Why the Hyacinths Are the Way They Are

Prologue: Every night, after the lamps are blown out, the flames begin to walk towards the temple of the Snake Goddess. There, in front of the altar, where the blue-green Goddess stands during the day, the lamps sit in a circle. But that’s just the beginning. As the night grows thicker outside, they exchange gossip, crack jokes and once the Snake Goddess gives them the approving nod after waking up from her slumber, they tell stories. Everyone has to be a storyteller at least once a month. And so far, it hasn’t exactly been a problem, believe me. Once they are outside of the grip of the wick, the flames have much to tell. The Snake Goddess, meanwhile, lays down her seven bejeweled hoods one by one and listens to the stories. Often making a cryptic comment or two. And sometimes, when the stories get too sad, she begins to shake her hair like a woman in frenzy. Pathos is something the Snake Goddess cannot stand. Therefore, she does not cry or shade tears in any way. The flames, however, say that the night she heard the story of Laloba, she raised the index finger of her right hand to wipe off something from her eyes. Whether it was a tear, or just sand, or anything else, no one knows.

Knowing how to make the rosemary smell
like thyme, is not enough. Laloba’s
brother told her. With a touch on her
forehead, which, he thought, would reassure
her. If she really wants to be the kabiyali she
thinks she is, she must learn how to make
pearls from dust inside her spleen. And that, he
said, requires perseverance. Amongst other things.

Not yet ready to give up, Laloba
spent days sorting through heaps of
rubble. Looking for the right kind of dust.
Holding it up against the sun with
her three fingers. Then, once, she had them
all, she swallowed the dust drops. One by
one. Every one of them. Not noticing that
her forehead now bears five glowing blue
spots. Exactly at the places where her
brother’s fingers had touched her
cantaloupe skin. Probably because, she
wasn’t feeling anything there.

For thirteen years, three months and
three days, she made the hyacinth
leaf her bed. Fed on air. And woke
up every morning to throw up spit the
color of deep brown earth and sunlit
scar tissue. Which she would then
use to sculpt rabbits, deer, sparrows and
hedge-hogs. And once she had slipped
on to her hyacinth bed, her brother would
break them all. One by one. “ Too ordinary,”
he would say, with an expert frown.

The morning she spit the pearl
out, her brother held her head, picked up
the pearl stone, and after looking at
it for two whole minutes through
purple-tinted field glass, said, “Sissy
dear, you have yet to learn the art of
madness wild.” It was then that she
smashed the pearl on the rock. Collected
pieces too pink. And wrapped them
up in her rainbow skinned scarf, walking
off towards her hyacinth-shield.

Needless to say, no one saw her ever
again. Nothing much happened to
her brother either. Only the white hyacinth
flowers, in the lake, turned fluorescent
violet. And on full-moon nights, they
bleed red. Routinely. Ritually.
Without fail.

Glossary:
Kabiyali: In Bengali, the word means the female poet.