Photographer’s Note: A sallow moon sucks on a jalebi. Someone gently ran a hand along the back of my crimson head in the dead of night. I only caught a fleeting glimpse of their bluish tongue—
now my left earlobe feels damp in my sleep. Just the other day, standing at the edge of the village’s palm-lined pond, my legs trembled. Long ago, in childhood, a giant Brahmadaitya’s winnow-like ears fanned such a wind that I was stricken with fever. As she pressed wet cloths to my forehead, my mother said, “It’s nothing—just your imagination.” Mother didn’t know science, but I do now.
And yet, why does my forehead still feel damp when I stand by the pond’s edge? The water from the wet cloth trickles past my ears and floods my chest. Mother has grown strong now, hardened. She manages the household with no worries, feeding and clothing us twice a day. Working herself to the bone tending the fields, the cattle, the children—her body and heart both worn down. Even now, she alone heaves down the big pot of boiled paddy from the large hearth in the courtyard. The coldest night on earth has descended upon my body. All that I have earned, all my faith—I’ve abandoned it to the waters of the Muriganga. That old banyan tree on the unpaid school’s field, turned to stone, doesn’t even sway in the wind. The other day I saw it—its eyelids too seemed moist somehow. We shall go nowhere any more. We’ll just sit here, inert, unmoving. And one day, when all is quiet, Bhagirath, bring forth a stream of pure water from deep within the earth, and sprinkle it upon my head.
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