Sisters Who Bet
Kadru wanted nothing to do with the forests,
marshes that depressed her. Moving
to the cliff overlooking the sea, she sunned
on the rocks waiting for a thousand eggs to hatch.
Vinata collected twigs, built a nest
with wind-swept feathers and dry leaves,
bordered the nest with a levee of sharp stones,
cradled her golden egg in the coziness of care.
Kadru was disgruntled with her lot—she
had asked Kashyapa for a thousand sons,
but Vinata outdoing her had asked for one son
to surpass her sister’s thousand. Jealousy stirred
when Kadru saw Vinata’s golden egg as it lay
on the rock to garner sunshine for five hundred years.
Vinata protected it from the cold sheets of wind,
she built a clay oven where she placed the egg.
When it was time, Kadru’s thousand eggs quivered,
she soon fatigued cracking them open,
and threw away the shells heaped like foam hills.
The serpent babies slipped under the warm rocks.
Not one given to parenting, she fed her babies
for a day or two with rats and fledglings, then went
to her favourite knoll and lay gazing at the clouds
above the sea that changed shapes ever so often.
Annoyed with the clamour of her hungry sons,
she moved close to the sea and walked on the sand.
She saw an apparition on the horizon – just a family
of clouds gathering into a thunderstorm?
Vinata pointed to the horizon: That is Uchaishravas,
Indra’s seven-headed white horse.
Kadru scowled: Not all white. Bet? Let’s fly close to look.
Vinata bet: I’ll become your mistress if it’s not white.
The sisters flew like wisps of breath over the sea,
the fish looked at the sprites waving thin arms.
Like little girls, they giggled and rolled over as their
skirts tossed over translucent marble thighs.
Uchaishravas looked at the two women skimming
the ocean, oblivious to the serpents on his tail;
bidden by Kadru, her sons crawled like lice—black shot
through silver—causing the horse not quite white.
***
Garuda
The shell cracked and the tender
down of the eaglet shone.
Wind on the high mountain moaned,
coils of serpents sunning on the rocks
welcomed Garuda—
the cousins he will kill
for holding his mother in servitude.
***
Soma
Upon the flattened grass
Garuda placed the pot of Soma,
the nectar of immortality
wrested from Indra—
the ransom to free his mother from bondage.
Cautioned by Indra of the catastrophe
should the evil serpents drink the elixir,
Garuda bid his cousins
take a purificatory bath first.
As they slithered toward the river
Indra carried away the celestial drink.
Mad with anger, the hissing serpents
pressed their bellies on the grass
where the pot lay, thrashed in fury,
licked futilely the darbah grass
sharp like a razor, with hope of tasting
immortality, but acquired
forked tongues instead.
***
