A cool stroke of wind awoke Kalindi from her meditation. She looked up at the sky. The sun's rays were askew, seemingly concentrated on a point a little while away. She sighed. The river was still flowing as usual. Unable to concentrate, she threw herself into the cool waters. Washing her matted locks, she looked up at the sun again. Why wasn't he smiling down at her today? She felt as though the sun was saying something, nudging her almost. Shrugging the thought away, she sat at the edge of the riverbed, washing away the dust of the sandy beach- a futile task.
Kalindi had resided in the small hut by the river for as long as she could remember. Her earliest memory was that of a sage feeding her payasam. To this day, she wasn't sure if the old man had cooked it for her himself or if he had begged for it in the city somewhere. She had been around ten years of age at that time. She had no memories of her life before that time. The kind, old sage had found her floating inconscious in the river Yamuna and brought her home. He was the one who had named her Kalindi, after the river itself. After his death Kalindi had continued living in the same hut, living a quiet life, but nothing ever had felt natural to her. She had always felt separate from the rest of the world around her, finding solace only in the dark, playful water of the river Yamuna.
The only thing she remembered very clearly before waking up in the sage's arms, was a promise. Someone had told her they loved her. She was supposed to wait for them.
The sage had tried very hard to get her married. Every Sunday, he would line up suitors before her hut. Even though she was grateful for his efforts, Kalindi always found the idea of marriage repulsive and turned down all the expectant young men. Finally, the sage had given up when she had turned twenty. All her friends were now married, and mostly mothers. Any time they visited their homes, they would be sure to pay a visit to their crazy, spinster friend, and Kalindi always made sure to keep heaps of sweets for their children. They would always end up berating her for not marrying, and yet she remained their refuge whenever they needed to vent about their stressed married lives. Even women married into their village saw her as a confidante and often came to sleep off their tempers in her humble abode whenever they fought with their husbands. Kalindi found herself endlessly amused by the ironies that surrounded her, and yet felt an acute emptiness within her heart.
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That day, as she splashed around in the waters of the river absentmindedly, she felt a strange detachment from this ever-flowing stream. Something in her felt like it had snapped. As long as she could remember, Kalindi had been tied to this stream. The people of her village worshipped her as the river Goddess, but hardly anyone had spotted the sadness in its pitch-black waters. It wasn't as though she had stopped getting unwanted propositions from men even as her father had given up. On occasion she had had to physically fend off the especially stubborn suitors, some of them her friends' husbands!
How much longer do I wait, she asked the midday sun again, which had always seemed like a second father to her. Kalindi had always been able to see directly into the sun without blinking or hurting her eyes. While she had mostly used it as a party trick through most of her childhood, as she had grown she had come to ponder upon this unusual talent of hers.
Hearing footsteps, she looked up. Two men stood on the bank of the river, laughing at something unseen. She immediately recognized the taller of the two, and a warm glow of happiness rippled through her heart. It was as if a curtain of fog had just been torn apart. She stood dumbfounded, watching the men unload their royal jewellery and dive happily into the water. How could she have forgotten that face? That beautiful dark face surrounded by those dark blue curls? Now that she had seen it, memories came flooding back to her. The day he was born, his father had carried him across the river; she had been there then. Then, she had been born. Oh, how she remembered now! She looked up once more at the sun, in her mind she saw her old room, in the house of Sun himself, as if in a previous life, her twin brother laughing. Twin? The God of Death! How he used to cry in her arms when their stepmother mistreated them. She remembered how scared they both were of their father. She also remembered her other brother; Manu, the father of mankind! When he had died, she had sent him off, and her brother had received him! How could she have forgotten the aeons of laughter and tears?! And, the boy who played his intoxicating flute at this same riverbank! Oh, how often had she watched from a distance as he frolicked with his friends! To her, now, it seemed like a bare instant ago, when she had seen him dancing on the hoods of the multi-headed serpent!
