Mother's Love

Mother's Love (2)

2.

The chanting was muted. Once night fell, the sullen murmurs would mount to impassioned, sometimes frenzied, cries. With the right balance of consumption and fervour, the matriarch of the house would be possessed at dusk; her husband, their head by name but in essence, her passive, dutiful courtesan, would take in a similar spirit before midnight.

Summer was lazy, waking up well after midday – it was closer to sunset when the day finally turned humid and soggy after a crisp morning, the drowsy air permeating heat still after the sun was gone. It hadn’t been until the atmosphere grew sticky under daylight, around six o’clock, that the true festivities began.

The idol, on a raised plinth, was transferred judiciously to the garden, where a high, cream-coloured tent enclosed the crowd from the sky, gently darkening. It was sweltering now, even with a thin breeze.

The youngest daughter in-law of the hosting family kept watch on her beloved idol as she performed the rite. It was repetitive and the copper tray (smoothly beaten copper stained with wax, glowing petals, small loads of sweet food and shadows against guttering candlelight) was heavy, but her arms never numbed, in the process of lifting the offering around him, giving him the candle flame to channel blessings into. She stayed absorbed by only that which mattered, in the onslaught of smoke and scent.

The sung praise of her God, low and off-key, twisted many voices with a deep, resonating calm always found when she prayed and felt his reception and response. It led her senses to intuit his will every time. The jarring singing couldn’t pollute her attentiveness, acquiescence, and trust, that she would not be told anything directly, but would come to all understanding that he wanted her to have, subliminally.

Her husband watched from the front of the crowd, merely mouthing the song. The intonations of his parents beside him always was irritating, but the gauzy look of his wife’s pink and gold dress preoccupied him enough that it only bothered his ears, never subverting the depth of his thought, turning him vexed. He was content.

The gold idol beyond her, opaquely reflecting the little bright light inside the tent, stared at everyone. Perhaps it was due to his wife’s closeness, at the forefront of the ceremony, receiving blessings through the flame to pass onto the rest, but the idol seemed most drawn, his smile most benevolent, towards her.

Yet the intricacies of the ceremony threatened to fade, the longer she revolved the tray. The idol’s eyes boring through smoke rising from incense sticks around the plinth were so compelling that they superseded noise. She forgot to sing; she wordlessly longed for her God’s peace, from which he might fragment a crumb and feed her family, allowing all, new unions and old, to grow, move past stiff customs of daily striving for holiness and opt for warmth and togetherness instead. She didn’t know the irony that the one they presumed asked followers for such strict adherence was the one she hoped would absolve the family’s need for it.

And it didn’t strike her, the selfless quality of her wish – she yearned for it, for her own marriage’s sake. But she yearned just as much for her mother-in-law to soften towards her own husband, who’d given up trying for the detached woman’s affection long ago. Their God had blessed them with so much fortune, yet bewilderingly, kept them apart in the intimacy of their home.

The girl was interrupted from her wish, suddenly, pulled from the plinth by her husband, who’d receive blessings first. The gift the God had sluiced into the stifling, burning candle aura claimed her as potently as it infected her husband, raising his hands from above the flame to his head, eyes on her. This instant of blessing her husband said something: her marriage to this harsh man would not turn out wooden and cool, as his parents’ had. This answer passed into her eyes, as she looked to her husband’s and found the austere and distant man close, earnest and reverent, not of their God, who willed her senses to comprehend this, but her.

It fluttered into her nostrils, sandalwood and flowers mixing to affect visions of their favourite God sprawled by a pond, surrounded by masses of spiced wilderness, made sweet by the perfume of women he pleasured, too many to count. These two, stood here while the crowd waited, would eventually experience the same mingle of aroma and flesh, wildly and often as their lord willed it.

It slavered into her mouth, breathed restlessly in her ear, when he thanked her for his favourite sweet on the tray, a bite of which he ate, self-consciously savouring. It skimmed her fingertips, as he, on whim, took the tray, no longer avoiding her hands, and motioned for the crowd to form a line and come forward to receive blessings.

His warmth on her skin remained, never quite felt before now. And God whispered, not with words but sensations, that she and her husband, by their own wills, weren’t distant and destined to grow yet further apart like her surrogate parents. No, they would inch closer, fingertips jostling further until every barrier succumbed. They would share more than soft falls of breath within sleepy darkness. There’d be entire visions, scents, tastes and impressions, whole experiences, together. God said so, here and now, in every subtle and stirring detail.

It would take time to reach that pinnacle. But revelling in her husband’s pride, the girl thought it could take forever, if God willed these two that way, and it wouldn’t matter. As this moment, alone, was pleasure.

But now his eyes widened, meeting his mother as she took her turn at the blessing. She looked unhappy, but he behaved as though he didn’t realise it, wanting to stay with the hazy warmth beside him.

In fact, his mother fumed. Her son had taken the tray from her daughter in-law to give blessings. How could he? He’d not been the one to offer the flame to the God, and yet here he was, showing off false solidarity with his simple girl of a wife, who looked up at him as though he were God himself.

It didn’t matter, she decided as she stepped away and watched the rest. Soon, God would be in her; she’d conduct displeasure at these two, their insult, flouting ceremonial tradition and using this festival to exult their strangely thawing union. They wouldn’t snub her rules, unspoken or otherwise, again.