Brocade

There was a girl named Aksha. She was neither beautiful nor ugly, just perfect, like a drop of water on a leaf early in the morning. The drop of water reflects light and shivers, perhaps with the terrible knowledge that the rise of the strong sun, means its death, but it is perfect in the moment. Just so was Aksha.

She was quiet but had a laugh that many compared to the gentle tinkling of anklet bells. Her skin was like velvet, though on the left side of her forehead had a rough, dark, birthmark, about the size of a twenty-five-paisa coin. Her hair was thick and black, though it never grew past her waist. She could cook for a month, without repeating a dish, though her daal was sometimes too watery. She liked going to the cinema, but would never pester her parents to take her. These are the qualities what made her perfect. Perfect because her faults would never let her grow too proud of herself and her accomplishments. And that was a prized quality indeed. News of her perfection spread like ripples on a stream.

Just as it is with all perfect girls, there were many takers for her hand, in marriage. One after another suitors and their parents sent in their representatives. At times there were so many old women sitting in her parents' courtyard that one could be forgiven for thinking that youth never lived within those walls.

"The boy is a gem. He will keep your daughter like a princess…a queen," said one.

"A gem huh?" scoffed another, "is that because he was in the big house for stealing from the jewelers shop?"

"Now look at this proposal, Aksha's mother. This boy is mature and well settled."

"Mature? He is at least fifty years old and has only one good eye and one good leg."

"So? Better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave, I say."

"Of course, and then quickly become the old man's widow."

"Stop it you old crows," said a middle-aged representative, "now look at this one here. Has a job, looks good too, fair as an Englishman, and lives with his parents so his expenditure is not too much. He saves a lot too."

"Yes, yes, accept that proposal," said another, "but don't come after me when you realize that his mother is a witch. They are just looking for an unpaid maid. And he is tied to his mother's pallu. Your daughter will be miserable there, mark my word."

The proposals and rebuttals went on for so long, that poor Aksha, listening from behind her door, felt her head spin.

For the first time she felt a certain dread at the prospect of marriage. Who would be this person she would spend the rest of her life with? What would he be like? Would her parents ask for her opinion? Would she like this man and his family? Would she…love him? And if so, how would she know she loved him?

This last question ate away at her, until she lost her appetite. Her mother would sit by her side and urge her to eat.

"Eat, daughter. You are wasting away. Look at you? Boys don't like girls who look like dried up mangoes. Come, eat. I made your favorites." She would urge her until her patience would start to drip away.

It was when Aksha would look at her with wide-open eyes, that she would become angry. "What has this world come to? Here I am urging a full grown girl, a woman really, to eat. Instead it should be you, waiting on me, and then on your husband's parents." She burst into tears, watching the decline of her perfect girl.

She wondered if she should call back some of the representatives and accept one of the proposals before it was too late. She was just not sure what to do.

"What is it? What is eating away at you? You are a lucky girl to get so many proposals. I would have died with happiness at your age, if I had so many proposals. Come on now, tell me."

She continued to wheedle, until one day, Aksha looked at her right in the eyes and asked, "Ma, how do I know I love him?"

"Love whom?"

"Whoever you select for me to marry."

"You want to love him?"

"Yes, but I want to know how I will know that I do?"

Her mother slapped her hands to her forehead in shock before lamenting, "Hai…these movies have rotted your brain. Like a worm they have crept inside my perfect daughter's heart and mind and spread their poison. You love whoever you marry. None of this dancing around trees…Oh, that I would live to see such a day. Why didn't you just kill me, you… you ungrateful girl?"

From that day forward, her mother would sigh heavily and deeply every time she would look at her. Sometimes she would glance in her direction and say, "Ohhh…may the Lord take me now."

Aksha went about her daily business though she still did not eat enough to keep a gnat alive. Each day she could see the bones in her face protrude until she could see her skull. She would feel her ribs and count them one by one.

One day, her friend Nirpa came to visit her.

She giggled as she said, "Oh ho, who are you pining away for, huh? Getting all skinny. Dieting huh?"

Without waiting for a reply she exploded into conversation.

