don’t know, Krishna, it doesn’t feel right to me. It isn’t honest.’ Maggot’s brow furrowed around the rose-coloured circlet that she habitually wore. ‘I don’t like it at all, hiding away, in secret.’

‘But Maggot, most people can’t see you anyway – you’re permanently hidden from almost everyone,’ Krishna glanced at his partner sideways, checking to see if his point had been convincing. It had not.

‘If it’s not a secret, why have you not told the other monks about me? Why do you have to sneak away to spend time with me and make up excuses to fool the other monks and novices? You’re even proud of how clever your lies are. They can’t see me because I’m a kinnari¹, but they can see you and besides, whether they can see me or not, I’m sure they would not approve of a monk having a girlfriend.’

‘But that’s just it!’ Krishna grinned, ‘Since you’re not a “girl” but a “celestial being” it’s not against the rules – at least I’m pretty sure it’s not² – well, not for monks anyway. I’m only nineteen Rains old, so I’m not a full monk yet and I’ve never heard anyone say a novice should not have a partner who’s a deva.’ As he was saying this, he was aware that he had made sure that he had not told Khujjuttara about his relationship with Maggot. She was a much respected lay follower of the Buddha, and a friend of Krishna, but she had no abilities to see devas and Krishna had not wanted to risk her disapproval. On account of this he had ‘neglected to mention to her’ this partnership with Maggot. His other elder mentor, the ragged monk Dusaka, who was from some remotely related spiritual tradition, seemed to be aware already that Krishna and Maggot were lovers but for his own reasons had not scowled at or scolded them for this. He was always difficult to read and could never be second-guessed.

‘Well that’s not a surprise,’ she grumbled, continuing to be unimpressed, ‘how often does the subject come up in an average conversation? And isn’t the monastic life based on “brahmacariya” – everyone in the monastery living as brothers and sisters and not having husbands, wives, partners?’

‘You know, Maggot,’ Krishna, fully determined to push his point, now tried a different angle of attack, ‘there’s this theory about the word “brahmacariya”– it can mean “divine conduct” and they like to translate that as “celibacy”, no love-partners and so on, but it also means “walking with the gods” or “going with the holy ones” – don’t you see? You are one of the divine ones, you are a goddess, so if I “go” with you, I am in fact following the “brahmacariya”. It’s right there in the word.’

‘So, why do you have to pretend to the other monks that you are doing other things when we are spending time together – I don’t get it.’

‘Well, it’s a philosophical problem,’ he looked at Maggot sideways again, testing the effect of this proclamation.

‘Oh,’ Maggot stretched out her legs meaningfully across the width of her nest. She leaned back on the weave-work of branches, looked up through the leaf-canopy of the Ghositarama forest and laced her fingers behind her head. ‘This sounds like it will be interesting. Please go on,’ she fixed Krishna with a stare that was equal parts innocent flower and hawk surveying a rabbit, ‘I can’t wait to hear this.’

Krishna settled himself into a niche of branches, his dark face alight with the relief of at last talking this all-important subject through with his belovèd, as well as with some trepidation that it might go in a direction that he was keen to avoid.

‘You see,’ he leaned close to her, ‘the truth is…’

‘The truth?’ Maggot raised an eyebrow, well-knowing Krishna’s ability to make presumptions and to be ‘certain’ where a guess would be more realistic.

‘Alright, how I see it is that the Master only keeps up a front about all this “abstaining from sexual desires” stuff because that’s what’s expected of the traditional monks’ life. The Buddha secretly approves of seeking sensual pleasure but only pretends that the standard is celibacy and renunciation for monks and nuns because that is what society expects³. It’s because he has to get along and work with all those life-negators that things appear to be set up in the way they are. Those who are in the know realize this and are aware that the Master in truth sees that such life-affirming ways, like the pursuit of love and pleasure, are all beautiful and good.

‘After all, what about his teachings on “The Middle Way” and his rejection of the old ascetic path of self-torture – doesn’t this all shout loudly that he is a lover of life and not one who would deny or oppose it?

‘The Master’s message is the very spirit of freedom, breaking through the tight shell of austerity and life-denial.’ Krishna warmed to his theme. ‘That spirit, that urge towards enlightenment, is the life-pulse of the universe⁴ – how could it go against our love for each other? Don’t you see how our being together helps us to drink in that spirit, helps us to emerge from our small-minded habits? In fact we should always reach for that spirit, that life-impulse – to have it sooner, to always seek for more – this is the Way, the Great Mangala! I know it!’ Krishna’s eyes were alight with inspiration.

