Urmila

“Why am I here?”

The girl with the pale face does not look up as she asks, but she is waiting all the same. For an answer. Her fingers are buried in atta, and she kneads the dough as if it were her life’s work. 

Outside the shade of the banyan tree, her sister is following Ram, who is Ram only because he is the chief’s son; and Laxman, who is Laxman only because he could not be Ram.

Her sister is Sita, because she is the most beautiful girl in the village.

The girl watches her uncle watch the game. He is the man who does their books in the afternoon.

He does not answer her.

The girl with the pale face looks at her sister’s painted nails, and wonders at her own fingers, adorned with white mud. 

She does not mind the silence. 

She will wait.

*

She is not ugly, she thinks, as she washes the leathery skin of their goats. If she were ugly she could have played a demon and have Laxman cut off her nose. But the girl with the pale face is not playing at all.

The goat makes a restless gesture with its tail, and the girl reminds herself that someone has to dust the floors, and Sita had just been banished to a forest. Someone has to do it, and it might as well be her.

*

The game does not bother her, not really. Her older sister has two glittering pebbles for eyes and feet that flow through the house like a spring river. When it is her turn to knead the dough, she turns it like clay under her hands, making an Atta princess dance with an Atta prince until they fall in love. 

The girl with the pale face crushes the dolls under her palms. Her dough might be unloved, but at least they could cook it. 

*

Today the girl with the pale face is washing clothes, trying not to fidget under her father’s stare. She’s scrubbing them twice, because the water pump is closer to the children than the Banyan tree is. There is a moment in time where she has a role in the game, and she doesn’t want to be too far, because it’s small enough that they can skip it.

“Urmila” she whispers, to the bubbling water. Her father stares at her, and she gets up to make his tea. It’s not her fault that she’s talking to the water. It is the only thing that listens.

*

The tea takes too long to boil, and the children skip over her part.

*

Her father is not as kind as he appears to be. The only reason her sister goes to school is because he does not have a son who could go instead. But he tells the children that Sita has a sister called Urmila, so that they could include her in the game. 

The girl with the pale face stands on a stool and takes out a chest filled with her sister’s old dresses. They had had a mother once, but she died giving birth to the son who would have gone to school. She waits for someone to come in and scold her.

No one does.

The girl with the pale face holds up the old dresses one by one, thinking she could have been Sita if she had them when they were new. 

*

It is night now, and there is a large toad by the pond who’s too busy with its own woes to listen to hers. The water is dark and it shimmers with the light of the moon. There is a star in the sky which is less bright than the others, and she wonders why it is there at all. The unworthy star is easy to ignore though, and she ignores it like she ignores everything else that makes her chest feel painful.

The girl with the pale face wonders about being Urmila, about being capable of loving someone enough to give them years of her life. 

She wonders if she could sleep in the eyes of the world, and bear the hurts of its darkness, so that someone else wouldn’t have to.

The water shifts for a second, so that the reflection has glittering pebbles for eyes. 

She could, she decides. 

She already has. 

*

The hibiscus is in full bloom, and the girl with the pale face stands in front of the flowers, trying to find the prettiest one. 

Today Sita is being rescued from the evil king Ravana, who is the evil king Ravana only because no one else wanted to be. 

Her uncle is beside her, hauling up bags of cement. He is a strong man, but not as strong as her father. The girl’s bare feet press into the sand, but she does not look up from the flowers.

The sun has made the sand hot and unbearable.

The tale is almost at an end. The evil king Ravana will be slain, and Ram and Lakshman will take Sita back to their kingdom, where they will live happily ever after.

“Why am I here?” asks the girl with the pale face, still waiting.

Why am I here, when the game is over?

Why am I here, and not in school?

Why am I here, and not in the playground? 

Why am I here, when you will not talk to me, and the water is the only one that will listen?

He does not look at her. She watches him watch the village meeting. He has a smile that does not reach his eyes, and a soul that is easy to ignore.

Among the men in the circle, she can make out the red of her father’s turban. He represents their family because he has a long beard and he inherited more of their land than his brother did.

Her uncle knows this. He does their books in the afternoon.

“Not every character”, he says, “gets to be the hero of the story.” 

The girl with the pale face knows this. Her uncle knows that she knows, and yet both of them keep waiting for something else. Her uncle is also barefoot, and there are beads of sweat on his brow, but he picks up the next bag of cement, and does not look at the village meeting again. 

She looks at her sister, and thinks about the things people do for love.

Urmila picks out the most beautiful flower and sets it aside. Its petals are deep red, and its slender tongue has yellow bells on it. She will offer it to the statue in the temple, and pray for a new dress. She will pray, perhaps, to go to school one day. She will pray, from the patience that stems from a lifetime in the shadows, that the children include her in the game next time.

The rest of the flowers are not as red. The girl with the pale face will crush them to make tea; talking to the water as it turns to blood.

It's not her fault, though. The water is the only thing that listens.

*