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God's Child
Miyako I.
When the sun rose to its highest, she dried the cakes of fresh cow dung she formed by hand on the crumbly ground parched by the scorching heat of May, the hottest month in North India. That was all she did, as far as she could remember, since she was thrown out of their house to live in the cowshed to fend for herself. Amrita was just five.
When the river of Ganges flooded two years ago, her father, a cotton farmer, lost most of his field and suffered a great loss—her mother drowned by the riverbank while offering a prayer to the river goddess, Ganga. It was Amrita's third birthday when the tragedy happened. Everyone in the village lost either a friend or a relative. They all mourned and blamed her. She was called "malak-ul-maut", an angel of death.
"You must abandon the child, or I shall kill her," ordered the angry saddu, the priest of the village temple for Shiva. He brandished a sharp trishul threatening Amrita.
Her father, a devout Hindu and loving parent, asked, "Can you tell me how to abandon a child?" She was his father's only daughter, and he adored her.
"She must suffer to atone the evil deeds of her bad karma."
"Is God merciful?" her father asked in tears. He could not do anything but follow the sacred whim of the priest, who showed him his daughter's unlucky astrological chart.
Two years later, Amrita had suffered a lot. She could not even play with her brothers. To survive, she sold dry dung used in the village as fuel for dirty, open stoves. She could not understand why she was not allowed to touch her father's feet, a child's gesture of respect to an elder. Even to play her siblings' toys, she was forbidden. The hornless white cow was her only friend, and the cowshed, the only world she knew. She had enough. After drying and selling the grassy cakes, she bought a garland of fragrant flowers she put around the neck of the cow after bathing its head with honey, rose water, and ghee. She burnt sticks of incense and hummed her chants. Decided to traverse the vast arid land browned by the drought and determined to find a place where she could start a new life, she packed up and left the cowshed without telling anyone.
For months, she had walked barefoot, tiptoeing to avoid hot stones and sharp rocks. She picked blossoms of marigold along the roadside when hungry. Riding on the floating leaves of overgrown lotus, she hand-paddled the shallow, drying lake. She ate their blooms until she had a good fill. Crisscrossing the mountains, she took shelter under the leafless bushes. She plucked their edible buds that failed to open.
One dusty afternoon, she reached the village severely hit by the heat wave. Heads raised up the sky, the people stood in the middle of the barren road, stretching their arms and begging for mercy and rain. They had not seen even a drizzle for almost a year. Their crops were dying, and the village well would lose its moist soon. Sitting under the bodhi tree resting and watching the devotees in pious hysteria, Amrita was spotted by the saddu, who led the puja ritual for Indra, the god of rain. Her skin glowed like the saffron of marigold. He approached her. Shaking in fear, she could not say a thing but breathe heavily. She exhaled the scent of lotus. He asked who she was. Copiously sweating, she just uncurled her lips in nonchalance. Her sweat smelled like a potpourri of perfumes.
The priest, at once, dropped on his knees to touch her feet and said, "My devi, you have arrived." He alerted his followers. "The child of Vishnu is finally here!" They ran towards Amrita singing a devotional bhajan. The sky darkened and roared. After a silvery bolt, it drizzled and then rained. It was the first pour of monsoon.
