The Light That Became a Woman

The war had lasted a hundred years.

At the end of it Mahisha, the buffalo demon, sat on Indra's throne, and the gods were walking the earth like men. He had taken the sun's work and the moon's, the fire's and the wind's, Yama's and Varuna's; whatever office there was in heaven, he held it now, and the gods who had held it before had nothing to do.

They went to Brahma, and Brahma took them to Vishnu and Shiva.

"Hear what Mahisha has done to us," said Indra, and told it from the beginning.

Vishnu's face darkened as he listened, and Shiva's, and Brahma's with them. Out of the faces of the three, out of the anger in them, a light came, and from the body of every god in that assembly another light came to meet it, and the lights ran together into one mass that burned like a mountain on fire.

Then it was a woman, and her brightness filled the three worlds.

Her face was of Shiva's light and her hair of Yama's. Her arms were Vishnu's, her waist Indra's, her legs Varuna's, her feet Brahma's. The three eyes in her face were the Fire's, and her ears were the Wind's. Every god had a part in her, and every god now armed her.

Shiva drew a trident out of his own trident and put it in her hand. Vishnu made a discus from his discus. Varuna gave a conch and a noose; Agni a spear; Vayu a bow and two quivers full of arrows. Indra took the thunderbolt from his fist and the bell from the neck of his elephant Airavata. Yama gave his staff, Brahma a rosary and a water pot, Surya his rays, Kala a sword and a shield, the Ocean garlands and a lotus, Vishvakarma an axe and armour, Kubera a cup of wine, Shesha a garland of serpents. Himavat, king of the mountains, gave her a lion to ride.

"Victory," the gods said.

She laughed. The laugh filled the sky and shook the earth under it; the seas rose and the mountains moved. Far away, Mahisha heard it.

"What is that?" he said, and went to find out, with his whole army behind him.

They found a woman of light with a lion at her side, and they attacked her.

Chikshura came first with his divisions, then Chamara on an elephant, then the rest of the commanders, each with his thousands. She cut their weapons in two with the rain of her own. Her lion went through the ranks as a fire goes through dry grass, and the hosts that came from her breath cut the army down behind it. Headless trunks kept fighting. Rivers of blood ran, and flowers fell from heaven.

Chikshura's sword shattered on her arm. The lion took Chamara's head with one paw. The rest went down to rocks, mace, arrows and trident, until only the buffalo was left.

Mahisha came at her in his own shape. His hooves tore the ground; his horns threw up mountains. She threw the noose on him and he left the buffalo's body and was a lion. She cut the lion's head off and he was a man with a sword and shield. She shot him and he was an elephant, dragging at her lion with his trunk. She cut the trunk and he was a buffalo again, and the three worlds shook with his bellowing.

The goddess lifted Kubera's cup and drank, and laughed, and her eyes went red.

"Roar," she said. "Roar while you can, fool, for one moment, while I drink. The gods will do the roaring when you are dead."

She leapt. Her foot came down on the back of his neck and the trident went into him. He strained to leave that body one last time and was halfway out of the buffalo's mouth when the sword took his head.

The army broke and ran. Gandharvas sang, Apsaras danced, and the gods with Indra at their head praised her: the cause of the world and what held it up, Lakshmi and Gauri and Sarasvati and Durga in one, gentle beyond gentleness and terrible beyond terror.

"Choose a gift," she said.

"You have done everything," said the gods. "Only this. When we remember you in trouble, come."

"When you remember me, I will come," she said, and was gone.

In Bengal the autumn goddess is not a woman made of light. She is a daughter who married a poor man, and the story is her mother's.

Menaka, queen of the mountain king Giriraj, had given her daughter Uma to Shiva and had never stopped minding it. He kept no house. He lived on a mountain of ice with ash on his body and nothing in his hands. One autumn night Menaka dreamed of her daughter, thin and far away, and on the same night, the singers say, Uma dreamed of her mother.

Menaka woke her husband.

"Go and bring her home."

"She is a married woman," said Giriraj. "She has a husband and a house of her own. What will people say if her father comes begging at the door?"

"Let them say it. I will not leave her on that mountain another autumn. Bring her, and she will not go back. If he comes for her, I will tell him to his face what I think of him."

So Giriraj went up the mountain and came down with his daughter, and her children behind her. When Menaka saw her at the gate, every hard thing she had meant to say went out of her head. She fed her. She dressed her. She oiled her hair and sat her down and looked at her.

"Now you are home," she said. "Now you stay."

"Three days, Ma. He has let me come for three days."

"Then send for him too. Tell him there is new cloth here, and sweets, and as much bhang as he can drink. Tell him he is welcome."

Uma sent the message. Shiva did not come. He had not forgotten how her father had spoken of him in the old days, and he would not sit in that house as a guest.

Three days are short. On the ninth night Menaka would not go to bed. She sat by her daughter and begged the night to last, begged the lamps to keep burning and the sun to stay down. The sun came up. Uma put the children in a line, touched her mother's feet, and went.

That same morning the whole lane carries her image to the river. The married women put vermilion on her face and on each other's, and the image goes down into the water, which is the road back to Kailash. Next autumn the dream comes again. The same visit is kept in the west and the south, by a girl in Rajasthan and a wife in Karnataka, and that is told in Gauri Comes Home.