"Anyway, I came to invite you for my wedding. Here is the card. Pretty na? My father picked it out of fifty different ones. You should come and see my clothes. So beautiful. And look at my mehndi. My cousin sister's sister-in-law made the designs. It's really great, right?"

Aksha smiled patiently as she admired the card and her red-patterned hands and promised to visit her to see her clothes and jewelry.

"Can I ask you something, though?" Aksha asked.

"How do you know you love him?"

"Who?"

"This, this Amit person you are marrying," she asked, glancing at his name emblazoned in gold on the gaily decorated card, splattered with auspicious yellow and red.

Nirpa's face betrayed her total and utter shock, "Hai Aksha, where do you come up with these things? He is going to be my husband and I will love him. Anyway, I have many more cards to deliver. You'll come no?"

After Nirpa ran out the door, Aksha went back to her thoughts, crumpling the invitation between her fingers.

As her hands churned butter, with her mother, her mind roiled and threw the question around. As she washed clothes, scrubbing dirt out of the wet folds, squeezing out the water, her heart tried to wrap itself around the problem. Picking stones out of rice, washing utensils with coir and ash, bathing, dressing, even sleeping, the question remained: "How will I know I love him?"

She lay on the rough, wet grass on a river bank. The

fingers of one hand teased the water, while the other stroked the

textured grass. Lying between earth and water she closed her eyes to

capture a perfect moment.

The wind changed direction ruffling the tall grass. It stoked the waters,

making ripples peak into tall waves. The sky turned dark with anger,

readying itself to unleash its emotions in a flood.

"I'm cold," she whispered, to herself, and perhaps to the gathering wind.

Suddenly she felt a warmth over her, as someone slid a thick, fluffy quilt over

Her body. She felt enveloped in a gentle fire that warmed her

from the inside out.

"Thank you," the words came slowly as she was pushed into

comfortable sleep. Her hands stroked the fine weave of the quilt cover,

as she tried to see the person who had covered her up. But she could not open her eyes. She just could not.

"I have to see you," she whispered over and over again, struggling to remain awake.

"Please let me see you. I have to see you," she tossed and turned in her bed, coming awake with a start. She could hear her father's snores from the courtyard, where he slept during summer nights. Sleep was slow in returning to her that night and many nights thereafter.

Far away, in a land beyond the seven rivers lived Harja. A weaver by trade, he had learned to turn skeins of thread into cloth by his father who had been taught by his father before him. Weaving was his life.

As he ran his callused hands, criss-crossed by healing and fresh cuts from the threads he handled every day, he felt a sense of anticipation. Perhaps it was the thought of going to the twice monthly village fair. After selling his cloth, he would indulge himself there by eating spicy chaat and then going on the giant wheel. Clamping his hands to his ears, he would let loose a piercing scream to drown out the giggles and screeches of the children on the ride with him. He felt rejuvenated each time he did that.

He lived alone since his mother and then his father had died suddenly, before finding him a wife for company. In fact, his father had died before being able to teach him all the fine intricacies of weaving. He knew how to manipulate cotton thread into rough cloth and could even weave passable silk and satin, but he was not as fine an artist as his father had been. It was hard for him to take the beautiful flowers and ferns he saw in the world around him and turn them into silk and satin on his loom. He had tried a few times. Once he had tried to weave a beautiful, single, pink rose into silk on his loom and had instead ended up with a mass of knots that loosely resembled a giant pink cauliflower.

His father had been an artist, a true artist. He would spend days walking around, looking for beauty to catch his eye. Once, Harja remembered, his father had spent a whole week staring at a river bank full of reeds, with tiny short-lived flowers blooming within that nest of swaying green. When he returned home, he dyed silk thread in exactly that same luminous, lush green for his warp. He worked furiously transforming other colors of nature into threads for his weft.

It was only after the skeins had been readied that he began work on a length of fine brocade. Harja would sit by his side watching a vision of beauty come to life.

Unfortunately, the chilly air by the river had turned his father's lungs into ice water and he died barely two weeks later, gasping for air. He held the brocade in his hands before summoning Harja over to sit by his bed side.

"Complete this when you are ready, only when you are ready," he gasped, before his lungs gave up the fight.

Sometimes when Harja felt alone and restless, he would unfold the fabric and watch it for hours.

