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Parvati:

this is what makes us girls (we all look to heaven and put our love first)

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A thousand-thousand goddesses are part of this mythology, but I dare you- yes, go look, learn and explore for yourself- to find another story of another woman as well-documented as Parvati’s. She is called mother, destroyer, invincible, power, Queen. Parvati is mother and wife and goddess, but she was not always this; once, she was a girl, and once she did not love, and there was a time when she was even human.

Perhaps we should start from the beginning, because Parvati’s story begins before her birth. It begins with a young human named Sati; the first woman-born-of-a-woman in this world.

Sati, it was said, was the first true woman in the world. Even though she had Brahma’s power in her veins and a kingdom at her feet, she was the first female to be born of someone not a god. That marked her for all her life, and even if that hadn’t been enough there was more, so very much more to her story.

You see, her father was Brahma’s son. Daksha was his name, and he was king, king of all the land.

Sati was the first woman born of a woman, the eldest princess of the first kingdom, the blooded consort to a man she would never meet. She was different, you see, and that frightened them. It frightened her father and her brothers and her gods, so even before her birth her fate was sealed:

She will be consort to the Destroyer, Brahma would intone before he allowed his son to go to his wife with his blessing. But never queen in her own right.

Shiva was the destroyer, was the killer, was the bane of creation. Brahma knew that opposites were needed to balance the universe, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Brahma was the creator and Shiva was the destroyer, and Brahma would spend his entire existence trying to temper Shiva’s strength.

So Sati was born, and she was raised, and she was beautiful. The very moon bent to her, they said, starlight yearned to bleach her dresses; clouds would scuttle away from the sun’s face when she went outside.

And as Sati was raised, she rarely saw her father, all but for certain glimpses- sitting on the throne, in hushed conferences with military advisors, sparring with his sons. There were even times (rare, yes, but she cherished them the more for it) when he would pick her up and throw her into the air, and afterwards let her curl up on his chest.

It was then that Sati would ask, in the half-asleep tenor of toddlers, “Tell me stories, Papa.”

And it was then that Daksha would answer, always mindful of his father’s command, with a tale of the Destroyer.

“His third eye is of flames and power from Tapoloka…”

“He prays and so, when he dances, he is lovelier than all the apsaras of heaven…”

“I’ve heard he eats and drinks nothing, lives only on the energy of the world…”

But perhaps most alluring to a curious girl with no knowledge of consequences-

(and isn’t that the truth in every world, in every tale, in every mythos? The curious girl commits an unspeakable act, and the world thrums to her tune. She is called Eve, and Pandora, and in this story she is named Sati.)

“-no one has seen him for centuries, beta.” Daksha said, once, unmindful of his father’s command. Sati stiffened, and he realized his words and cursed himself. It was not quite a dismissal, but Daksha could see his daughter’s heart, and even at ten she adored the idea of such a god.

But Daksha could not stand against his father any more than Sati could not offer her heart, and though he disliked the idea of giving his daughter up to one who would never have the ability to admire her soul, he could not stop her.

That resentment, silent and cherished, festered.

So, when Sati was old enough to marry and turned them all down, Daksha felt his hatred spiral higher- and his helplessness fed it. He called in princes and beggars, sages and sinners, flung them all at his daughter and watched as she smiled placidly and rejected them.

“She will follow her heart,” his wife told him once. “You know you cannot stop her.”

But he tried. He tried, and would always try; his first daughter loved her grandfather’s bane and Daksha would have shut her up in a dark room if he didn’t think that would push her further into Shiva’s arms.

“I will not love her if she chooses him,” he replied.

His wife laughed and patted him on the arm. Daksha did not tell her he was utterly serious. He had seen too much bitterness, too much war to believe that his daughter could be happy with him. He knew who was responsible, too, for that thought: it was Daksha who had whispered the stories of Shiva to his daughter like so many sweets.

It was not a full month since that conversation that Sati walked away, choosing love over family. She walked into the forests full of banyan trees and tigers without a single pause. If Daksha wasn’t so furious, he might have been proud.

Seven years passed.

It was a long time even then, when men lived for millennia, because humans still comprehended things only on a short scale. It was not the longest time the people could remember, but it was enough; it was long enough for the story of the eldest princess to sink into legend. Daksha could not walk down the streets without hearing whispers of Sati, the first woman born of woman; Sati, the eldest princess of the land; Sati, who rejected all her suitors; Sati, who loved a man who could not love.

Seven years to the day, she returned. He could have welcomed her with open arms, but she walked into his throne room with Shiva by her side, and it was all he could do not to disown her on the spot. His wife coaxed him out, conducted the ceremony, and Sati walked away with her husband.

Daksha felt the copper sting of defeat heavy in his mouth.

Decades later, Sati would walk back to her father’s home for a pooja she was not welcome for. She would throw herself into a fire in an attempt to reconcile father and husband. She would not scream on her pyre, and Daksha would note that even in death his daughter was her father’s through and through.

Shiva would rage, fruitlessly, and walk into the depths of Talatala in an attempt to bring back his wife’s soul. He would think himself a failure, and leave; in fact, he succeeded in dislodging her soul enough that she was able to escape. When he returned, he would dance for a full night, and Daksha would die under his son-in-law’s blade.

Shiva, remember, is the Destroyer. His love is destructive; his very being degrades the world around him. The night after Daksha fell, Shiva swore off women for all eternity.

