And She Kissed a God

6. Gift

Seated on the divan, I drank another cup of coffee that Priya offered me. Throughout my life, I sat in the most boring meetings as an HR. I listened to people drag issues further than required. But with Priya, I was at my highest level of patience, ready to understand the minute details about my mysterious girlfriend.

Priya said, "One thing people wrongly ask about Ms Samidha is who she is. I think a proper question will be what she is."

"Before I carry on, what is your knowledge of our mythology?"

"Hindu mythology? Too many gods. Too much faith."

Priya chuckled. "A nonbeliever, I see."

I shrugged.

"Well, I will try to be clearer." She juggled in her chair and put one leg above the other. "There are many rumours about her birth. But Lucien wrote about her true self. She was a gift of God, given to a couple to save hundreds of lives."

"The world had changed after the Kurukshetra war had ended. Chaos danced in the streets. A village by the bank of Brahmaputra wasn't an exception."

"If I may," I interrupted, "When you meant war, you meant the war that Pandavas and Kauravas fought against each other."

Priya nodded.

I could hear the sirens going off in my head. They were indications that I was out of my expertise. Yet, I welcomed that feeling.

"So in that village," she continued, "People were going through tough times. The crops were dead, people were starving, and the bandits were attacking, stealing the food and wealth. The village head was in a conundrum. He couldn't approach the kings who were returning from the war with the ill-fate of a tiny village. He turned to the last resort, God. He called upon the entire village for a fire ritual to the God Shiva. They had gathered, offering food and everything they had left."

"That's a foolish move," I said.

"They were hopeless."

An eye-blink later, she continued, "The ritual went on for days. The villagers had given up hope. Slowly, they stopped attending the ritual. They believed that God had given up on them too. But the village head and his pregnant wife hadn't stopped. They continued the ritual every day from sunrise to sunset."

"The priests conducting the ritual had thought that he would die. However, on the sixteenth night, an unbelievable thing happened. Right before the couple was retreating to bed, tired and frail; they heard a voice from the sky. Clouds gathered above their house, blue and thundering."

"Did the god come down to them?" I prompted. "Like they show in the movies?"

Priya frowned. "If he did, wouldn't it be written all over the history? Wouldn't a prominent poet write hundreds of verses on his dutiful behaviour towards devotees of a poor village?"

She made me think. I scratched my head and rejoined her narration.

"The couple came out to find a scintillating figure standing in their veranda. It was the god of winds, Vayu deva, holding a baby and smiling at them. And there was a chariot parked behind him ridden by two horses, one white, and one purple."

I slid to the edge of my seat. A part of me was battling to digest this mythical story, but having seen Samidha in action, I brushed those thoughts away.

"The god put the baby into the village head's arms and said, Behold, the girl is your gift from the God Shiva. Raise her well and protect her at all costs, for she will bring good luck into your lives. And she lied still, giggling, an infant destined to change the lives of an entire village."

I sniggered. "So her superpower is that she's lucky."

"It's a lot more than luck, Mr Aditya. She's a beacon of hope to that couple. Yet, they were afraid the baby could suffer under the popularity of 'God's Gift'. So they hid her. They hid her under their name and blood. Call it a miracle or a godly coincidence; the wife gave birth to a girl the same night, letting the village head present both the girls as twins and starting a thousand year secret legacy in his family."

"Have things changed after her arrival?" I asked.

"Oh, things changed." A voice emerged from my back. I turned my head. "There were drastic changes in the village." Samidha stood leaning to the oak door. She still wore the blood-stained shirt and jeans.

Priya jumped onto her heels. "Ms Samidha. I haven't noticed you."

"Why would you? You are so busy narrating my biography. I forget that people around here are obsessed with sharing my story."

Priya stood still. "I apologise."

"It's okay. Can you give me a few minutes with Mr Aditya?" Samidha said, her voice ironic.

"Sure." Priya sprinted outside as if she was walking on eggshells.

"You couldn't wait for me to tell my story; you went poking my grandson's secretary?" Samidha said, turning to me, giving her full eye contact.

Now, in my head, she was more than my girlfriend. She had a history worth enough to study in textbooks. I felt petty before her.

"You weren't saying anything." I justified myself.

She walked closer, and I felt her breath on my chest. "If I say I want you to kiss me right now, will you?"

I tried not to blink, thinking of a reply to her question. I was hesitating. Her eyes were drilling into mine; perhaps hoping I would give an answer she wanted.

"That's what I thought," she whispered. "If you know about me, you will find ways to run away from me. And I don't want—"

I bent forward and caught her lips before she could complete the sentence. She didn't move, letting me kiss. I let my mind go blank, no thoughts, no remorse, and no panic; the hell with life. I wanted her. Our tongues caressed as she moved her hands to my face and plunged her body into me.

Our lips parted after a minute and I said, "That's for disturbing me when I was listening to the most exciting story of my life."

She smiled. "I did you a favour. It only gets boring after that."

"What happens after that?" I sang.

Placing her hands around my neck, she said, "Well, it rained more. People didn't starve, and they were happy. There was one interesting thing though, a few weeks after my birth, the villagers found the bandits dead in the forest. People said it resulted from a power struggle."

I kissed her again. "You are dangerous, Sam."

"You bet I am."

We were about to kiss for the third time when Priya ran inside, saw us standing intimately close, and hung her head down.

"I'm so sorry to disturb you, but both of you need to leave."

There was a paper slip nudged between her fingers.

Samidha freed me and walked to her. "What's that in your hand?"

"It's from one of my secret informants. I have news that your grandson is planning to kill Mr Aditya tonight."

Samidha narrowed her eyes. "I thought you worked for him."

"I work for your family, Ms Samidha," she corrected. "We don't have time for this."

Samidha shook her head. "I don't want to run away. This is my house."

Priya glared back and shouted, "You can't save him from every bullet now, can you?"

Samidha froze, taken aback by those words. 

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