Goddess Featuring Snigdha Prabhakar

If He’d looked, he’d have seen that She was furious. But He didn’t. So He didn’t know. She was a storm of hurt and anger, contained within unperturbed flesh and unbroken skin. Her body had learnt the secrets of keeping one. Her face was a tale of deception. Her mouth was a soft bow of compliance and her brow was made of smooth marble. All but Her eyes, in whose depths galaxies collided against each other from the sheer violence of that sharp intake of breath made at His strange stipulation. A breath so sharp, that it speared right through Her heart and broke it into a million shards. One blink and the galaxies obliterated into a black hole of indifference. “Walk through fire, is it?” She looked at the emissary almost coldly. The monkey god half wished he never found her. She was better off in the demon kingdom.

“Yes, Devi!”, he stammered, not making eye contact “It is a test …to see if you’ve been faithful or not.” he bowed down. “So all this has been about him?”, she wanted to ask. But chose to cut him short with a curt nod. he knew he’d fucked up - big time. he had played into the hands of one helluva ego trip. He thought he was acting upon honour. And he was. But when He told him to take this message to His wife, the emissary knew none of this was founded on Her happiness. If He had found her happy and satisfied in the demon’s harem, He would have still undertaken the journey to “rescue” Her and watched grimly as the fires of virtue engulfed Her. Making a lesson out of Her. Uttama purusha wasn’t so big a compliment after all. Walk through the fire, She did. But instead of paeans being written about Her, She was just given a grade.
Fair enough.
Homely enough.
Faithful enough.
Compliant enough.
Insignificant enough.
Well, She was learning the one tiny problem with settling for wife-grade.
It can be taken away from you.
And then you don’t know who you are anymore.

She ought to have demanded that Her song be sung. That Her legend have proceeded Her before Her return. She ought to have had the welcome of a Goddess.

The Fire Tamer.

The Resolute.

The Brave.

The Warrior.

But instead, she walked into the country as Wife.

And a rather questionable one at that. What kind of woman worships a man who abandoned his pregnant wife? What kind of race holds him as the typical male? (oh the irony!) What kind of woman walks through fire for acceptance, lives to tell that tale, and settles for being abandoned? What kind of woman lets that man go down in legend as a god?

Just about every other woman.

That’s who.