But Sati was never as weak as men around her thought. This marked her- it took seven years to receive Shiva’s attention, but she did not give up for that whole time.

This time it would take longer to return to his side, but Sati knew her place. If it took her millennia she would fight her way through.

In the end, all it took was three centuries- three hundred years for the barest shadow of her soul, whittled down to the dregs of her very being, to traverse the realms between Talatala and Bhoomi. When she finally returned, she would be reborn as Parvati, second daughter of Himalaya and Minavati.

The stories say Sati’s story ends when she throws herself onto the flames. They wrap themselves into a final ending: “reborn as Parvati,” as if the sum of any woman could be her previous life. She is called a martyr, a tragedy, a victim. They will call her a pawn caught between husband and father.

She is nothing of the sort.

Sati is the hero of her own story.

She walked, remember, into the forest with nothing but the clothes on her back. She stood against thousands of men and said thanks, but no thanks. She returned to her father for a yagna she would not be welcome for, and fought for three centuries to return to her husband’s side.

Remember, she chose Shiva. Remember, she was feared by all the men in her life. Remember, she took what had not been a choice and made it one, took a tragedy and made it a triumph. Remember, Sati was a woman in a man’s world, and chose her own happiness in the end.

But this is not a story about Sati. It is a story about Parvati, who was once Sati, but is now her own self.

So our story begins with Sati, and continues with Parvati, daughter of the mountains:

She lived her whole life on craggy mountains, high enough that stretching your hands felt like holding up the sky. The stars were close but the moon was closer, and she grew up with a love for color in a place that was, above all, slate-gray.

You see, Sati was a human, but Parvati was a goddess, and that was an imbalance. Parvati would never be Sati, because there was always more of Parvati than there ever could be of Sati.

For the first couple years of life, Parvati was happier than Sati could ever remember being. She danced when she wished, sang when she could. The wind whipped about her skirts when she asked and there were nights when Parvati would walk on nothing but air.

But there were also nightmares- dreams of people she would never know; whispers of hellfire and demons and a god’s rage that killed the first son of another god. When she awoke, there were ghosts of family and friends she had never seen crowding her, jostling her arms, wrapping around her body in chilled embraces that left her shivering and wanting to cry.

Parvati also never cried. She was daughter of the mountains, and the mountains never wept; there would be rain, or clouds, and sometimes even oil spilt out of the sides like black blood, but salty tracks never wound down the face of her cliffs, of her father’s kingdom. Parvati knew what it meant to be strong and swore she would be so even if it killed her.

But for all that Sati wasn’t the entirety of Parvati, Parvati was still influenced immensely by her past life. She would ever be her own person but never the whole of one.

So it took her all of three years to fall in love with Shiva, all over again. She was Sati, but she wasn’t Parvati. She fell in love deeper; Sati had never had a choice save for her father’s paltry attempts but Parvati did, and she chose Shiva.

Did you know that history repeats? Once, and then twice; a tragedy and then a farce.

Sati chose Shiva against her father’s wish.

Parvati chose him over her father’s warnings.

But history is not a story, and people are not governed by the past. This is where the story diverges, Sati dying in defiance but Parvati winning her happiness.

Sati won her love with hard work and austerity. For seven years, she prayed. For three of those seven, she followed her true love’s example and fasted, not eating and not drinking. She would have gone longer if he had not come to her.

Parvati won her love with cleverness and resolve. She was childhood friends with Kama, who grew to his father’s mantle of God of Love. She watched and waited, called in favors and told him to hit Shiva with the arrow of love.

It was a child’s dream, you see, and Parvati was still a child.

She wanted love to be that, she wanted love to be an arrow, to be lust in the eye of a man she would give her soul for. When Kama fell down in a shower of black ash, Parvati did not scream. When her childhood friend burned up for her sake, she did not avert her eyes.

This, a wooded grove laden with fruits, was the last pyre of a god. This was where Parvati the child fell, as well, and the woman arose- over the course of her long life, she would be called many things, but never weak. This moment was what she remembered when she needed strength.

Parvati watched because not seeing something did not mean it did not happen, and she did not scream because she was not afraid. Sati had braved death and returned, and she was a part of Parvati. Nobody fears the darkness when you can walk away from it.

Years later, Shiva would come to her in the guise of a saint and tell her his evils. Then he would ask her, sharply, “Do you still love such a man?”

Parvati would think about Sati, who thought love was sacrifice, and Kama, who had taught her love was death, and her parents, who loved her despite her choices.

She would say, “I would walk through hell for him.”

It would not be a yes or a no, but at the same time it was. Parvati loved him but did not know him, not truly. She would grow to love him if needed. For now, she loved the idea of him.

But right now, she watched as Shiva showed the blackest rage he was capable of. It was when he strode away that she moved. And she did not walk away; she moved further inwards and ran a hand over her best friend’s ashes, gathered them up in the scoop of her gossamer cloth. She walked into the night, all the way to Kama’s wife’s house- Rati, goddess of love. She walked down the mountain for the first time, cut her feet on sharp stone. Parvati strode past fearsome beasts and battlefields, all the way to a palace built of seastone and glass.

She walked up to the front step, feet bleeding the red of humans, and knocked. When Rati took her husband’s ashes, Parvati did not cry.

But she did tell her what he had died for.

Kama would return to Rati after she begged Shiva for her husband. He would never have a body, but he would still return. Parvati walked away before he did, walked all the way back through battlefields and beasts, up the mountain she had never wanted to walk down. Her long hair tumbled back and her dress was cut to shreds.

