Wishing to impress her, Kubato orders a feast and calls all the nobles of the land to attend. They sit in rows at his fine tables, but Kubato seats Parvati and her son on a cushion beside him, on the dais. He hands Parvati a glass of fragrant wine.
“This wine,” Kubato says, “has waited for your lips for a hundred years in a gold casket lined with sweet wood. Every cup is worth a year’s wages.”
Parvati takes the goblet, but she does not drink. “I think it is too rich for me.”
So Ganesha reaches for the cup, and then he gulps the wine all down, greedy, with red droplets running down his cheeks. He smacks his lips, and he sends his long trunk all around the room, dipping into every goblet and pitcher. He sucks the wine into his trunk, then brings it to his mouth and has it all in one long swallow.
He looks up to his mother, and he says, “But I’m still hungry.”
Kai has been drinking wine herself all night. She is very, very drunk. If I didn’t know this story down to its last syllable, I might not follow, that’s how bad she’s slurring. I’ve heard “Baby Ganesha at the Feast” since I was a baby myself, though. I have no concrete memory of the first time, that’s how long this tale has been alive between us.
Kubato calls for his servants to bring out the feast platters, heaped with roasted lamb and vegetables. The rice is soft with new oil, yellow and fragrant with costly saffron.
The servants bring the platters to Parvati first, but she says, “Oh no, thank you. It’s too rich for me.”
Ganesha reaches for the platters, though, and takes them, every one. He tips them into his mouth, swallowing lamb shanks, bones and all, and bushels of roasted apples, and a hundred thousand turnips and onions, enough yellow rice to feed an army for a year. He even licks the grease from every platter until the bare silver shines.
Then he looks up at his mother, and he says, “But I’m still hungry.”
All afternoon, Kai has seen me packing in her peripheral vision. She told my left ear where to find the boxes. She offered her heavy thrift-store coat to the spot just past my shoulder. She asked my hairline to bring her the open jug of Burgundy from the cabinet under the sink. What she hasn’t done is look at me. What she hasn’t done is tell me not to go. I’m in no mood for a scoop of mystic bullshit from her now.
So the rich man, growing angry, is even more determined to impress her. He sends his other guests away, and then he brings, with his own hands, a single silver dish. Inside it, layers of delicate pastry are stuffed with nuts and honey.
He says, “This is the honey of the dark bees, who are striped in blue and have human hair. Their sting is instant death. A thousand men died to collect a jarful, drop by drop. Here. I’ve had it all made into this sweet for you.”
Parvati smiles and says, “I thank you, but this is too rich for me.”
Ganesha’s trunk curls round his mother, and he plucks the sweet from Kubato. He stuffs the whole thing in his mouth, pan and all, and swallows.
“Still hungry!” he cries. “Oh! I am so hungry!”
I sit in a resentful hunch in the bedclothes. I let her tell it to the headboard. I let her tell it to my packed underpants and her own coat.
The rich noble takes them through the kitchens, outside, to the silos behind his house, and he says, “Here are my storehouses, built to feed my kin when famine comes. I have enough grain and oil to feed my whole household for seven years. No matter how poor the harvest, those I love will be fat and fed.”
Ganesha rushes into it, wild, stuffing all the bags and jars and crates into his mouth, swallowing all that he sees, until there is not so much as a grain of rice left on the dirt floor.
“Still hungry!” Ganesha bellows.
Kubato is beginning to feel desperate, but his pride is so great, he says, “See this fertile field? I own it. I own every field, in all directions, all the rice and the grasslands where the lambs are grazing, and the forests full of game, and every river. I even own the sea and all the fish in it.”
So Ganesha opens his wide mouth—
“That’s not how it goes,” I tell my mother. She is stretching it out, adding another layer. Before Ganesha eats up all the storehouse grain, Kubato is supposed to cry and quail and beg Parvati to help him, lest he be forever ruined. Then Parvati takes the fruit and crackers from her basket, and feeds Ganesha a bite from her own hand. He is sated at once, and curls up in her arms and goes to sleep.
“Shh, I’m telling it,” Kai says, weaving in the doorway.
“I know this story,” I tell her. “Give Ganesha the cracker and let me go to bed.”
“He doesn’t get the cracker,” Kai says. Belligerent. “You don’t know every end of every story.”
So Ganesha opens his wide mouth, and begins to swallow up the farmlands and the forests, slurping up all the lakes and rivers, and when they are dry he begins to suck the salty brine out of the ocean, washing down all the fish and squid and kelp.
Even as he eats, he’s moaning, “Oh, I’m hungry. Oh, I’m hungry!”