Playing Goddess

As little girls in Durga Puja recitals,
Preparations began with rubbing an icecube on the face.
To freeze drops of sweat and welcome
Thick strokes of stage makeup.
Overdrawn kohl, lipstick pasted on our mouths and then
Rubbed on the apples of our cheeks as we were told to grin but
Instead we frowned and squirmed.
Innumerable pins, pulling back short hair from the hasty masterpiece of our faces.

But a solemn calm came over our restless, nervous energy
As we sat to have our hands and feet painted in aalta.
My mother uncorks from her precious, wrapped bottle that she has carried back from Calcutta,
Its glass now a deep ruby red,
A few drops of brilliant magenta in a tiny bowl.
With an earbud, she starts painting in the middle of my palm, barely touching, the stubborn dye with a golden gleam.
All of us are instructed to sit absolutely still in observation (or catch a nap) and touch nothing,
While the shock of red fills our hands.
It is a delicate red, it has always been and it bathes me in a strange, self aware bloom.
The shock of red confuses and quitens me, the shapes in their simple geometry and their glaring significance.

When dancing, the red glares back, even to those sitting in the last row.
We step in formation to create Durga at her fiercest.
We are told to heave and seethe in the anger of the Goddess, enraged.
This makes all the difference.
Tell an eleven year old this and she acts,
Tell a twenty one year old this and she recounts.

After the dance, we are relieved, giggly, twiddling the oversized bangles.
Our aalta smudges on our borrowed laal paar,
Taints the egg-roll, the best loved greenroom snack,
Bleeds into the lines of our hands,
Blushes on all it touches.

That night we wash our hands extra hard,
Rubbing the aalta off our palms.
It doesn’t leave the rim of our fingernails,
This stubborn red.
So we let it stay and the next day,
The army of girls playing goddess
Heads to school,
Carrying the last of the pink divinity
In their sweaty palms.