She walked back in silence, and decided that she did not need anyone else’s love for hers. Her bleeding feet would heal by the time she was on the mountain grove she favored; there would be no scars. She was a goddess, and bled like a mortal.

Kama had died but he would be revived. She did not know that yet. All Parvati knew was that she loved a man who killed, and continued to love him after. Maybe that said something, but she wanted that fierce rage for herself, wanted someone to see the ferocity and the tempest brewing inside her skin.

When Sati did penance, she did it silently.

When Parvati prayed, lightning sparked along her veins and thunder shook the ground at her feet. She did not fast as Sati had, only called on every ounce of outrage and tempered steel inside of her, called it and channeled it into her words.

Sati had found love with patience, but Parvati found love through life.

She did not pray with arms folded and seated; her prayers were songs weaving through the ragged shrubs of a mountain’s summit. She danced, and the flowers wrapped around her legs, formed faceless princes for their princess to waltz with. She called him Bhairav, because she had felt terror at his hands, and she called him Durjaneeya because it was true.

(Durjaneeya meant difficult to be known)

And do you remember? Sati is not Parvati, but she is a part of her. They are two different women, but they are the same at the core.

“Come home,” her father once asked her.

“I shall walk home with the Destroyer at my side,” Parvati replied. “Or I shall not walk home at all.”

They are two different women, but they are the same at the core. Parvati cannot remain still, but she can be patient. Goddesses and women can rise beyond their nature; they are capable of more than what they are.

Parvati can learn silence.

It took longer, this time, for Shiva to fall in love with her. Sati had attempted to fit herself into what he would love best, to be the wife he wanted: demure, modest, reserved. A good wife- a proper woman.

Parvati loved Shiva on her terms and nothing more. She would never forgive his rage at Kama, even after his return. She loved Shiva partly because of her past, partly because of what she knew of him, and was partly just waiting for him to give her a reason.

It took longer, but it was not in either of their nature to give up. When he finally accepted, Parvati’s first reaction was to slap him.

“You killed my best friend,” she told him. Then a gift, for him: “But you saved Sati.”

“You have no right,“ he began, violet eyes flashing with unspeakable rage.

But Parvati knew of the grief beyond the fury, and she did not flinch. She was not Shiva’s wife; she was her own person. “I have the only right,” she said softly. “Because I am her.”

He stilled. Stared. Then he said, “Sati?”

“…a part of her,” she amended, because she did not think she could bear it if Shiva only loved her for her past life.

He nodded and kept his silence, and it was the first time she saw the gentility he was capable of. Parvati thought she knew more of why Sati had loved him, before- he was a man of contradictions, but a man of strength. She might never forgive some things, but she would never forget others, either. They were not the sum of their past.

Cold air whistled over them. Parvati wrapped her arms around herself and smiled. Then she walked to her father’s palace on her own, without Shiva by her side. He might marry her but she knew her own worth, and could learn from her mistakes. When she walked into her father’s throne room, she did so with head held high and the name Maheshwari an indelible tattoo on her skin.

She would spend her life supporting her husband, but also fighting him.

Parvati was the strength behind the throne, the tempest in the teacup. She was not the eldest goddess, but she was the strongest. It was her power, she thought- a thousand names described her thousand attributes, but not one of them went beyond. Not one peeled the layers of Shiva’s wife to the core of a being more woman than anyone could have hoped for.

So, you might wonder, who was this girl, this woman? You say she is more than Sati, that she was happy. But was she kind? Was she beautiful? Was she the Queen her past life was denied?

No, she was not.

Parvati would never be beautiful. She was too raw, her body too thin, arch of a cheekbone too sharp. She was striking, but she was not beautiful. There was too much of Parvati for her to be beautiful, too much energy racing through her blood, too much life in her heart. Centuries later she would teach a select few of her followers that the only difference between beauty and strength was the line between fear and courage.

She would never be called kind. Merciful, yes; sometimes even the highest compliment of mother- but never kind. She never taught her sons to be soft, only strong. They would have to learn mercy, indulgence, and kindness from other people- others who had not fought for centuries for something intangible. Parvati would teach her children how to bend without breaking, and how to bow without giving in. Grace, she told them, was as important as beauty. More important, because it was something learned.

And Parvati would never be queen for the sake of her past. She was queen, yes, but she was so much more. She was a deity, a goddess, a power in the land. She was the unbending spine of women who never knew anything but denial; the sun-worn laugh lines limning a farmer’s wife’s face; the dignity of a grandmother as she passed into death.

Strength, Parvati whispered into the folds of the earth, can be found in the strangest of places.

Let others be called wealth or intelligence or beauty- Parvati can make her riches, learn her words, paint her face up.

She will call herself strength, and be utterly proud of it.

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Saraswati:

not all those who wander are lost (deep roots are not touched by frost)

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Let us sketch a story of a goddess who does not need a man for her to find herself. Let us paint a picture of a woman who is not brave or kind or beautiful (or at least, not more than any common, human woman), who is strong when she is needed but not beyond. Let us tell a tale of a girl with bright, curious eyes, who looks around her and asks, “What else is there to see?”

Saraswati’s story is not one of love. Make no mistake: she will have her teenaged romances, her arranged marriages, her sloppy, adolescent dreams. She is a child before she becomes a woman, with every inch of that heartbreak written across the curve of her shoulders.

