For Leanna Renee Hieber, a choker jewel

 

Once upon a time, so long ago that streams ran thick with silver, and the sun shone in rays of molten gold, an old woman squatted on the green, flower-choked bank of the Sarasvati River and scrubbed fancy clothes for patrons far more fortunate than she.

How she hated this work! Her back ached, her hands were chapped and calloused, and the caustic soap made her eyes sting and her throat burn.

More intolerable still was the company. A nosy sort, the old woman fed on gossip and speculation as readily as on dal and rice, and the other launderers’ chatter was as bland as it was stale. Of what interest to her were the younger laundresses’ squabbles over a mealy custard apple or the absent-minded launderer’s loss of his spectacles for the hundredth time?

Yet the old woman had no recourse but washing to earn her daily chapati. She had mastered no skills, studied no letters, and possessed naught but a mud hut that threatened to melt away with each subsequent monsoon. And so she laundered and listened, laundered and listened, and laundered and listened day in and day out, grumbling all the while.

One summer morning, as she toiled to remove a recalcitrant stain from a pampered child’s embroidered choli, the old woman glimpsed a blue-and-green bangle gleaming in the water. Her breath caught. Could it be something so precious, she might sell it on Deepavali and quit her profession at last?

However, when she plunged her arm into the current, her fingers brushed not gems but rather scales as brilliant as sapphires and emeralds. Their owner recoiled in surprise, its slit-pupiled eyes shining.

The old woman snatched up a stick and would likely have struck the lovely snake, had it not opened its mouth and hissed, “Lay down your stick, kind crone, and not only will I relieve you of your burden, but I will ply you with secrets as none but the royal family know.”

Despite her alarm, the old woman carefully appraised the offer. Although she would have opted for a bracelet she could exchange for coins, she tossed aside her stick, relinquished the choli, and inquired, “Who are you?”

“Such a query should never pass your lips,” scolded the snake, “not now, not ever. Should you press the matter, you shall see neither scale nor fang of me again. Consider it enough that I am your friend.”

The old woman bowed her head in acknowledgment. A serpentine friend was better than no friend at all, to say nothing of one willing to assume her tedious work. Resting her elbows on her knees, she focused on the snake, who detailed how the raja’s multiple clandestine attempts to cook the rani a meal had nearly poisoned her in the process.

At the story’s conclusion, the old woman glanced up to discover the sun setting on the horizon, as orange as a mango, and her heaping baskets of laundry washed, dried, and crisply folded. “How can I possibly repay you?”

“My terms are simple,” said the snake. “Meet with me tomorrow at dawn.”

“Consider it done,” she said, then hefted her baskets onto her shoulders.

This happy arrangement proved a balm to the old woman’s scabrous hands and scratchy throat as well as to her tattered temper. She soon began to regale her fellow washermen and washerwomen with depictions of the rani’s ornate gold and jewels, the raja’s crimson turban and immaculate mustache, their palatial court of peacocks’ calls and plush cushions, until they grew as real in her listeners’ minds as their own mud huts and plain repast.

As summer yielded to autumn, the snake turned from its dwindling supply of rumors to an ample trove of traditional poems and songs and tales. Fictional though they were, they more than satisfied the old woman’s hearty appetite for drama. She especially loved hearing about the exiled rajkumar who traveled from village to village, town to town, spinning stories to pay for his lodging. The trite gossip she had previously relied upon paled in comparison.

But how had a serpent, of all creatures, learned such lore?

With each poem, each song, and each tale, the old woman’s curiosity swelled, and by daybreak on Deepavali, she could no longer restrain herself. “You can be no ordinary serpent,” she suggested, “to so readily list the rajkumari’s chosen lovers and so confidently identify which of her enemies the rani treats with behind closed doors.”

The snake flicked its tongue in warning. “Pursue this no further, my friend. You will surely come to rue it.”

