Two Tales of Love and Loss under the Light of the Full Moon

Translation

Chandrima had the ill-luck of passing away while still carrying her child within her, of taking her child with her when she was transposed. And she had the further misfortune of passing just as the full moon was climbing into the sky. She would have no time at all to linger with her Aditya, who was still desperately, convulsively clutching her body – the shell she had just shed. She watched him as he sobbed and cried out for the young wife he had barely begun to love and the child he would never even see – the family he had now lost forever.

Mrs. Chauhan stood by her as she stood heart-stricken over Aditya. Mrs. Chauhan had died during the new moon, a fortnight before Chandrima, in a hospital a few blocks away. She at least had the chance to see her family overcome the first shock and the most cutting grief, and to make her silent farewells to them and thus come into a measure of peace. When Chandrima had breathed her last and followed her breath out of her body, Mrs. Chauhan was in the room, waiting, having made it her duty to welcome her and try to ease her transition. Though strangers in life, they had each known who the other was the moment they met.

“Perhaps it is for the best you will be departing so quickly,” Mrs. Chauhan said. “The pain is sharpest now, but perhaps not so bad as when it starts to dull.” She was thinking on how her husband, children, grandchildren, and other loved ones, even in the depths of their bereavement and desolation these past two weeks, had begun picking up their lives again – going back to work, to school; going about their daily tasks; slowly filling the hole she had left behind – once they had withered her body into ashes.

“How can it be that I will never see him again?” Chandrima asked, her eyes still on Aditya. “I am still here. You are here. How can it be that he will not be when his time comes?”

Mrs. Chauhan let a moment pass before answering. “I do not know.”

“Why is it that men have no souls? How could that be?”

An even longer pause. “I do not know.”

Chandrima looked at her naked, swollen belly and quietly voiced her truest, deepest fear: “And what of my child? It is a son I bear inside me. Is he in there? What will happen to him when the moon is full in the sky?”

Mrs. Chauhan pursed her lips tightly. “I do not know.” She was sad; it didn’t seem as if she was of much help after all.

Chandrima had known the answers to her questions even without Mrs. Chauhan’s responses. Some things had been made clear to her the instant she had passed, but most things remained a mystery. She had asked in the forlorn hope that Mrs. Chauhan, who had been dead longer, might have some knowledge that she did not.

Mrs. Chauhan felt the first stirrings inside her. It was almost time. She said, holding out her hand, “Come, child. We’d best get outside.”

Chandrima was desperate to stay, to touch Aditya one last time, but she knew that if she tried, her hands would not rest on his skin or feel his warmth – nor would they ever again. And she, too, was beginning to feel in her body the first intimation of the rising moon; she could sense her growing lightness. After one last longing look at Aditya, she took Mrs. Chauhan’s hand. They left her house.

Outside in the street, they saw here and there others like themselves: women and girls, shorn of their clothes as they had been shorn of their bodies, standing and craning their heads towards the heavens. Some who saw them gave them smiles – knowing, welcoming, sisterly smiles, sweet with anticipation. All seemed to be glad that the waiting – short for some, nearly a month for others – was at an end.

Mrs. Chauhan released Chandrima’s hand and watched the moon with a sad, solemn look as it inched upwards. Chandrima had glanced at the circle of light, but had looked down at once to stare at her belly, in which all her love and anguish lay. When it came time to depart, would her unborn son pass from her, a soulless husk? Would she give birth to him right there in the street and leave him behind at once?

A breathless sigh arose from the waiting women and girls as the moon continued to rise. More and more Chandrima felt lighter on her feet as the moon exerted its pull. She closed her eyes and embraced herself, wrapping her arms around her belly.

The moon moved over them, came to its highest point, and cast its brightest glow. Chandrima felt her feet slowly lift from the ground, felt her toes kiss the earth one last time before pulling away. She opened her eyes in fear – then cried in exultation. Her arms still cradled her belly, which was still round and heavy. She could feel that, as the full moon drew her upwards, so it drew up the child within her. Her joy and relief could not be marred, not even by the sorrow of leaving Aditya behind.

She glanced about her and saw Mrs. Chauhan smiling at her as she rose upwards alongside her. The air that flowed around her and past her was soft and warm and caressing. Bangalore below them was a receding grid of twinkling lights, becoming smaller and smaller, until it was a glimmering smudge on the dark face of the earth.

Chandrima looked up and saw what she and Mrs. Chauhan and all the other women and girls – and the son within her – were flying towards: the shining disk, the round mirror, which for all its blemishes bathed them all in its clear, cool, borrowed light. The glow became brighter and brighter, as they ascended above the earth, rushed through the void, chased the moon as it flew through space, until the light became so radiant that it enveloped them, swallowed them, consumed them, and they disappeared, translated.

(August 2012)