But the difference is this: she is not defined by love.

She is not Parvati, to fight centuries and love beyond death. She is not Lakshmi, whose belief in love is the stuff of legends.

Saraswati is steady all on her own. The truest depths of her love are for knowledge and curiosity- she will first fall for a bright gleam in an eye, not the traits of a man.

She finds it by accident, this girl-woman-goddess. In persistent boys and insistent mothers; in society’s expectations or hopes. But she does not go looking for it. She is on another journey, another quest, and at times people walk beside her but at others she is alone.

(This is bravery. This is strength. This is something carved out of long, terrified nights and days spent stepping out into the sunshine anyways. This is courage, made all the sweeter because Saraswati does not call it that.)

In some stories, she is called the Consort of Brahma, because she is the goddess of knowledge.

But we do not need a man to define this goddess; she does not need his love or his respect to find herself. Saraswati is the eldest goddess and, once, she was the most powerful.

This is not a story about love, you see. It is not about love though love is a part of it. It is a story of power. It is a story of finding worth in what others say is worthless. It is a story of value, and humanity, and care and patience. It is about women and men, children and grandparents.

This is a story of wonder, knowledge, and above all, curiosity.

Once, you see, the universe was whole, was filled to the brim with chaotic, swirling energy. Then it fractured down the middle, cleaved in two- a division as sharp as it was subtle. Male energy and female, this schism would be called.

But Saraswati was the form of the female energy while Vishnu formed the male. He divided, spent his power giving to the beings he created out of chunks of himself, Brahma and Shiva. He gave them both powers, all save for two: foresight, and the ability to change.

Saraswati watched, and waited, and she did not divide. The universe saw this and it needed its balance. It struck a deal, silent, unspoken- the memory of her birth would be taken, while she could keep her power. She did not know this contract. Gods, you see, are not all-knowing, even when they are all-powerful.

More gods formed. Then earth came out of the dark. Humans began to populate its rivers and mountains and deserts.

But something was missing, some integral part nobody could see but wanted nonetheless.

It was not until Saraswati reached out and formed something out of a pale wisp of her power that she felt right. Balanced. Whole.

The first woman was born.

The more she formed, the more an ache in her gut eased. But the more she created, the more the men were able to find her. The easier it was for gods to hunt her down.

She finally gave in, met with them. She walked there expecting something like a discussion, a debate. She wanted that. But the gods were scared. They were men, and they were multiple, and they wanted her to bend knee to someone, as they did.

Brahma was not there. Neither were Shiva or Vishnu.

Saraswati felt rage, because she was worth so much more than these knock-offs. The first meeting between man and woman, and she was cheated. She was forced to fight and beg for an audience that should have been nothing more than her birthright.

Who do your Trinity answer to? Saraswati flung back at them, and hoped they choked on it. Why should I bend knee? I am what I am, and that is more than can be said for any of you. I am brave, and powerful, and beautiful. Why should I kneel?

But they insisted, and she refused. Her power was her own; her strength a part of her very soul. She would not give it up, not for anything-

Not until the second goddess came: Lakshmi, born in the moment after Brahma called her in the curls of the lotus flower.

Saraswati saw her, this woman similar to Saraswati but with such little power, and sent her a gift.

Good fortune, the wind whispered in Lakshmi’s ears, tugged playfully at the hem of her skirt. You shall ever be a mark of good fortune, of luck.

It took the chit of a goddess three days to cheapen her gift freely given, to take power and turn it into amusement. Three days, and she was nothing better than a monkey sideshow in a circus- performing tricks for her better’s laughter.

Saraswati was furious.

She cursed Lakshmi away, out of sight, out of the world. She opened a hole and flung her into it and told her that she would have another birth millennia later, and only then would she have a second chance.

(Lakshmi would. When they churned Mount Mandara, she would walk out of the darkness and into the light, and she would choose not to be goddess of fortune any longer, but goddess of wealth, of beauty, of things that mattered and were not whims.)

Before Lakshmi’s redemption, however, Saraswati felt curious. She looked down at humanity and saw their unthinking malice, their gentle nobility. She saw contradictions and wanted to understand more, and even then curiosity held her in its grasp, so she took monsoon rains and formed a river. She tried to learn about beginnings and impossible things from humanity.

Other gods and goddesses (yes, there were some females, now) spent a paltry half-century on earth and called it a life, an experience; twisted their lips in disdain of the very people who worshipped them.

Saraswati walked on the earth for two millennia as a river. She watched and she learned; she saw pettiness and cruelty, nobility and altruism along her banks. For 2000 years she waited, and then she left the water behind to see more, to see further than the water’s edge.

She took strange forms and other goddesses’ names. She might have been everyone and nobody- poor and rich, in equal measure. Saraswati was beautiful in some lives, crippled in others, but she was always looking and watching and learning.

She could have been a clever child, scheming for her next meal; a weary fishwife, bartering for honey; an emperor’s mistress gently nudging him away from war. She called herself Savitri, Aditi, Bharati: hundreds of names for thousands of lives.

And she walked those lives, every last path. Saraswati felt the delicate curve of her ribs, gasping breaths of pollution in her lungs, the trembling aftermath of horrors, the priceless beauty of kindness; she understood, for the first time, what it meant to be dying even as you lived. She learned humanity in all its bitter, scraped-out, hollow glory, and walked back to Heaven with new, fresh wisdom.