“But I must know!” she cried. That particular secret, juicy and enticing, tempted her above all others, above even the much-sought-after source of the rani’s cedar-smooth skin. “Who are you, and how have you come into possession of such arcane knowledge?”

Hissing, the snake blurred, and suddenly a handsome, well-muscled man stood there, his midsection wrapped in a snakeskin of sapphire and emerald.

The old woman marveled at the sight. “A naga!” Legend held that, should a naga ever find himself stripped of his snakeskin, he would be as the thief’s own thrall, obliged to perform their bidding.

“Such is my secret,” the naga said, and in his voice she heard only sorrow. “I am a rajkumar of my kind, evicted from my home and sentenced to wander. Alas, in learning this, you have broken our bargain, and so I must depart.”

“No!” she argued, already regretting her stubborn inquisition. “You must stay!”

For with each poem, each song, and each tale, the princely naga had undulated his way deeper into the old woman’s heart, forming a foothold at the center. To lose that friendship and resume her banal existence would be to bathe in the vile soap she had vowed never again to touch.

The old woman had no intention of violating that vow.

The naga sighed. “Hear me well. You have enjoyed the narratives I have imparted to you, yes?”

“Very much, but—”

“Bandits are coming,” he announced, “bandits with a spell to plunder and spoil. I have bequeathed to you what little I could, and now you must protect those narratives. They are more precious than all the gold coins in the royal treasury.”

“But—”

He vanished, and a hush as heavy and stiff as a helmet stretched across the kingdom.

First the launderers ceased their prattle. The farmers and the cooks and the cowherds soon followed. Then the merchants, and next the nobles, and finally, by dusk, even the royal family had fallen silent. No children sang, no elders told stories or recited verses. Worse, the Festival of Lights though it was, not a single lantern had been lit.

The naga had spoken truly: Bandits had indeed stolen the poetry, the songs, the tales—the collective pulse of the people. In doing so, they had stolen the light. Without stories, there was no inspiration, no hope.

And yet the naga had transferred as many as he could manage to the old woman before she had foolishly pried from him the lone truth he could not speak, and so disrupted their deal. If only she had heeded his counsel!

What was she meant to do without him?

Morose and desperately missing her friend, she roamed the desolate city. Empty diyas, their clay shape barely visible in the dark, lined the roads on either side. They should have been burning against the night, a constellation of flickering flames that illuminated the path.

The grand palace itself stood shrouded in the uncanny gloom, its lamps extinguished, its walls bare of gold and garland. For such a festive night, the grounds were bereft of joy, of sweet sellers, of laughter and dancing and games.

Yet what the palace lacked in revelry, it more than compensated for in iridescent pearls. Hills and hills of them towered as high as the parapets, glistening in the beams cast down by the crescent moon. The old woman spied a band of looters exploiting the absence of an audience to load up their carts. But where had the pearls come from?

As the old woman drew closer, they whispered fragments of odes and lyrics and fables in her head. The stolen stories!

When she spotted the naga among the hoard, his head lowered in shame, his hands bound behind him, and his waist stripped of his snakeskin, she was certain of it. The snakeskin hung carelessly from the handle of a cart as if thrown there.

Fury like the diyas’ absent flames flooded the old woman. Not only had these bandits pilfered public property, but they had also robbed her of her friend, and her friend of his dignity.

While she had no sword to wield, she was far from defenseless. The naga had entrusted his stories to her for safekeeping, and if the old woman had learned one thing in her lengthy and labor-ridden life, it was that stories were for sharing, not stashing away.

Slowly, then assuredly, she repeated the lore gifted to her, and as she did, pearls leaped off the piles and vaporized. Finer than silk, brighter than snow, every syllable a treat on the tongue, they were a summons to remember.

The snarling bandits brandished their sharp swords, yet the old woman held fast, recounting and recounting.

First the launderers appeared. The farmers and the cooks and the cowherds followed. Then the merchants, and next the nobles, and finally even the royal family, who, like the naga, had been shackled into submission.

