For this was Shiva’s little joke to keep the matter for ever in the mind of Durga’s Father, Dokhio.
We sat on the great quiet roof in the cow-dust hour while the latest Mother-in-law among us told the story.
She meant it, I think, for the special benefit of Boho, the ten-year-old Bride; and she was gratified, for Boho caught her breath in great gusts at this bold coercion of a husband. Nothing did the story mean to her save that—punishment for such sacrilege.
But Kamalamoni looked up smiling from a game with the household tyrant—her Nagendra—aged four.
“It is not thus the story hath its ending,” she said.
“Then tell the rest, Kamal.” But Kamal was better occupied.
“And how calls the horse, my son? and how the dog? and the cat? and sheep? And,” roguishly—“and how the great grandmother when in anger?” Till she of many years claimed Nagendra as her fee for such impertinence and Kamala was forced to tell her tale.
“And how should story end which wails no dirge for death of wife?” said Kamala, hotly. For opinion is but experience crystallized. “When Durga’s soul left her body thus early, it wandered to the mountains of snow, and finding on the threshold of sense, the empty house of a new-born babe, it entered it.”
Uma was the name by which its parents chose to know the child; and Uma grew strong and beautiful, gentle and good, with no memory of Durga the Ten-Headed.... And, one day when she had come to her woman’s estate in our kingdom of life, and was playing with her waiting-woman among the swans beside the lotus-beds, an aged Priest-man appeared before her, and falling at her feet, said, “Durga Mother, thy Lord of Destruction fasts and prays sorrowing for thee: go and tend him.”