(Two centuries later, Daksha’s son would die, leaving Heaven kingless.

Saraswati remembered a young boy at her shores, on her beach; his kindness, his strength.

He was no prince to fill an empty dynasty. He was human, and could become a god, but never would he be as prideful as Daksha’s son.

[She was wrong. She underestimated humanity; even its best was not capable of resisting the siren-call of power.]

But forever after, Indra would not be a name, but a title.)

Saraswati walked back to heaven and looked up at the golden sky and decided she knew something of love. She was feared for her power, after all. She wanted love, so she decided to give it away.

Beauty, to those who came calling. Power, strength, bravery. Mercy, compassion, kindness. Healing, gardening, tending. A thousand powers Saraswati had, and she gave them up to the goddesses that came. Her soul felt colder for it, but her heart felt lighter.

And then, there came a day when no goddess came. She waited and waited, but nobody arrived, and she was forced to conclude that there were gifts left behind that these goddesses, more than human, did not want.

Alright, Saraswati thought, and cradled these powers in the palm of her hand. Alright, this will have to be enough.

Beauty, kindness, strength- these were no longer her powers. If she was called lovely, it was not because of any gifts of the universe. She could remember the electric thrill of energy in the marrow of her bones, but it wasn’t hers to claim any longer.

All she had were the unwanted gifts; the leftovers. Curiosity, knowledge, creativity.

But what was curiosity, without bravery to let you explore? What was knowledge, without use for power? What was creativity, without passion?

Saraswati looked at her hands. There would be nights when she would startle awake, the ghost-memory of power heavy in the lines of her palms.

She had given up what she had, released it into goddesses she did not understand, for a feeling she could not measure, did not know existed.

Fine. If she did not have bravery, or passion, or strength, fine. She would do it on her own merits, walk where such things would not matter. Or, if they did, she could at least teach otherwise.

So Saraswati returned to earth, to the human’s humble abode. She learned things goddesses had no need of: how much salt to put in bread, how to flood paddy so the best rice could grow, how to dye cloth the hue of a summer storm. These were not necessary things, but they were still knowledge. In their own way, they were just as important as diplomacy or kindness or mercy.

There is worth, you see, in knowledge for its own sake. There is value in that, a price that goes beyond the useful. It allows you to look past your horizons, to see through other’s shoes, to walk where silence and ignorance fears to tread.

But it would never be enough.

She walked down to earth because of curiosity, do you see? But she did not stay because of that alone. Saraswati stayed because she had her followers, her prophets and her worshippers, and they were called such things as useless. As ugly. As never-going-to-succeed.

She ached at times, because there was nothing she could do, and there was already so much loss. She was fighting a losing battle, one she could not give up.

What is this battle, you must be wondering. Where was it fought, why is it important?

This battle is about beauty. It is about what we care for, what we value. It goes beyond our loves and our desires, to the core of a person: who, this battle asks, do we wish to be?

Parvati called strength beauty and meant every word. Lakshmi was the definition of beauty.

But intelligence could never masquerade as anything but itself. It could be pointed or dulled as needed, but it was a weapon- where beauty was nothing but an asset. Saraswati saw countless men (and even more women) wither under her blessing; shriveling, as those with Parvati’s or Lakshmi’s touch blossomed, rose to new heights and said: “There is no higher standard the looking good. Be good, and you shall look even better. Your sins and your virtues are written across the slope of your nose, the width of your cheeks, the shade of your lips.”

“No,” Saraswati would whisper.

(She was not brave enough to scream. This was her power, change without challenge, but there were so many nights when it wasn’t enough.)

“No,” she would whisper. She would look into the hopeless eyes of a woman she could not save, a woman who had Saraswati’s blessing, and she would want to howl.

“You do not need to be beautiful,” she would say, soft as a winter wind. “You do not need to be strong. All you need is to look beyond the farthest mountain, and if all you do is ask ‘what is further?’ I will be so utterly proud of you. Save courage for others. You do not need to be beautiful to be worthy. If someone crushes you beneath their heel, save your tears but you do not need to get up. Know that you wish to cry, that you can get up. That is all that matters.”

Once upon a time Saraswati had all the power she wanted. She was feared for it, but she wanted love, so she gave it away.

Now, she was no longer feared, but neither was she respected. So she walked the earth and built her own respect, not out of others but out of her own deeds. Her sisters in the Trinity were different, two sides of the coin. But they were the same in what mattered, both ruling from on-high, untouchable as goddesses ought to be.

Saraswati dug fingers deep in earth and listened. She scoured ancient wisdoms down to their roots and asked, quietly, innocently, “Why don’t we do this?”

She changed, adapted, learned. She did not shout but she spoke, and because she listened there were a few who gave her back that gift.

A thousand lives in a thousand years. She walked sun-baked ziggurats in Mesopotamia, arching temples in India, stone megaliths in Europe. She sank roots into the veins of the earth and waited, still, aching. Knowledge was its own reward, intelligence its counterpart. There was nothing quite like feeling curiosity fulfilled.

Saraswati was a river, still. She knew change came slowly, and she had always been patient. There would always be sharp women, those who turned beauty into a weapon just as intelligence. But there would always be others, too- those whose only asset was intelligence, whose only saving grace was a certain inquisitiveness.

It was for their sakes that Saraswati would walk this earth, for them that she would fight.

