
instance: my husband is not have ten heads. Why is mortals believe such kind of nonsense? Five is maximum. And it is must be odd number only: one main head and then one or two on sides. Ten heads is means five this side, five that side and nothing in middle! It is total-foolish. But to get back to wedding night…”

“We’ll do that, Mandy, we’ll do that,” said Basra, “but first our viewers need
to know what brought you here, to the mortal dimension—”

“I is tell you that already. It is too boring for me,” said the divine. “Wedding night is much more thrill. For example, I am want to show how nonsense it is, this claim that my husband is lose interest in me because of Other Woman. He cannot! It is all lies of their side. In fact, there is not ever any Other Woman—”

“Who?” interjected
Basra.

“You know it is who,” said Mandy, her forehead starting to bunch together in a frown. “I am not insult my mouth by speak her rubbish name.” Throwing her head back, she howled in a high falsetto,
“Oh she whose perfumed face rivals the full-moon! She who makes the stars tremble with desire!”
For an instant, there was a disturbing flicker in the region of the guest’s throat, as of a second
mouth gaping open with a curved and toothy beak poking out. “After all, you tell me: why is I am here? And not
she?”