Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
H e stops the instant he enters. “You!” he spits out. “What are you doing here?”
“Kaushika?”
I turn slightly to see his shape outlined in the doorway. He is impossibly tall, and if it weren’t for his aura, the cave would become dimmer with the light he blocks. Instead, a radiance invades the temple. I blink to breathe in, momentarily dizzy from adrenaline and fear.
He does not know I have been eavesdropping. I am still safe. I turn fully to him, making my eyes wide, standing up slowly.
He scowls as he shoulders his way inside. Rain still drips from him, and the tiny cave becomes smaller. His light burns into me, and my skin feels scorched with his potency. It is so intoxicating that I want to lean in and inhale him.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he continues, eyes flashing. “How dare you leave the hermitage? If you want to leave, I can make it permanent right now, but do not think you are above the rules simply because you contain raw magic.”
“I’m praying to Shiva,” I say. “I only wanted to—”
“Like this?” Kaushika gestures at my undone hair, at my wrinkled kurta, at my still-damp skin. “If you are to be a sage, you need to understand there are decrees that disciples must obey, including the manner of their appearance. You come to the Lord like this?”
Despite my terror, my eyes narrow. Pointedly, I run my gaze down his own damp topknot, the warrior chest beaded with raindrops, the low-slung pajamas where I see a sprinkling of dark hair.
“Rich chastisement coming from you,” I drawl. “When you are half-naked yourself.”
Kaushika’s eyes widen in outrage. A quiet oath escapes him, and he ducks back out into the rain. He is back in an instant, pulling his kurta over himself.
A pang of regret goes through me as his chest is covered with cotton, dimming the light of his aura. Perhaps it is my heightened nervousness, but I can’t help but giggle at his frustrated expression.
His scowl deepens. “Do not make the mistake of comparing yourself to me. I have been practicing my austerities for years to gain self-control. I can afford to shed them now, but even I had to obey these steps when I was as uninitiated as you are.” He takes a deep breath, trying to master himself. “I have proved my devotion to the Great Lord several times. Yours is still under question.”
I arch an eyebrow. “And you will decide the value of my devotion?”
Kaushika shifts his scowl to the lingam.
The question hangs in the air, sharpening the edges of his own arrogance. He blinks and crouches down to the altar.
The lines of his back are straight, tense, but closing his eyes, Kaushika mutters a chant. His fingers touch the lingam, glowing with power. Silver ash trickles from his fingertips as he draws three horizontal lines, the tripundra, on the black rock. A garland appears from thin air, surrounding the altar. Incense embers flare within the cave with renewed light, and I inhale, stunned by the sudden peace that flows through me. I am too mesmerized, staring at the temple glistening with a rapid golden glimmering, to immediately realize that Kaushika is watching me.
The prayer to Shiva has already calmed his features. He is as unreadable as ever. I open my mouth to speak, but he looks away.
“Will. Knowledge. Action,” he says softly, his gaze on the three lines of the tripundra. “The basics of connecting with your prana. Have you learned these yet?”
“No.” None of my teachers have ever explained it this way.
“I thought not. Shiva won’t listen to you, Meneka. You don’t have the restraint needed to silence your mind to pierce through his meditation.”
“Shiva is Bholenath,” I answer. “He is the Innocent One. Perhaps your path to him is through austerities, but he does not care for devotional politics and rituals. He cares for the trueness of one’s heart, the purity of our intention, the sweetness of our love. Or am I wrong?”
“No. You’re not wrong. Tell me then, is your heart true? Is your intention pure?” A dark smile cuts Kaushika’s face. “Is your love sweet?”
I open my mouth but images flash behind my eyes. Princess Ranjani, my very first successful mission, in my arms. The pleasure in her eyes as I trickled kisses down her belly, as I parted her thighs. The vapid expression as I left her to return to Amaravati. When, sickened, I finally made the rule to never become involved with a mark no matter what my sisters did. Horror, doubt, and distress freeze my body. Sudden tears glint in the corners of my eyes. Kaushika watches my face, and his own grows softer.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, looking back to the lingam. “That question is never easy. Yet unless you can answer it, you will not be able to call upon Shiva.”