When humanity learned to look past their fragile shells, to see the blazing flame that was the soul of every being around them, perhaps they would learn some truths. The truth, in the end, is this: no one flame is the same. Some are brighter, others duller, others sharper, others colder. But not one is the same, and that is what marks us all.

Saraswati’s story is not one of triumph.

Her victories did not come of a sudden. It was in the little things- the small questions, the smaller wonders, the smallest whispers.

Some days she would look at her hands and they would be gnarled or smooth, long-fingered or large-palmed. She would look at her hands and she would remember actinic power flooding over them, and she would think, am I real? She would have spent so many lives on this earth, and so few of them worth it- was she real? Could she be a goddess? Or was this all the delusion of an old woman? A mad woman? A child, believing in stories until she thought the sky was purple?

Did it matter?

Saraswati’s strength was in her love. This passion, this fervor- it wasn’t any gift of the universe, not any strange, Ether energy. It was simple, natural love. It was bravery to say things she did not know to be true, but the bravery, the courage, the strength- it is not a goddess’ power. It is human, utterly, fallibly, human.

But she doubted her existence. And if she doubted hers, what was to say her sisters existed? Who was she to keep those wonders to herself?

Saraswati effected change by asking questions. She might wander a city’s wending streets and pause at a baker’s stall. She might see statues, polished and cleaned, to Parvati and Lakshmi and others. The baker might have three children, and no statue for the goddess of knowledge.

She would not rage. This baker would have the freedom of his choices.

But that would not mean she wasn’t proud of herself. She was, down to the blisters on her feet, down to the fibers of her muscles.

She would look at the man and remember that she once had power, but gave it up.

(That takes far more strength than shouldering that burden. One can falter under responsibility, but to shirk it is to open one up to wounds.)

She would think, my legacy is in eyes and thoughts, in whispers and in wonder. What need do I have for prayers when I still walk on earth?

“Do you ever wonder,” she might ask the baker, “whether the gods are real?”

The baker might open his mouth and say “No.” That would be the end of the story, then, and she would walk away. That had happened so very many times in her lives.

But there is the tiny chance, infinitesimal, really, but it is still there- that the baker might say, “Yes.”

Saraswati lived for such moments.

Then, she might hum. She might laugh, or giggle, or flirt. She might buy a sweet or not, but she would look the baker in his (human) eye, and she would say, “Teach your children curiosity. Teach them wonder. Let their lives be more than the dust at their feet. Let them see what you never dreamed of.”

She might stay, after that, but that is not what matters. What matters is the question in the baker’s eyes, and the quiet, firm encouragement of a goddess.

Change does not come as a bolt from on high. It is a river, slowly wearing down rocks, making canyons as deep as they are broad. Saraswati’s quest is not over, not yet.

She might walk the earth, still, in human form- asking questions, effecting change, being brave- but she does not do it as a goddess. Parvati learned humanity from a past life. Lakshmi learned it from watching for thousands of years.

Saraswati lived humanity.

She took a girl with cleft lip and said, look, see, there is life beyond looks. You do not need a man to find love, there is love in just living. Look around you, little girl. See the beauty and understand that there is no reason for you to have it within you.

This is her power, looking around and then further. It is not enough, not nearly enough, but it is what she has.

Saraswati builds power out of ashes. When goddesses scorn her for giving up power, she laughs. When the world does not give her love, she finds love in herself.

Do you remember? This story is about worth and power and value.

This is her truth: there is worth in the worthless because we place something in it.

She does not need love or guidance to be strong.

This is her power: fighting a battle that might never be won.

Can you see? Saraswati is not the goddess of bravery or beauty or wealth. She is the goddess of knowledge, of intelligence, of curiosity. She is dead and dying on battlefields, in childbirth, at the hands of disease- but she will always return. She will walk again, and she will not stop, not until her prophets and her worshippers see what strength there is in knowledge, what value can be placed in something so intangible.

This is her love: books, and people, and the look farther than the farthest mountain.

Let us tell a tale, we said in the beginning, of a goddess who does not need a man.

Do you remember? This, we said, is not a tale of love.

But as you walk away, make sure you do not forget this: this is a tale of love.

...

...

Lakshmi:

fierce as world-destroying fire (flutters softer than butterfly wings)

...

Lakshmi could remember on stormy nights, as a human, the soothing warmth of a lotus petal. She wondered if that was her womb, that pink shell from which she stepped out at Brahma’s call. Her clothes are actually a sharper memory than her birth- they would be a darker shade than pink, embroidery a brighter tone than yellow.

But her brightest, sharpest memory is afterwards, when she is alone in her chambers, wrapped in gauze and silk and jewels like a hemmed-in creature; a playful breeze, wrapping up her skirts and ruffling her hair.

A gift from the Goddess Saraswati, it whispered. Fortune and luck, to tide you through.

Tide you through what, she didn’t know. She did not know much of anything, truly- she did not know right and wrong, respect and practicality. Lakshmi was a child in all the ways that mattered, so when adults (read: men) told her to give them luck, to turn it away from others, she did not hesitate. Lakshmi turned powers to mortals and toyed with them, and she did not know it was wrong.

But remember this: she was a child.

Children can be held accountable for their actions, but there must be leniency involved. Saraswati’s wrath shook the stars when she saw her gift cheapened to mere amusement.

Lakshmi was flung into a dark abyss of the earth for her sins. She did not scream when she fell, though that was more because she did not think she could bear to open her mouth without sobbing, than any type of bravery.

