A Heart of Gold

Chapter 1: The Basket and the Boy

Hours of screaming had parched her throat and her lower pelvis burnt with the ache of childbirth. Yet that was nothing in comparison to the beautiful creature she was holding in her arms. He, for it was a boy, had been strangely sticky and dirty, but her faithful maid, the old Dhatri maa, had wiped him clean with a cloth and silently handed him over to her. He'd cried initially, but once in her arms, he quieted down and when she brought him to her breast, his toothless gums had closed around her breasts and suckled. It was ticklish but Pritha did not feel it. All she could see was the beautiful child, her child, and wish she knew what to do.

Dhatri maa, who had gone somewhere, now returned with a small cup of colorless liquid and silently held out her arms for the child. Terror gripped Pritha's heart. "What is that?" she asked.

"Poison, for the little one."

"NO!!"

"He has to die princess!!"

Pritha stared at the boy in her arms, so soft and so sweet, with his slim, dainty fingers clenched in a fist, and his baby toes curled around his tiny feet, and her heart melted.

She looked up at her nurse and saw the weary sorrow in her eyes. "Can we not give him away?" she pleaded.

"And who will take him in?"

"Surely there are childless people who would want him?"

"And what shall we tell them? 'Her royal Highness Devi Kunti has an illegitimate son, could you take him in?'" The words barely managed to stay afloat in the ocean of sarcasm.

"We can say we found him abandoned somewhere and..."

"If you cannot kill him, I will. And if you won't let me do that, then cast him away in the river. If he's to live, he will; if not then the river will hug him in her watery womb."

"But..."

"Cast him away."

The words, final as death, were damnation.

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Hours after Pritha had lost the argument, she stood on the banks of the Chambal river, watching its powerful currents surging past the protruding rocks. In the east, the sky was slowly blushing a gentle red. The child, sleeping peacefully in her aching arms, weighed a ton, and the coarse cloth of the cheap sari grazed painfully around her leaden bosom. Dhatri maa placed a neat reed basket on the ground and hastened to fill its corners with tiny gold ornaments and coins. Then she pulled out a worn red cloth and held out her arms for the child. Despite herself, Pritha's hands trembled.

The motion jarred the child and he woke up with a cry. Dhatri maa immediately got up and looked around, fearful of stranger ears. Pritha brought up the child to herself again and murmured, "Hush!"

A pair of surprisingly sentient amber eyes, looked up at her. His bottom lip quivered. Almost as though he knew he was being cast away, he clenched his baby fingers around the hem of the sari. His eyes filled with unshed tears. Yet, he did not make a sound. Pritha's heart was aflame. Dimly she heard Dhatri maa tell her to sing a lullaby to put him to sleep. She tried to speak, but a teary lump lodged itself in her throat. Dhatri maa took the child from her, gently prising open his fingers, and placing him in the basket, sang to him a song Pritha had heard a thousand times before. Pritha pulled out the pair of earrings Surya had given her from where she had taken to carrying them on her waist, knelt down beside her nurse and attached them to the child's ears. They pierced his earlobe, soft as the simul cotton, and embedded themselves there. He did not scream, nor yell, nor wail. He just turned his beautiful amber eyes towards her. Leaning forward she whispered, "Sleep, my son." And trusting the woman who would shortly cast him away, the baby boy slept.