Free Tikkipala by Sara Banerji Page A

golden mouth pursed and the trunk curled as though hard material had taken on the softness of elephant flesh. Sangita, suppressing a cry of shock, held the cup as steadily as she could against the statue’s mouth. With a tiny sipping sound like a kitten lapping, Ganesh started drinking. Sangita laughed aloud as the milk began to vanish into the solid image because now she knew her boy was coming back.
    â€˜Darling god,’ she said, when the final drop was gone, ‘Thank you. Oh, thank you.’ And she thought that Ganesh bent his head the smallest bit, as though saying ‘Thank you,’ too.
    She rose at last, her fear gone because she knew that Ganesh was bringing Anwar back to her.
    Even when an hour turned into two, then into three, and there was no sign of her child, Sangita did not feel afraid like everybody else, because Ganesh had taken her milk and made her a promise.
    All that evening and late into the night, the palace servants, people from the village and the Raja himself searched the woods and jungles, spreading out through the trees, scrambling over rocks and crawling among bushes, hunting for the smallest sign of the missing child while Sangita knelt before Ganesh, burning ever more agarbati sticks and imploring him to hurry and fulfil his promise.
    Throughout the next day and night, the people searched, but Anwar was not found. Sangita waited, increasingly worried because her child had had no food, and not eating anything herself because how can a mother eat when her child goes hungry?
    By next evening, too, he had not returned.
    â€˜Hurry, hurry,’ Sangita shouted to Ganesh. ‘He must be ravenous by now. Don’t wait like this.’
    It was a week later that the woman who had been sent to find an offering for the Tikki returned to the tribe. She was scratched, bleeding and gasping because she had spent many hours creeping and clinging in the dark, and she was nauseated because of the vile thing she had clutched to her breast. There had been a dozen times when she had nearly dropped it and a dozen other times when she had nearly lost her footing and plunged a thousand feet through the dark.
    At first the people were hopeful, seeing that she had brought something that she thought would be suitable for the Tikki, but when the people saw the gift, they began to moan with horror and shrink away.
    â€˜This is a Coarseones’ child,’ they cried and put their hands across their eyes because they could not bear to look at it. They held their hands across their nose because of the loathsome smell of it.
    Now the people understood why the Coarseones had been making such a commotion. This must be the child they had lost, though it surprised the people that the Coarseone showed so much grief. ‘For these Coarseones are not like us,’ they said to each other. ‘They do not love their children like we do.’ People who allowed children to shout and run and twist their bodies, as the Coarseones’ sons had done, could not possible be caring parents,’ reasoned the people of the tribe. Even the adult Coarseones behaved like babies, running and screaming and wounding the darkness of the night with swinging lamps. Their own children had died, but the tribe’s mothers kept their weeping silent and their bodies still.
    â€˜I thought it might be possible to purify it,’ said the woman who had brought the child.
    â€˜But it has had no naming ceremony,’ said an elder. ‘We cannot give a nameless sacrifice to the Tikki.’
    Another suggested, ‘Let us do this ceremony now.’ But as soon as he said it, he knew it was not possible for this child was already too old.
    â€˜Perhaps the Tikki will not object to the child being unnamed,’ the elders said. ‘For, without this creature, what else have we got to offer her?’
    But the elders continued to be troubled. ‘How can a Coarseone ever be purified?’ they cried.