Confusion swirls within me, to be given sympathy by him , to need it so badly. Even Rambha never fully acknowledged my fears about myself and what we do as apsaras, but here is Kaushika, of all people, attempting in his own detached way.
Thunder cracks outside, and I snap back to myself.
Enough .
I will not let Kaushika define me. I will not let my mark dictate this mission. I force myself to remember the resplendence of Amaravati, the real danger of this man, the hate I saw on his face on that first meeting. My tether tightens within me, giving me magic and anger.
“Convenient,” I say. “To choose Shiva as the deity for your hermitage.”
“What are you talking about?”
I shrug delicately. “Anirudh told me how everyone within the hermitage turns their sexual desire inward to achieve spiritual bliss. He said this is what Shiva needs, in pursuit of austerities.”
Kaushika jerks his head toward me. “You have been talking to Anirudh about sexual matters, have you?”
“We talk about many things. Does it bother you?” Kaushika scowls, and my answering smile is poison sweet. “In the hermitage, all I hear about is the path of Shiva sages must follow. Yet it seems to me you yogis repress a lot. Would Shiva condone repression, do you think? The Lord who is freedom incarnate?”
Kaushika’s eyes narrow. “Our austerities are not repression. They are a form of ultimate self-control. Shiva is free because he alone controls his mind, perfectly in charge of when and how he reacts. If you do not understand something as simple as this, then you certainly have no place at the hermitage.”
“Is that so?” I sigh dramatically. “Tell me, Sage. What does the lingam mean?”
To my surprise, Kaushika utters a raw, amused laugh. “That is your argument? The lingam is an erect phallus, and the yoni a welcoming womb. Every Shiva devotee knows this. Shiva is many things. Lord of Yoga. Lord of Asceticism. The one who performs the greatest austerities, yet the sensual one.” His eyes linger over me. “The erotic one.”
“Yet he is nothing without the Goddess. Even his representation marks her.” I raise my chin, and my own voice hardens. “You follow Shiva’s path, but you do not acknowledge that which balances him. You ignore Shakti, who shows him who he is, without whom he cannot enliven his divinity. Shiva would destroy the whole universe with the power of his meditation—destroy his own self. It is the Goddess who anchors him into life, forcing him to react, to give, to participate. It is the Goddess who turns his destruction into creation, into eroticism. Without her, he is incomplete, yet you ignore her in your hermitage, claiming to follow his path. I sit in one lesson after another, Anirudh and Romasha parroting what you have taught them, yet you have not taught them this simple truth. I meditate at the hermitage’s lingam, yet though you’ve built the yoni there too, not a word is spoken about the Goddess. Are you sure you have a place in a hermitage that claims to follow Shiva?”
Silence rings within the temple.
Kaushika opens his mouth, then closes it. His gaze moves across the cave, to catch on the carvings of Shakti in her many forms. As violent Kali riding Shiva’s body. As benevolent Parvati, rivalling Shiva with her own meditation. As Sati and Durga and Annapurna and Kamakshi—the Goddess always as Shakti , power personified, completing Shiva.
Something in Kaushika’s eyes shifts. Arrogance is replaced with sudden horror, then humility, and beyond that, a dazzling defenselessness.
It is so unexpected that I am taken aback.
“It is not Shiva alone who is the Lord of the Universe, Sage,” I say quietly. “It is Shiva when he is with Shakti. You worship the lingam and the yoni, but your denial of pleasure—your pursuit of asceticism without understanding—rejects love as a force of all creation. It rejects the Goddess, and so it rejects Shiva too. I asked you why you saved Navyashree, and you claimed it was your duty, an ascetic answer if there ever was one, yet your path of austerity does not embrace the beautiful contradictions of Shiva or the eternal shifting permanence of him. You claim to worship him, but how much of Shiva do you truly understand?”
Kaushika’s gaze moves from the carvings to me.
I dare not move, pinned by his eyes. I wonder if I have spoken in error. Given too much away. I try to retrieve my anger and indignation, the emotions I started this conversation with. I said the words to trip him up, but the longer Kaushika stares at me, unblinkingly, curiosity in his eyes, the harder it is to remember that I am in control.