‘But I don’t like to feel that it all has to be secret,’ Maggot’s sincere and open gaze met that inspiration and followed it back to Krishna’s heart, ‘don’t you understand that?’

‘I do. But, you know, I like the excitement of it – don’t you? You are my gorgeous, succulent forbidden fruit – Jambu-sirivanna, “Beautiful Radiance of the Rose-Apple” is your proper name – see: “Jambu”. It’s even there in what you are called⁵,’ he smirked.

‘I prefer being a “maggot” to being “forbidden”, thank you.’ She smiled at Krishna, enjoying his artless, excited innocence if not his message. ‘It makes me feel bad too, the idea that the Master might be deliberately deceiving people.’

‘No, it’s not lying,’ Krishna jumped in, leaning forward with his hands now on Maggot’s knees, ‘it’s what we call “skilful means”, as it has a noble cause in mind⁶. It’s not the whole of the story but more like a tale made up for children, like the Tooth Fairy. When they’re ready for the truth, they will be let into the secret.’ He felt he had finally got his point across but could see there was disquiet still written through the look on Maggot’s face.

‘One thing I don’t understand,’ his tone changing as he leaned in, ‘is why you have become all worried about this now. We’ve been together here at Ghositarama for more than a year and you’ve been fine with the coming and going in my monk’s robes and splitting my time between you and the routine of the monastery. What’s brought this on, about how you and me are together?’

As his words formed, the eyes of his celestial partner looked downwards. ‘I’m not happy mainly because it’s not just the two of us any more.’

‘Why should that be a problem?’ Krishna seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘The fact that your kinnari friends, Ant and Bee, and Gumby the yakkha, are around all the time now? Hardly any of the monks and novices can see them either, and even if they could, why does that make difficulties for you and me? I don’t get it…’

‘No, you don’t get it!’ Maggot now glared at him and, stretching the rose-pink film of her gown tightly over her (slightly-larger-than-usual) midriff, she arched her back and brought her bowing, navel-free belly up level with his nose.

‘Speaking of shells and emerging from them – look! It’s not just the two of us now; soon we’ll have a hatchling to think of as well⁷.’

---

To their mutual delight Sugandhi and Jayanta had been married in Kulluta, on a day rejoicing in many marks of good fortune, not long after Krishna had left the village. The wedding had cost her parents a large slice of their fortune, the bulk of it going on the elaborate and extensive purification rituals needed so that a girl from the lowest ranks of candalas, the matangas, the animal slaughterers, could wed a member of the sudra caste. The boy was the Headman’s son too so that, in addition to the priests, the dowry to Jayanta’s parents had been extortionate. Even then his mother – known by all as Mata-ji – still twitched an uncomfortable nostril at the ‘arrangement’. There were the appropriate smiles and inclinations of the head but the signals below the orders of propriety were that: ‘The girl is disgusting and probably spiritually polluted, despite all the ritual cleansings, but never mind… I have no objections to the match.’ The gold coming from the girl’s family stemmed from her father’s role as the appointed Royal Slaughterer; he was responsible for the care and eventual dispatch of warhorses injured or too old to fight, as well as the pasturing of brood mares and foals for the King’s stables. Caste-wise the family could not have been lower but the gleam of coin had won the argument when Jayanta had declared the girl to be the one he wished to be his bride.

The house that Sugandhi and Jayanta lived in was at the north end of Kulluta, on the steep western bank of the rushing Vipasa River, so it was one of the first ones to catch the morning sun as it climbed above the Himalayan foothills to their east. The air was fresher here – well away from the rank fume of the knacker’s yard where she grew up – but still it was tinged with odours of conflict. Mata-ji was always on her back correcting her clothes, the food she cooked, her speech, even the way she walked – nothing she did was ever right. Things had eased up a bit, Sugandhi admitted, when her fertility had been proven by motherhood now being imminent. The endless clucking litany of corrections were now interspersed with occasional self-satisfied crowings, which surprised her as it seemed that Mata-ji had forgotten that it was her daughter-in-law that was the mother-to-be, not herself.

