Skins

Part Eleven.

'Tell me a story.'

Siddhanth sat outside the Lady of Lourdes. The church was closed, the young woman dressed in white cotton sat on the limestone beside him, hair rich-gold in the sunshimmered afternoon light. Her white skin flushed pink. Her eyes bright. A shining leather box lay in her folded hands. He smiled like a teacher annoyed by a curious child.

'What kind of story?' he asked.

'Creation.'

The hollows in his collarbones steepened. He lay back on the limestone and crooked his neck upwards.

'Shall I tell you how Ganesha, the god of beginnings, came to be?'

'Yes.'

Siddhanth propped himself up on his scarred elbows. 'One day, in a timeless place where gods and earth and heaven were one, there was a goddess named Parvati.'

He sat up, straight-spined, and faced her.

'When Parvati wished to bathe one day, she asked her husband's bull, Nandi, to guard the door and let no one pass, so she may bathe in modesty.'

She gathered her hair over one shoulder and exposed a white neck, rolled between her shoulder and collarbones in silken flesh. Her eyes fluttered.

'So Parvati bathed, with Nandi guarding her, but when her husband, Shiva, returned, Nandi let him pass because his loyalty truly lied with Shiva. Sh--,'

'Could you draw it for me?' she interjected.

'What?'

'Draw it. That way I'll remember it,' she handed him the leather box. Siddhanth took it uncertainly.

He fished for a moment in his pocket, for a tiny fishing knife yellowed with turmeric and saffron. A knife dented with countless wide-eyed fish souls and coconut skin. He dipped the knife into the taut leather.

'She was furious at having been betrayed, and realised she had no one whose loyalty lied with her.'

He curved the knife into the leather.

'Beside her was a small bowl of turmeric paste, used for bathing. She took the turmeric paste,' he ran the flat blade against his tongue and spun it deftly in his hand, 'and into it she breathed the love and intuition of a woman and the strength and fearsomeness of a man, and she created her son, Ganesha.'

When he looked at her, she smiled like a child in Holi. A colourful smile. He handed back the leather box.

'I'll remember that,' she said.