But remember: Lakshmi was a child. There is no moral to this story. There is no lesson to be learned, no warning hidden in its letters. There is only a child, and those who did not show her mercy.

Lakshmi’s purpose- the reason why Brahma awoke her- was as an example. Could Saraswati give her gifts away? The answer was yes.

The cost was a child.

But Brahma did not care for children caught in the middle of his schemes. He was too busy stopping a war before it began, culling a goddess’ powers so he need not fear her.

(Do you see? The basis of this world is not built on anything but fear, and survival. Man fears woman, and woman cannot fight back. There is cruelty here, but it is not hate.)

Lakshmi fell, long and hard. She did not hit the bottom for so very long- it lasted for such a time that she forgot to be afraid of the inevitable stop, and instead began to revel in the air rushing past her fingers, the swoop low in her stomach.

But everything that rises must fall and she did, eventually, land. Her skin was bruised and aching at that rough landing. A sharp stone sliced up her ankle, and by the time she stopped tumbling her palms were shredded like so much grated coconut. For the rest of her life she would trace over ragged scars on her skin that would fade, later, to nothing but silver lines, visible only at the correct angle.

They would remind her that she was alive; that she had faced the darkest holes and come out.

But now she was nothing but a child-goddess cast down from heaven. She took note of her situation as best she could; the clothes she wore were of Brahma’s creation, she thought. They were red embroidered with gold, and utterly impractical in this land with no sunlight or beauty.

Lakshmi would be proved wrong later. She would stumble into a room glowing a peculiar shade between blue and silver, strands dripping down to the floor. She would walk to an underground ocean’s edge, and luminescent, electric shades would play across her face. She would learn to find beauty in the press of stone on stone, in the curve of earth.

For now, though, she did not know anything of this. She simply walked, and walked, and walked. She had no powers save for fortune and luck. There must be dangers here, in this world that was sealed away, and little Lakshmi had no weapons.

She learned to hone what she had.

Gifts of steel and blood were not hers. Her power was in her voice, in her beauty.

Monsters paused- perhaps for only a breath, sometimes even for less- and she learned to use that hesitation with every ounce of ruthlessness born of desperation. Lakshmi could talk the harshest monsters down from berserker rages, could be what the creatures of the night needed.

“I am,” she would whisper sometimes, when she would fear that the memory of language could disappear from her mind. “I am, and I exist, and I was once a goddess. I am, I matter.”

She did not know if this was a lie. Lakshmi did not care. She was not above using her skills at speaking to fool herself. Pretty lies were better than vicious truths, particularly in a land where a being was, sooner than not, stripped down to the barest pieces of their souls. Laughter was as precious, she learned, as water or beauty.

Centuries passed in this manner. Lakshmi walked the underbelly of earth and taught herself to laugh, taught herself right and wrong. She traced swooping syllables out in dust and learned alphabets. She wove cloth out of silkworms and wept as she watched them die. She built gardens of lotuses in murky pools, saw them reach out towards the soft light of glowworms.

Saraswati had told her, before she fell, that she would have another chance. Lakshmi wrote out that hope in curled letters around her body, carved it into stone.

I am, sloping script read. And I will be once more.

Lakshmi did not know how many years she spent there.

Then Mount Mandara churned, and Lakshmi wanted to go.

The monsters who had once wanted to eat her nuzzled at her cheeks. Glowworms wrapped themselves in thinner and thinner strands, right up until they were columns from ceiling to floor. Her silkworms wrapped around her fingers in fat little bundles.

She wore her best tunic (only mended twice), the gold she’d been wearing when she fell (stashed in a well-placed hollow stone so the clasps wouldn’t break), and no shoes. In a belt pouch made out of silk scraps and lotus petals, she put a silk cocoon, an ivory claw, a smoothened ocean stone. She tucked the biggest, pinkest lotus flower in her hand and walked up, into the light.

(How much courage must that have taken, how much she must have wanted that sunlight, to walk away from the safety of a womb into the sunshine.)

She walked upwards, climbed the stone and pulled her body up with thin muscles cording her bones.

And when that was over- when that journey ended- she stood on the cusp of a choice: backwards, into the night or forwards, into the light.

It was never even a choice.

Lakshmi watched numbly as she saw sunlight and clouds after so long. She stepped forwards, and moved through the gods in a daze. It was beautiful, this upper world, but it was so very dangerous. It was so very bright.

She had spent centuries wrapped in earth, smothered in darkness. This stimulation- the play of light on water, the glamor of gods and demons- it was almost too much.

Was this how she felt when she first awoke, from her first cocoon of lotus petals?

Lakshmi was ushered into what must have been a summer palace; the columns were too thin and the curtains were too airy for it to be a winter home. Maids clad in flowers and gossamer showed her jewel-toned cloths. They scrubbed and scrubbed her jasmine-pale skin until the bathwater ran the rust-red of dust and dirt. By the time she stepped out, she felt more naked than ever.

She had picked out her bijoux already- gold and rich, engraved with little lotus designs. The dresses she’d picked were the exact shade of a lotus bud before it blossomed.

“Leave me,” she told the flower maids. “I shall dress myself.”

They walked out, and she finished. But when Lakshmi looked in a mirror, she realized that she had dressed as if she were still underground: her hair was scraped back into a severe bun, her skin was too pallid (with no becoming flush on her cheeks), and the sari she wore was too pale.

She didn’t look beautiful. She looked hard, and dangerous.

A second birth. Was this to be her legacy, from now on?