The improvement of mood around the house was tempered in Sugandhi by a concern that only she was party to. She was anxious about the forthcoming child, as any mother might be, but for reasons unbeknownst to her husband or anyone else:– That ‘goodbye kiss’ with Krishna turned into a little more than she had planned, and his skin was darker than baked-on blood at the bottom of the vats. What colour was her baby going to be?

It was with great relief, when her daughter was born, that she saw the infant’s skin was not blue-black like Krishna’s. Rather, in what she took to be a small miracle – and perhaps revealing her own wished-for royal ancestry, as she had often fantasised that she was in truth ‘The Lost Princess of Taxila’ – the baby girl was blessed with the fair complexion her mother most admired.

‘I think I’ll call her Harittaca-Kumari, “Princess Golden-Skin”,’ she reflected. For the sunny, big-eyed child, who now smiled up at her, had the golden colouring of a mango.

---

Maggot was not the only kinnari in the Ghosita forest with an unusual partner. Her friend Bee had settled into a colourful and occasionally raucous relationship with Gumbiya, a yakkha who had once threatened to eat them but who had, in the process of helping to rescue her sister Minti from a grisly death, saved Bee’s life and won her heart. Then there was Ant, the third of the kinnari companions who would have loved to make a nest with Ninka, an exotically beautiful deva from the heights of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three Gods⁸, had she been given the chance. Ninka’s duties in the Thirty-Three meant she needed to make an appearance there from time to time; this should not have been a problem had not time itself been problematic: when Ninka ‘slipped away for a few minutes’ from Ghosita’s forest, those ‘few minutes’ in the Thirty-Three were several seasons long⁹, even a whole sun-turning, in the Human Realm.

Gumbiya was a few cups of nectar-mead into the retelling of one of his favourite war stories – the volume consumed matching the likelihood of him forgetting that he had told Bee the tale before – when Ant arrived at speed at their nest among the trees.

‘Bee, come quickly. Maggot’s egg is on its way – now!’

With impressive agility, Gumbiya dropped his cup, stepped outside the broad branch-woven nest Bee had made with his help, and expanded his form to almost tree-height. Gently picking up both Ant and Bee in his rough-clawed hands – without pause in the fluidity of motion – he sprang aloft and shot across the forest to where Maggot and Krishna had their place, buried deep in the undergrowth at the far edge of the trees.

The moment of the ‘first birth’ had come whilst they were on their way. An aura of weary peace hung over Maggot and her nest; Krishna sat beside her wide-eyed and open-mouthed, while in her lap, nestled and swaddled in layers of petal-film and flower-down, lay the opalescent jewel of Maggot’s egg.

Kinnari are called the ‘twice born’ not because (like the brahmins) they have a physical birth and then a ceremony to make them ‘proper brahmins’ but because like birds, or flowers, they are born twice. Flowers and trees produce seeds or nuts, birds lay their eggs and so do the kinnari. The child remains egg-born for the first three Moons, while it quickens and grows within the shell, then when it is fully formed and ready for the open air, it breaks the shell and is born its second time.

Gumbiya put Bee and Ant down with as much care as he could, then shrank to as compact a human size as possible. He was never going to be trim but he could fit into the narrower space with all the others if he tried. They crowded around.

Maggot glowed with joyful pride, with Ant and Bee either side of her, stroking the radiant colours of the eggshell together. Krishna was still agape; despite being very aware that his beloved was an earth-deva, a kinnari, part of him was expecting a child to be born like other children. The utter strangeness of Maggot producing an egg, and then the iridescent beauty and size of it, fully boggled his mind. And what made it even more amazing was how normal it seemed to Maggot and her friends:– He loved her and he loved… it… but it was an egg… which was pretty strange… for him at least. Love and confusion.

---

‘What is it?’ Loni, one of the smaller children asked.

‘I don’t know,’ the eldest and tallest, Dinka, replied, trying to edge up a tree-trunk to get a better look. ‘It’s bright and shiny, but its colours keep changing, like a rainbow on a bubble of soap. It looks like a stone – its shape stays the same…’

Bhima drew close through the bushes, looking down for snakes and giant centipedes as he made his way.

‘I can’t see!’ complained Dido, ‘someone lift me up,’ this was a common occurrence for the smallest of the friends from the village, out on their daily mission to gather grass and leaves from the forest for animal-feed.