It was a world of nature. Silvery snake-like streams ran throughout it, converging in the center of the fabric, into an unfinished broad, twisting mighty river that reflected the light of the moon above, and the colors of the flowers around it.

Some nights when he stared at the brocade in the candlelight, he could see the flowers sway in the wind. He swore he could even see tiny dew-drops glistening on the petals and leaves. The ripples on the water of the river felt cool to the touch.

Filling his hands with the cloth, stroking its smooth and silky texture, he would imagine how it would look when completed. His hands could not get enough of feeling the cloth and he would have to force himself to put it away for fear of spoiling it.

One day, he vowed, when he was ready, he would set it up again on his loom and complete his father's vision, with silk thread.

From then he was on a mission, filling his mind with visions of colors and fantastic fields of flowers. When he traveled to different places to sell his cottons and rough silks he would talk with other craftsmen and artists to learn as much as he could about the art of making brocade.

"So, now, if this silk thread is my warp, how many threads can I use as weft?" he would ask. Or, "what is the best way to dye silk so that the color does not run?"

Gathering pieces of knowledge, building upon his own burgeoning imagination, Harja started to create a continuation of the unfinished brocade in his mind.

His waking thoughts as he worked at his loom, making cloth, were of the beautiful piece of art he would complete. Even when he was not at his loom, his hands were constantly in motion, as he mimicked the exact ways he would weave his masterpiece. Even while dreaming, his mind played and re-played its completion.

Warp, weft, knot, scrape down…his hands fly over the loom. A brilliant poppy

emerges from the silk, next to the glimmer of the river that he continues to weave,

down the center of the piece. Slender reeds, bending in the wind

line the banks.

And there, connected to both reed and river, someone lay. He squints

his eyes against the fast gathering gloom of an approaching storm. It's a

a girl, a perfect girl, one hand playing with the ripples, the other stroking

the reeds next to her.

But what was that? A frown of discomfort? Yes, of course, the wind

was gathering the cold of the river into its cheeks, blowing it out again

shiveringly cold. She is feeling cold. Holding the completed brocade

in his hands, now fashioned into a luxurious quilt, he walks toward her.

'What is the color of her eyes?' he wonders, wishing he could look into

them.

Aaah, her eyelids, are beginning to flutter, getting ready to open.

Covering her with the quilt he waits for their eyes to connect.

She whispers her thanks trying to see him. The wind

gathers strength, pushing him away from her. He can hear her voice,

saying over and over again, "I have to see you," but the rage of the

storm carries his strength away with it.

His breathing ragged from fighting the dream storm, he awoke as the first light of dawn began to color the sky. He was ready, finally ready.

He started working on the brocade that instant. Then one day, he cut it down from his loom and looked at in the light of the waning moon. The liquid river flowed over his callused hands, slippery as the fish that lived in it. The flowers, raised from the silky background, caressed his fingertips as he traced their silken petals. Poppies and roses of many colors sprinkled throughout the fabric made it come alive.

"I was ready father, and now it is complete," he whispered into the breeze that carried his words away. The fluid cloth, heavy with vision and dreams, shifted in his grasp.

Aksha stood by the river as the sun began to dip into it, turning it into a rosy-gold serpent of fire. A slow-moving silhouette came toward her, silently cutting through the water. She waded into the shallows waiting for the boat to come ashore.

A man sat in the boat, beside him a few large bundles. He rowed straight toward her, stopping his boat when he was a mere foot away.

'Her eyes are black as midnight, flecked with moonlight,' he whispered aloud, as he looked into them, while dragging the boat onto the packed sand.

"What?" she breathed.

"I have something for you," he said evenly, catching his breath at her perfection.

She looked at him wordlessly, as he opened one of he bundles. There was cloth, bales of cotton and silk and a few pieces of patterned satin.

And then, as she looked on, he drew from the jumble of cloth, a quilt made of nature. A river and streams and reeds and flowers, in perfect balance with each other.

"That is how I know," she whispered, in wonder, as she took the offered brocade quilt.

"This is all I can give you," he said to her, drawing the quilt around. Her fingers traced the path of the river that ran across her shoulders.