Page 59 of The Legend of Meneka
“Because I know it is futile,” Kaushika says, adamant. “You yourself said he won’t allow me to dictate who resides within swarga. Besides, I left my kingdom because I could see what damage his reign is doing. The prayers unanswered. The very circle of birth and rebirth broken. Indra allows only the pious into his home, but he determines who is pious. In a world that is changing …” His eyes harden, and he shakes his head.
“If Indra learns of this meadow—” I protest.
“He will not know. Very few people are aware of it. The sages know. They sensed the magic I was doing in the many years it took to create it. Anirudh and Romasha were told of it too, but they are loyal to me.” Kaushika comes closer to me. “You are the only other person I’ve trusted with this.”
I feel Amaravati’s tether inside me, alive and golden. “Why?” I whisper. “We do not even know each other fully yet.”
“I want you to join me,” he replies. “I want you by my side. I cannot do that without trusting you.”
I shake my head. His reaction does not surprise me, but Kaushika thinks he has the element of surprise. He does not know the lord is already preparing for battle.
“Indra will destroy you,” I say. “I can’t watch that happen.”
“He will destroy me easier if you are not with me.”
“And what of the halahala?” I ask desperately. “I still don’t believe that was Indra.”
“Meneka,” he says, seizing my shoulders, “I cannot do this without you.”
I hold his gaze, panic in my own. “You were going to before.”
“Yes. But now …” His expression wavers, and a shudder passes through him. He grips my waist and leans in, and his mouth brushes over my lips. He doesn’t kiss me. Simply closes his eyes and leans his forehead on mine. His breath feels like a prayer.
“I fear I will forget my way without you,” he whispers. “I did once, and I am atoning for my sins every day. Tapasya gives me power, Meneka, but when I exhaust every bit of it, I still have power because of love. You reminded me of it, and you continue to remind me simply because of who you are. And I need the power desperately. To absolve myself of my greatest shame.” He lets go of me and approaches the stone obelisk hidden in the trees.
I watch him curiously, not understanding. Kaushika brushes the low-lying branches off the obelisk. His eyes grow sad.
“Everything is tied to Indra,” he says quietly. “My past, my vows. Even my mistakes.”
He opens his mouth and sings a soft and melodious song. It is a melody of repentance. A lament, a eulogy, a dirge. It is only a few syllables, but it glimmers around the obelisk like a living thing, and stone begins to move, cascading into shape.
“You asked me once how I knew Queen Tara was seduced by an apsara,” he says. “An apsara was sent to seduce me. I was deep in meditation, consecrating the meadow. The portal was open when she arrived in front of me and began to dance. The power she wielded frightened and angered me, and I—I turned the weight of my magic onto her in self-defense. My curse took hold before I could stop it. Anirudh has taught you the way mantras work. Once they are unleashed, they cannot be altered. The best I could do was lay a condition on what I did, that she remain in this form until she is released by a purehearted sage.”
I remain immobile. His words and my own realization come to me as if from a distance, separated by an ocean of horror. I know what he is saying. I understand what is occurring. Still, I cannot accept it. I wish it to be untrue. For him to take back his words, his actions, and for me never to have learned this. I want him to stop speaking, but it is clear that after all the admissions and our night together, he wishes to keep no more secrets from me. His voice grows quieter, sadder.
“I have tried so many times,” Kaushika says. “That very day you and I met in the forest by the hermitage, I was returning from yet another unsuccessful attempt at freeing this woman. Yet I will never be able to help her becauseIam not purehearted. It is why I was so angry that day, my own failure staring at me despite my tapasya. This is why I must deal with Indra first. Until I have fulfilled my vow to King Satyavrat, until I have balanced the karma that binds me so strongly, I can never know purity. And she will remain trapped.”
The mantra seeps into the stone. Rock shifts, no longer in an arbitrary obelisk shape but resembling a dancer, her face terrified, arms raised in defense over her head, stone tears glistening in her eyes. Nanda, who taught me some of my earliest dance forms. Nanda, who could sing like a nightingale. Nanda, who was rowdy for an apsara, her jokes always slightly irreverent, her smile always a bit wicked, and who could make me laugh even while giving me the most arduous exercises to do.
I cannot take it. It is too much. The fight with Rambha, the pleasure I felt with Kaushika, the meadow and his heaven, and this pond where my terror and his danger bore witness to our lovemaking—they break my stunned moment of numbness. A horrified cry falls from me and I stagger forward to the statue, tears rushing down my face.
“No, no, no,” I whisper. “What did you do? What did youdo?” My hand touches Nanda’s stone one. I turn around to face him,uncaring of the danger I am in. “Where are the others? Where are Sundari and Magadhi? Did you curse them too, Kaushika? Where are my sisters?”
He looks bewildered for a long moment, his brow creasing. “Your sisters?” he chokes out. “No, it cannot be. That must mean you are—”
He cuts himself off.
His eyes widen in pain and denial and understanding.
“It is not possible,” he whispers, as if he is speaking to himself. “I warded the forest after Indra sent his gandharvas, knowing he would try again, but I shielded myself from apsaras after I encounteredher. I did not think Indra would dare send another one, not with her missing. And you … you can do tapasvin magic like a yogi. No immortal is capable of it. I couldn’t have been this wrong. It’s not possible.”
“Indraallowedme that power,” I lash out. “Indra did it because I was sent—I am here—you may not have believed it, but I am anapsara, Kaushika! I always have been!”
I hurl out these last words, too upset to contain my shock and anger to soften them. Kaushika stares at me, his face caught in the horror of my confession, shaded by the vulnerability of his own admission about Nanda—and it isthisexpression which abruptly washes out my own rage, in how this moment between us has twisted.
Confusion and chaos pummel me, and grief weeps within me. This is not how I meant to tell him. I wanted to be tactful, show him that it doesn’t matter anymore why I came here in the first place. My reasons changed because of him, and I want to tell him that he is my antithesis and my mirror, the destruction to my maya and the completion to it as well. My anger leaches out of me along with my horror, and all I feel in this moment is a deep sadness, for the sheer waste of what has occurred in his pride and my confusion. My hand touches Nanda’s face, and my heart breaks into a million pieces because sheshows me, in her smooth stone and stillness, just how wretched this mission has been from the start, and how everything has led to this moment of truth and collapse.
My voice is a croak as I stare at Kaushika. “Will you turn me into stone now too?” I ask.