Dinka, the leader of the gatherers hoicked tiny Dido onto her shoulders so he could see through the dense shrubbery and tangled vines.

‘Oh,’ now Dido had the best view of them all, ‘it looks like it’s floating on air. It’s a big coloured stone and it’s in a kind of huge nest – and it is in the air, like a bubble…’

‘Let me see,’ Loni elbowed her way forward, past her sister, trying to peer through the confusing mass of leaves and branches. ‘Look! The way it changes colour – they’re all moving around. What is it?’

‘It’s an egg,’ a firm and friendly adult voice spoke from behind them. ‘It’s a deva’s egg, to be more precise, that of a kinnari – one of the flower spirits.’ The children all turned, ready to be scolded, but the wrinkled and ragged monk smiled broadly.

‘Be quiet and respectful, and maybe you’ll be able to get a little closer. Come this way.’ Dusaka led them around the side, to Krishna’s secret entrance to the nest. He was there with Maggot on a visit but sitting off in the shadows, and the two of them had been chuckling at the wonder-filled conversation of the village children. It was Maggot herself who had suggested Dusaka invite them in.

‘Come on,’ Dusaka beckoned them into the narrow open space within the tangled bower. He sat himself down on a branch to one side and the five youngsters gathered round the mysterious presence. To their eyes the opal-coloured egg floated – its shell shimmering and glistening with ever-shifting hues – about a hand-span above the soft flower-down and moss-like lining of the nest. In reality it sat cradled on Maggot’s lap but as the children could not see her, it seemed to hover like a strange jewel from another realm, like one of the nine gems of the Bejaratana¹⁰, which in a way it was.

Maggot smiled in warm appreciation at the five wide-eyed, bedazzled children. One or two of them glanced at her as if they could almost, from the corners of their eyes, discern her outline and see her face. She lifted the egg that contained her precious child and gently moved it towards them.

Dusaka asked, ‘Who would like to offer a blessing to the new baby? It will emerge from its egg very soon.’ Five faces turned to him. ‘Any of you?’

‘Us?’ Dinka was shocked.

‘We can’t give blessings,’ her brother Bhima chimed in, ‘we’re not brahmins or monks and nuns who follow the Buddha. We’re just farmers from the village.’

‘According to the customs of the kinnari,’ explained Dusaka, ‘all beings are considered to be of equal nature; all friends and visitors alike are invited to offer a blessing.’

One by one, in order of age, the children came up and laid their palms on the warm shell of the egg: Dinka, Bamba, Bhima, Loni and Dido. Close up, the egg was fragrant as well but none of them could say just what that scent reminded them of – a flower, spring mist, the earth after rain – petrichor – there was no name for it but they would not forget it either.

Five pairs of grubby hands, fingernails dark and broken, were laid in turn upon the nascent child, blessing and being blessed in return.

---

Krishna had his arm round Maggot, the two of them transfixed by the gurgling newborn in her arms. The nest was crowded. Ant and Ninka sat on one side while Bee held up a finger for the baby to grab on to.

Gumbiya sat behind her, wedged on some thicker branches while Rhamba and Salassa, of the lineage of heavenly dancers and musicians, wove protective charms and spells to ward off all ills, spinning and undulating through the air around them.

‘What shall we call her?’ Maggot was asking herself as much as Krishna beside her, looking into the child’s new-hatched yet ancient eyes. ‘What’s your name, little one? Half-human and half-kinnari that you are.’

Her skin was tawny and her few tufts of hair were copper-lit in the morning sunbeams, sieved by the bower. ‘Her hair is just like my sister Tamba’s was – almost red when it catches the light,’ said Krishna.

‘Should we call her that, “Tamba”? Or would that be a bad mangala, inauspicious?’ Maggot smiled as she mused.

‘How about “Tambaka” then?’

‘It’s close enough to honour her memory but different enough too. She was my sister, after all, and even though she did a lot of bad things¹¹ it wasn’t all her fault, and she had many wonderful qualities too. I’d like to remember her in a good way and this pretty little mite can be a way for us to do that. Are you happy with that?’ Krishna was not sure that this was wise but it seemed so right at the same time. He looked sideways at Maggot to gauge her response.

‘“Tambaka”, is that who you are?’ Maggot touched her finger to the baby’s lips.

The newly-hatched girl lifted her hand to her mother’s and smiled, her eyes flashing bright fire, like shining metal.

Notes & References