Free The Temple Dancer by John Speed Page A

will always be a devadasi! It is a blessing to have you in our house."
Silvia's round face glowed in admiration, but Maya humbly turned aside.
Lucinda tried to hide her puzzlement. So Maya was a temple dancer? What
of it? But she said nothing.
    Soon servants brought in dinner. Before Silvia and Maya they set china
plates: rice, vegetables, dal, and dahi. Then the women waited politely
while Lucinda was served.
    Someone had made an effort to cook Portuguese food in her honor.
Her plate held cabbage boiled to a thick paste, and in a pool of congealing
fat, an unidentifiable sphere of meat, fire-blackened until it looked like an
enormous bolus.
    "I knew you would not want your food half raw, the way men eat it,"
Silvia said.
    "You are very kind."
    All of them stared in silence at the dreadful plate. "Would you like a
fork, sister?" Silvia asked politely.
    "My digestion is unsettled," Lucinda answered. She glanced at the servant, who whisked the plate away, holding it at arm's length as she carried
it from the room.

    The other two women looked relieved. "Perhaps some rice and dahi?
Very soothing, I think." Silvia nodded and one of the servants scurried to
fetch a plate. The white grains floating in the white curds actually looked
rather appetizing, Lucinda thought. She did her best to scoop up the mixture with her fingers, Hindi fashion, since Silvia had not given her a
spoon.
    What a strange collection they were: She and Maya so similar in age
and appearance, so different in background. She and Silvia, like a pair of
mismatched bookends, dressed in Portuguese clothing but talking in
Hindi. It wasn't that Silvia looked uncomfortable in her clothes so much as
she looked lost. She wore the Portuguese dress as one might wear a costume to a fancy ball.
    They talked little until the plates were cleared. When they did at last
begin to chat, Silvia wanted mostly to speak with Maya. Even though
Maya did her best to include Lucinda, somehow the subject always steered
to temples and idols, and gurus and shastris. Lucinda could do little but
listen.
    "But Maya cannot have always been your name," Silvia insisted.
    Maya shook her head. "It was given to me by that hijra."
    The two women shared a scowl. "What was it before?"
    Maya set her face, as one preparing to feel the doctor's knife. "Prabha."
    Silvia sighed and closed her eyes, looking as if someone had placed a
sweetmeat on her tongue. "Do you know this word?" she asked Lucinda.
"It means light; the light that surrounds the head of the Lord. It is one of
the names of the Goddess."
    "Which goddess?" Lucinda asked.
    Silvia looked confused. "There is but one."
    Maya placed her hand on Lucinda's. Lucinda tried to hide her surprise.
So many people had touched her since she left Goa. "That one goddess
has so many forms. Surely you have seen the goddess Lakshmi?" Lucinda
nodded; the goddess of wealth-even some of the Portuguese shopkeepers
kept her idol in a tiny shrine. "Prabha is one of her names."
    "My name was Uma. That name too means light-the light of serenity." Silvia smiled, remembering. Then she sighed and turned to Lucinda.
"I suppose your name means something, too?"
    "Yes," Lucinda answered slowly. "Lucinda too means light."

    Later, there had been an awkward moment when Slipper burst into the
women's room. He staggered and lifted his pudgy hands to the women,
nearly toppling over, as if this were some difficult balancing act. No one
knew what to say, least of all Slipper. "I'll go to sleep now," he slurred at
last, and with that stumbled out of the room. Soon they heard him snoring
outside the door. Though his speaking voice was high as a woman's, his
snores were deep and rasping as an old man's.
    "And he pretends to be a Muslim," Silvia humphed. "They're just the
same. All of them, just the same."
    As the evening went on, Lucinda noticed that Silvia's conversation recalled the way her father discussed money-he would talk for hours, discussing