The Game of Dice

Narada came up to Kailash on a day when nothing was happening, and praised the pair until Shiva asked what he wanted.

"Nothing, lord. A little sport. Two can play dice for great happiness."

Parvati looked at the sage. "What does a man who owns a veena and one cloth know about gambling?"

"Nothing at all," said Narada, rather quickly.

"Then watch. I will play him in front of you."

The first round went to Parvati, and it went fast, and Narada said she had cheated, and Shiva laughed with him. She took the sage by the neck as if to put him out of the hall, let him go, and set the pieces up again.

"Stake something worth winning this time."

Shiva staked the crescent moon out of his hair, his great necklace and his pair of earrings. He lost them.

"Pay," said Parvati.

"I was not beaten," said Shiva mildly. "Nobody beats me. I am invincible."

"You lost, and you do not know what you just said."

"I am invincible."

"To others," said Parvati. "I beat you."

Narada tried to help: the Lord was formless, who could beat him? Parvati said the Lord was famous through her grace and the sage could be quiet. He was quiet.

Then Bhringi spoke, because Bhringi could never watch his master lose. Had she forgotten who burned Kama to ash, and who had to do penance to win him afterwards? Had she forgotten the body she threw away at Daksha's sacrifice?

Parvati turned on him. "You are partial to him, and foolish, and you are telling me what I am made of. I am made of him. Who are you to speak to me? Be without flesh."

And Bhringi, from that day, was skin on bone.

Then she collected more than her winnings. She lifted Vasuki from Shiva's neck, took the ornaments, the moon, the elephant hide, the two serpents from his arms and last of all his loincloth, and the ganas found something to look at on the far wall.

"The sages are laughing at me," said Shiva. "The gods are laughing. Give me back the cloth."

"The Daru forest has seen you with less. A man gives up what he has lost."

Shiva's third eye opened on her. The ganas covered their faces. Parvati did not move.

"That stare is wasted. I am not Time. I am not Kama. I am not my father's sacrifice, or Tripura, or Andhaka. Look as long as you like."

So Shiva got up and went to the forest, where nothing could cling to him, and the household followed as far as it was allowed: Bhringi with the umbrella, Nandi with the chowries, the bull walking ahead. At Siddhavata he sent them back, sat down with Shesha for an upper cloth and Vasuki for a belt, and closed his eyes.

Parvati went to her rooms and hated them.

"Go after him," said her friend Vijaya. "Ask his pardon for the game."

Parvati laughed. "Pardon for winning? Without me he is formless. I made the universe for his sport. Watch."

She went down to the forest as a Shabari, a dark huntress with a bow and a quiver and peacock feathers in her hair. Shiva opened his eyes on her and forgot every vow of the morning. He reached for her hand and she was gone, and he wandered until he found her.

"Who are you?"

"A girl looking for her husband, the lord who knows everything."

"Then you have found him."

"You? You left a wife you won by penance, and you have not one gana left to show for it. Do not ask me again."

"I did not leave her."

She laughed at him, the great yogi who could not be won. He took her hand anyway. "Be my wife."

"Let go. Let go. Ask my father."

She led him up the peak to Himavat and stood by while the lord of the three worlds asked a mountain for his daughter a second time. Narada appeared and warned that young women bring affliction. Shiva admitted he had been captivated and said he would go to some other forest, and this time the mountains and the ganas begged him to stay. At Gandhamadana the sages crowned him, and he sat down on a divine seat with Girija beside him, as if nothing had been lost. Nothing had.

The carvers of Ellora cut the game at least four times into the rock, and never once cut the quarrel.

The grandest is in cave 29, the one called Dhumar Lena, hollowed out in the eighth century. Shiva and Parvati sit at the dice board, and their two faces are in different moods, the carver's one hint of what the afternoon will bring. Round them the ganas are at play, climbing and tumbling, and below the board stands a great bull with a belt of bells round his middle, waiting to be needed. Across the hall, facing it, the same two are being married. Whoever planned that cave set the wedding and the game opposite each other on purpose: the day she was given to him and the day she took everything off him, one glance apart.

In cave 21, Rameshvara, the game is on the back wall of the sanctum, with Ravana straining under Kailash a panel away. In cave 14, Ravana ka Khai, the couple play above while Nandi plays with the ganas beneath them, the bull and the dwarfs of the house tumbling together. In cave 15 they sit on the mountain with four attendants, two of them holding fly whisks, a household at ease on an ordinary day.

What the stone keeps is the moment before anything is lost. No sage has proposed anything yet. Bhringi has not opened his mouth. The moon is still in Shiva's hair and the serpent still round his neck, the board is between them and the bull is below. A pilgrim who had never heard the Purana would see a husband and a wife at a game with the small creatures of the house running about, and would be right. A pilgrim who knew it would see the dice in her hand and know how the day ends, and would smile at the bull, who is about to walk ahead of his master into the forest and does not know it.

There is a reason the carvers chose this and not the stripping or the walk-out. A temple wall is looked at for a long time. The quarrel lasts an hour; the game is the household of Kailash as it is on every other day, the goddess and the god facing each other over something small, with the whole mountain content around them.