Aunt nodded, her eyes closed, but she didn’t explain. We listened to the fighting until suddenly, my door swung open, and Father pointed to my diary. I fetched it from its shelf and gave it to him, unsure whether I was supposed to write in it, or if he was.
A moment later Grandmother appeared, and Father took a pen from my desk. On an empty page in the diary he wrote, “Every person here bears witness to the fact that if something should ever happen to me, neither of my daughters shall ever”—and he underlined the word ever—“become devadasis. There is no money for a dowry fortune large enough to find them both suitable husbands. So tomorrow, I begin training with Sita for a position in the Durga Dal.”
Since Grandmother couldn’t read or write, she looked to Aunt for a translation. When she heard what he had written, she sucked in her breath.
“The Durga Dal is the most elite group of women in this kingdom! No woman in Barwa Sagar has ever become a Durgavasi,” she said.
My father’s nostrils flared. He might not have heard her words, but he understood her meaning.
Only ten women are chosen for this role. “You want Sita to become one of the women who not only guard the rani but entertain her?” She took the pen from Father’s hand and handed it to Aunt. “Ask him what will happen if she fails. Ask him!”
Aunt wrote the question in her small, neat handwriting.
“She will not fail,” Father wrote back. “She has me and she has our neighbor, Shivaji. We will train her.”
As soon as Aunt relayed this message, the color rose on Grandmother’s cheeks.
“They haven’t held a trial for a new member in three years. You don’t have the time for this!” She instructed Aunt to write. “What about a new wife? A woman who can raise your baby and give this family an heir?”
Father replied, “Until Sita becomes a member of the Durga Dal, I will never consider remarrying. Ever.”
He put down the pen. The decision was final.
From this moment, Grandmother began to pretend that I didn’t exist. And since she could only communicate through crude signs to Father, our house became extremely silent. I’d like to tell you that this was ideal, that it gave me more freedom, but as anyone who’s ever lived inside a house of eggshells knows, nothing is more fragile.
In the mornings when Avani came to help me dress, there was no more laughter. Grandmother had told her I was a shameless child, and whether or not Avani believed this, we no longer shared happy moments together. But I watched her with Anuja, and the tenderness she showed my baby sister made me understand that if I had been younger, more pliable, less shameless, things might have been different. Eventually, I grew so accustomed to the silence in our house that I became like a frozen stream—hard and impenetrable on the outside, but secretly bursting with life within.
Chapter Four
1846
Father honestly believed I would be accepted into the rani’s Durga Dal and become a member of the elite Royal Guard. True to his word, he enlisted our neighbor Shivaji to help prepare me for the day when one of the rani’s Durgavasi retired. It could happen in a month or in five years—we didn’t know—but whenever it occurred, I had to be ready, for the rani always had ten women protecting her, and as soon as one retired a trial would immediately be held to find her replacement.
Although Shivaji had three sons at home, he came to our house for several hours each day to train me. I was the only child in our village rising before dawn to begin lessons in poetry, Sanskrit, English, Hindi, and all of the martial skills the Durga Dal required: swordsmanship, shooting, fighting, archery. Before we began my mind was filled with the swashbuckling tales I had read with Father: The Three Musketeers and ballads about Robin Hood. I wore a new pair of nagra slippers for my first day of training: they were plain leather with simple red and gold lotus designs, but I thought they were the most exotic things I’d ever seen.
“You see these thick leather soles?” my father wrote, turning the shoes over when he presented them to me. “These will keep you from slipping.”
“Can I wear these every day?” I couldn’t believe my luck.
“Yes. Especially when it’s raining.”
“And what about those?” I pointed to a green angarkha he’d brought in with the shoes; a cotton, knee-length shirt that was fitted at the waist.