Free Tikkipala by Sara Banerji Page B

‘Look at the way it twists its body and creases up its face. Look at how itsbody is quivering and shaking like a tree rattled by the wind. Look at how it is allowing the water of tears to run down its face although it is no longer a suckling baby but a large and walking child.’
    But then the subtle ones came forward saying, ‘Our need is very desperate and great. Perhaps, given time, even though it is unnamed, we will be able to train this child into our still and silent ways, until at last it becomes a suitable gift for the Tikki, for never before has she been given a human child and although a Coarseone, I think it is also human.’
    â€˜The subtle ones are saying something good,’ agreed the elders. ‘We will do as they suggest. Have this Coarse child cleansed and prepared. The first thing that is needed is to remove its foul coverings and, after that, the creature must be washed in the juices of our jungle plants.’
    The Coarse child screamed, writhed and clung as the people of the tribe ripped its clothes away. It shrieked sounds like, ‘Mama, Mama’ and ‘Papa, Papa,’ and struck out with its fists when they started scrubbing it. It tried to escape them, ducking and dodging from their grasp. After they had shaved away its hair and eyebrows and smeared its naked body with purifying juices, and bound up its mouth with a weaving of bark and hair so that it could not shout aloud, they tied the creature with a ligament to stop it from running away.
    At first the people thought that the Coarseones would go away quickly, realising that their child was lost forever, but even many days later when the Coarse child was starting to be subdued and the people felt that their taming methods might have some chance of success, still the clamour rose from the Coarseones palace and still they heard the cries of ‘Anwar, Anwar, where are you?’
    When that day and next brought no child, Sangita could not understand it. How could the Lord Ganesh fail to keep his promise? It was as though he was no better than her husband the Raja, and the Lord Rama.
    Day after day Sangita waited, first filled with hope and then, as time passed, worry gradually grew into despair until her prayers to Ganesh went from pleading to anger. ‘I gave you milk and you drank it. You accepted my gift, now fulfil your promise.’ But still no Anwar.
    In the third week, Sangita was suddenly seized with a new and terrible fear. This loss of Anwar was nothing to do with her regretted prayer but she was being punished for the lie she had told.
    She had expected the iron to burn her. It should have done so and, sometimes since, she had feared being punished in some other way. For she had sworn she was innocent, though when Paul had kissed her, a fainting bliss that was as strong as the terror she now felt, but that did not hurt at all, had taken hold of her. All this time later she could still summon up the sensation of his mouth against hers and the way her lips had tingled as though they had just encountered hot chillies and lime juice. And later, when she had been returned to the palace and, in the night, lay under the striving body of her husband, she would purposely summon up the feeling of Paul’s hands against her skin and his mouth on hers. Otherwise she could not have endured the Raja’s physical intrusions. Staring up, past her husband’s body, at the ghekko studded ceiling and the slowly turning fan, her mind transformed the Raja’s body into Paul’s, and his struggling grunts into Paul’s imagined utterances of love. Sangita had even pretended she could feel, against her skin, Paul stroking her with palms hardened by his tennis racquet. Those sharp small calluses that had pressed her shoulders when he kissed her were in the very places where she had expected to be burnt from the red hot iron.
    Being burnt with a hot iron was not painful enough to punish her for the joy she had