Naming Maya by Uma Krishnaswami Read Free Book Online Page B

forms—some to protect, some to destroy evil, some to change the course of the universe. It strikes me that nothing in India is what it seems to be. Everything has many names, many forms, many meanings. Maybe that’s why so much of what I see here is both strangely familiar and just plain strange, all at the same time. Maybe these meanings just show up when you need them. I glance at the goddess. It is surely my imagination, or maybe the shadow of the setting sun, because of course she couldn’t possibly have moved her stone lips in a flicker of a smile.
    Too soon, it’s time to leave. “Madam, come back this evening, please,” the tour guide begs Lakshmi Auntie. “Shore temple floodlights will be on. All maintained by Mamallapuram Town Panchayat.” Lakshmi Auntie gives him a handful of rupee notes, and he leaves, urging us to return.

    A vendor comes by selling hot roasted peanuts in paper cones. Lakshmi Auntie turns up her nose at first, but when Ashwin begs, “Please, Mummy, please, I’m so hungry!” she gives in and buys us one each. They are salted, and there is spice in them that creeps up on me, so I eat them without realizing how they will make my eyes water. But maybe it’s my own mixed-up feelings that are making that happen. It’s hard to tell.

The Movie
    When we get back to town I find Mami has cleaned the house till every last doorknob gleams.
    She sprinkles water over the front step and the gravel at its foot. Then she pinches some rice flour between her thumb and index finger. Every morning she trickles it out onto the step in fine lines, and then onto the gravel in circles and stars and swirly designs until magical patterns decorate our threshold. By the end of the day they get blown off, swept away, walked over, and then the next day she does it all over again. When I look up and down the road, there are the same kind of kolam patterns on every doorstep, every threshold. But ours are bigger and better because Mami has double the energy that any of those other women have.

    â€œTeach me,” I ask her one day after I’ve taken some pictures. She tries. I am clumsy. She is patient. But as I pour the fine flour into delicate circles and connect-the-dots like hers, my fingers slip and I end up instead with a scattering of flour all over the steps, all over my feet.
    And Mami begins to laugh. At first I join her. We laugh together. Then I stop. And she carries on laughing. It is only then that I realize her laughter is too shrill.
    She laughs until she has to clutch her stomach and sit down. She laughs and it seems she cannot stop. I am alarmed by the small trickle of saliva that escapes from her mouth, and at the harshness of the laugh as it forces itself out of her throat. Can you die from laughing too hard? Can you be choked by laughter?
    She stops suddenly and frowns, as if taken by surprise. She dashes the moistness from the corner of her mouth with the end of her sari, and says to me, unsmiling, “That’s enough. I have work to do,” as if it is somehow my fault she has nearly died laughing.
    I try to decide if there is something here for me to worry about. If Mom were here I could ask her. But she has gone out to get some papers stamped by the notary who sits in a cool dark office under a thatched roof three blocks away. And I decide it is just as well,
because what would I ask? Is Mami okay? What reason do I have for thinking she might not be? Laughter is not cause for concern in the world. Is it?
    While I am spending time being undecided, Sumati shows up. “Want to go see a movie?” she asks.
    â€œI don’t know,” I tell her. “Mom’s not here.”
    â€œOh, come on. She won’t mind, will she?”
    â€œI don’t know. She might if she comes home and I’m not here.”
    â€œLeave her a note,” Sumati suggests. She’s so sensible. “No, better. Tell Kamala Mami. She’ll