But even Grandmother could not control the stars. It was up to the priest to read them.
I followed Grandmother to the puja room, where the priest would pray for guidance in reading my sister’s Janam Kundli. I sat down cross-legged with Avani on fresh jute mats. Father must have bought them that morning. I looked across the room at him. He was sitting near the priest in front of our mandir, the wooden temple that housed the images of our gods. I tried to catch his gaze, but even though he was looking at me, he was somewhere else. Next to him, the priest was speaking with our new milk nurse about my sister and how she had come into the world. It was the first time I had seen the baby properly. She was a pretty baby, and I could see at once her resemblance to Mother. She had the same small nose, thick black hair, and a pair of dimples on either side of her cheeks. The midwife had wrapped her in a swath of yellow cloth. I felt a heaviness in my chest because I wanted Mother to be the one cradling her.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Avani said. “Coloring like your grandmother, but darker eyes.”
“I think she looks like Mother,” I said, to be defiant.
The priest took his place in the center of the room and we waited in silence while he prepared the puja. A puja is a prayer, the same as you might make in any church. To perform the ceremony you need incense, flowers, ghee, and a round bowl for making a small fire. If you want it to be elaborate, you can add painted oil lamps and large brass bells. With the exception of the priest and the fire, this puja for my sister’s Janam Kundli was not so different from what my family did every morning, when—after our bath—we entered our puja room to stand before images of our gods. I’ve learned over the years that Catholics and Hindus have similar rituals: Catholics light a candle before statues of their saints and repeat a mantra they call Hail Mary; Hindus light a stick of incense and repeat mantras to the gods.
A puja can be long and intense, or it can be quite simple and short. That afternoon it was long, and since eating is prohibited until the ceremony is finished, it seemed to go on forever. After the priest finally stopped chanting, he turned to me. “Have you seen your mother’s body?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“The child should see her mother before the body is taken away,” he announced. “When is the cremation?”
Since Father couldn’t respond, it was Grandmother who told him.
“Tomorrow. My son will go today to make the necessary arrangements.”
We followed Grandmother into the spare room. Mother was laid out in a new yellow sari, her litter illuminated by a ring of oil lamps. Women from the village had scattered marigolds at her feet, and when the priest kneeled above her, he added roses. Then he spread sandalwood paste across her forehead and intoned another mantra. I glanced up at Father, but his eyes were focused on some distant point, like a sailor who’s seen the ocean for so long that he’s lost all hope of spotting land.
The priest handed me an orange carnation. It was my turn to lay a flower on Mother. I approached the litter as slowly as I could. She looked cold and lonely. In life, I had rarely seen Mother sleeping. She had always been in motion; if her feet weren’t moving, then her arms were moving—as well as her lips, since she loved to sing. I laid the flower in her hands, then stood there and waited for her to move. It was childish, but I believed that if I concentrated hard enough, Brahma would take pity on me and bring Mother back to life. But no such thing happened, and I wondered yet again what I had done to so offend the gods that they would take my mother away.
We moved into the front room to eat rice and lentils, then the priest finished interpreting my sister’s Janam Kundli, which was favorable.
“Tell me,” he said as he was about to leave. It was only Grandmother and me at the door. “What arrangements has your son made for this girl?” He looked down at me, and I immediately looked away, so he wouldn’t think I was shameless.
“Now that there’s two of them, there’s no money for a dowry fortune,” Grandmother said, “if that’s what you mean.”
“She’s already eight, is that right?”
“Nine,” Grandmother corrected.
“And very pretty. But if there’s no money for a dowry—”
“We are dedicating her to the temple,” Grandmother said. “She will become a devadasi.”
At the time, I had no idea what a devadasi was, except that it meant “god’s servant.” Now, of course, I can understand the horror on the priest’s face when she said this, since a devadasi is really no different from a prostitute. Many years later, I came across an English translation of a poem written in the fifteenth century about devadasis, “sacred servants of god”:
I’m not like the others. You may enter my house.
But only if you have the money
To step across the threshold of my main door, it’ll cost you a hundred in gold. For two hundred you can see my bedroom, my bed of silk, and climb into it.