He watches me, head tilted, like he is trying to make me out as much as I am him. Like he is truly seeing me for the first time.
Slowly, my breath grows shallow. My eyes dart to the laugh lines on his face. The long, artistic fingers. The fullness of his lips and the ghost of those dimples. What does he see? Why won’t he speak? My tether blooms, confusing me. I clutch it, but his perception unmoors me. Rambha, Amaravati, Indra—all of them disappear. Suddenly Kaushika and I are alone, without pretenses, without agendas, here in Shiva’s temple.
Kaushika’s mouth lifts in a small smile.
“You are right,” he says at last. “I have been ignoring the Goddess. Agastya would laugh at me if he knew this is what I’ve done. Perhaps that is why I have failed to summon Shiva to the hermitage.”
My eyes widen in horror. Abruptly, I am brought back to my mission. Did I truly just give him a weapon of knowledge, one that would help him? Did Indra see this somehow? Would the lord consider this a betrayal?
“Shiva would not leave Mount Kailash,” I breathe, panicked. “He does not simply come when called. You said so yourself.”
“He comes when he is convinced of a devotee’s love and purity,” Kaushika says. “ You said so yourself. You have given me essential insight into why he has been ignoring me. I should have seen this all along.” He rises, surging to his feet. “I will take your knowledge, freely offered. I will use it for the betterment of the hermitage. I thank you for this, Meneka.”
I rise to my feet as well, alarmed. “You admit I have knowledge. Then you will allow me to stay in the hermitage?”
“To teach us the path of the Goddess?” he says ironically. “You are unbearably beautiful. No doubt the others would welcome the learning from you.” He laughs, a raw, jagged sound, and shakes his head. “I think not. This is still my hermitage. No one stays here without knowing themselves. Without being able to perform the magic that connects them to their deeper self. Grateful as I am, your days are numbered unless you can make runes.”
He moves forward to leave the temple, but I block his way.
“Then teach me,” I say.
“It is not worth my time.”
“Your time?” I mimic his raw laugh. “You have time to leave the hermitage and travel, but not to train me?”
He shrugs callously. “Very well, I have the time. I do not have the desire.”
He cannot evict me. Not now. Not when I’m finally advancing in my mission. My desperation makes me bold. “You have not wanted me at the hermitage from the very beginning. Despite my strength. Despite my devotion. Why?”
“That is my business alone—” he begins.
“It is my business too,” I say sharply. “You want me to fail. You are lying about your intention. Lying about why you don’t want me here.”
Kaushika’s eyes flash. “Do not presume so much,” he says. “I thank you for your guidance about Shakti, but gratitude is all you will get from me today.”
Anger suffuses me, heating my cheeks. He makes to slide past me again, but I block him again. “Teach me,” I demand. “Teach me once, and then decide about my worth.”
“No. You debate well enough and you have philosophical knowledge about Shiva, but I sense too much turmoil in your heart. I have no time to treat with it. Linger here and pray, Meneka. Pray that Shiva listens—but I must return to the hermitage.”
“So must I. Anirudh is waiting for me. Teach me, Kaushika. One lesson, and if I do not learn, I will leave the hermitage myself. I won’t wait for the Initiation Ceremony. I will leave tonight if you wish it.”
Interest sparks in his eyes. He inhales sharply, and his gaze travels down to his wrist. I realize I have captured it in my hand. His pulse thunders under my touch, and his eyes darken a fraction in awareness. My throat grows dry, but I refuse to swallow. I blurted the words out without thinking, but I am guaranteed to fail. I cannot do what the others do. My pretense here is over, and so is my mission from Amaravati. Surely he will not agree to my reckless demand? Anirudh told us that Kaushika is not allowed to teach by the dictates of the Mahasabha. I stare at him, expecting him to say no, but a roguish smile forms on his lips as though the prospect of having me gone from the hermitage is enough to risk the censure of the other sages. As though he has already won.
“One lesson,” Kaushika agrees softly. With his other hand, he gestures to his horse, pawing the grass outside. Air shimmers, rain disassembling over the barrier he conjures. “Let’s see how much you can learn from here to the hermitage.”