No. Not for all the gold in the world.

She would make her legacy different. Hesitantly, she moved over to the closet and opened it. Block colors shone out at her, sharp and stiff.

Reaching out, she ran a hand down the silk. She remembered the play of light on red cloth with gold embroidery, the rich color of a fabric that felt more like liquid along her skin than any cotton.

Brahma had chosen her dress upon her first birth, but Lakshmi would reclaim that cloth. She wound the vermilion cloth over her lotus-pink sari, covering the lighter shade until only she could tell that there was any cloth under it.

The color was the color of blood, of love, of passion. It was the color of dust below the earth, and she wove it around her body as a banner.

(Of what, she didn’t put to words just yet.)

But when she looked at her face she still looked sharp. Too sharp.

Lakshmi knew how to change that, so she feathered out her black hair, teased it down and out until it curled over her jaw like flame licking over the edges of parchment. She still looked too pale, so she tinted her lips somewhere between lotus and blood. Around her eyes, she drew smoky lines out her temples.

She was draped in scarlet and vermilion. When she saw herself in the mirror, she didn’t look hard anymore. She looked achingly beautiful, in a clash of red and gold and color.

When she married, she would be dressed in the brightest red she could find. Tucked under her skirts would be a pocket full of her underground world’s gifts. She would smile and laugh, and when she was told to introduce herself she would do so as goddess of wealth and beauty, not goddess of luck.

There are some things, you see, and some times, where the world balances on a roll of the dice.

But there are others that hinge on the choices we make, and those are the kind we can effect. Lakshmi chose to be goddess of one and not the other, but that is not the important part.

The importance is this: she made a choice.

Perhaps you have heard of a story, of a woman captured by a demon and taken to an island in the sea. An army of monkeys led by her husband would liberate her, but that is not the important part.

No. What we must remember is that her husband, the all-knowing, all-powerful Preserver- he did not trust her. Sita walked on flames, that day. She put the name to trial by fire; she stepped out of a furnace unscathed.

She forgave Rama once.

She walked back to the kingdom she had never truly known. Her feet bled a thousand sharp cuts but she didn’t protest- they were only more scars, on the silvered ones she’d had for millennia. Rama placed a crown on her head and Sita was happy.

But then a man said a word, and her husband exiled her.

Really? She wanted to ask. Really? You think slander outweighs your own love? And even if it were your right, that does not make this right.

But she didn’t. She walked away, and forgave him a second time.

Sita gave birth to twin. She loved them with every inch of her heart, but then they walked away. Because she loved, she would give them a choice. They would choose to walk away.

Lakshmi had never hated her exile. Perhaps this was her power: seeing beauty in the blackest of nights. But she had not hated it.

Her sons walked away with the father who had sent her here. She was all alone in a world that she had chosen.

So Sita would walk back under the earth, then; she would hold her silkworms and tend her garden and embrace her monsters. She would weep, because she would always offer up what she had, and it would never be enough for her husband. She would gather the shreds of her dignity and she would revel in the dust, but she would remember her duties, and she would walk back up to the sunlit world again.

The point of this, can you see? Can you look past the injustices? Can you see that there are lies told not only of- for- Sita, but also her husband?

You do not get to absolve a god of his human sins because of the power in his veins and watch as his wife fades into the darkness.

Rama loved her, the stories go, to delirium. Longer than ten years he waited, the stories say. How could he not wonder? How could he not doubt?

But there is a difference between thought and action. There is a difference between quiet uncertainties and trials by fire. There is a difference between walking away from your wife and sending her away.

Rama never brought Sita back. He never told his countrymen that he knew his wife better than any man on the street could hope to. He sent her into the woods with the clothes on her back and his children in her belly.

For his blue skin and his godly self, Rama is called a paragon of virtue. For this, for this, he is redeemed.

Sita walks into the darkness, tears streaking her face.

Let’s talk about a goddess with a beautiful face, a goddess who has so much more running underneath. Still waters run deep, but oceans have whirlpools. Lakshmi knows where every last one lies in the star-studded sea of her kingdom under the earth.

“I am,” she would still remind herself, but this time it wouldn’t be because she thought she could forget to speak; this time it was to remind herself of who she was, who she wanted to be. “I am a goddess. I exist.”

Sita was her first avatar on earth. Her next ones would not be much different, but they were- Lakshmi had taught herself her truths when she was young. She taught herself, now, how to speak while being silent; how to smile without laughing; how to take and not give and never let anyone know otherwise. By the time she joined Vishnu on the earth a second time- as Rukmini- Lakshmi was no longer a puppet, but a master.

There were still nights, of course, when she could only sleep to the sound of waves at her back. There were mornings when she traced silver scars on her ankles, and nights when she fell asleep to the melody of quiet, choked-off sobs.

But Lakshmi would walk out of the darkness and into the light. There would always be the shadows across her soul- gold casts the darkest shadow. But it also gives the brightest glow, and she learned to do the same.

Her choices were her own, even when they weren’t.

She would be a damsel in distress, but that is not wrong, even when others sneered at her- it is who she is. She would be a dancer, a princess, a queen. Lakshmi would learn, first, how to use her pretty face and her kind words to get things done. This, then, she would teach others.

This is her legacy, and it isn’t in gold or beauty.

This legacy, measured in women and power and silence, in careful words and sharper looks, this legacy Lakshmi can be proud of.

This heritage, Lakshmi is proud of.