Though a knife pierced the skin of her throat, and a drop of blood trickled down her chest, still the old woman did not stop.

“Remember,” hummed the poems, the songs, the tales, “remember.”

The would-be murderer lifted his blade to her neck, preparing to sever her head from her body. Before he could strike, the crowd surged in to shove him aside and shield the old woman. So secured, she spoke and sang and recited, her voice soaring through the black sky.

“Tell us,” someone cried. “Tell us how we might help you!”

“The pearls!” shouted the old woman. “They are your stories! We must reclaim them and break the spell!” She loudly launched into the victorious homecoming of Rama, Sita, and Lakshman to Ayodhya, the triumph of Krishna over the vicious Narakasura, and the end of the Pandava brothers and their wife Draupadi’s exile, all of which gave rise to Deepavali. For each poem, each song, and each tale that settled into the listeners’ hearts, a pearl dissipated and a diya kindled.

Already the old woman could sense the change in the air, a slackening of the shroud over the realm. Recharged by the recitation, the crowd advanced on the bandits, who trembled and fled, abandoning the piles of pearls. Still speaking, still singing, still reciting, the old woman rushed to free the naga of his fetters and untie his skin.

His voice, liberated once more, chimed in with hers.

“You did it,” he said, his face awash in astonished admiration. “You saved them.”

“You showed me how,” countered the old woman. She averted her gaze while the guards freed the royal family, not wishing them to suspect she knew their secrets far better than they would prefer.

Knotting his snakeskin about his waist, the naga considered the slightly shrunken mounds of pearls. “Every one of those must be reinstated among the populace. It is their birthright.”

The rani, unmoved by the declaration, glared at him. “Guards, seize this naga! He aided and abetted those bandits who imprisoned us.”

“He did no such thing!” protested the old woman. “They used his snakeskin to compel him! He had no choice.”

Yet the guards were already swarming around the naga, preparing to haul him to the dungeons.

“I charge you with the mantle of lore keeper,” he called to her. “You must travel and distribute those stories to the world, teaching them to the people once again. Only then will the remainder of the pearls dissolve.” Then he transformed into a snake at the guards’ feet as if to slither into the shadows.

“Not without you!” said the old woman, and she ripped the glittering scaly skin from the snake in one great flourish, revealing the rajkumar within. “Your Majesties, you malign an innocent man.”

As swiftly as she could, she flung the snakeskin toward the naga, ensuring none would ever use it against him after that night. She could have burned it in a fire, she knew, but she had grown quite fond of her serpentine friend and would not bind him to one body any more than she would be bound to a trade she abhorred.

“What is this?” demanded the incensed raja.

“I rescued the kingdom,” said the old woman, “and I desire a reward for my service.”

The raja nodded. “Speak, then.”

“But I only did so with the aid of this reluctant marauder. Pardon him and permit him to travel with me. Together, we will restore the lore to the land and its people.”

The rani contemplated the old woman’s words. “Yes,” she said. “I believe that is precisely what we need. We will store the pearls as long as is necessary for you to complete your task.”

The naga joined his palms in thanks. “All blessings upon you, Majesties.”

The rani set a silver ring with the royal seal on each of their right hands, then bade them a formal farewell. “Go forth, then, as our representatives.”

Such a clangor the fireworks made as the pair of lore keepers strode away from the palace, a susurration of stories already spilling from their lips and springing into their ears.

“Well,” said the naga, knotting his snakeskin about his waist, “I suppose you wish to hear just what the bandits blathered about during my stint among them?” With that, he embarked upon the telling of his newest chronicle.

The old woman grinned at him, quite pleased with her fate. Not only would she have the most fascinating of companions at her side for the foreseeable future, but with as many poems, songs, and tales as waited to be returned to the people, she would never be forced to wash another patron’s fancy garments for the rest of her days.

© 2025 Shveta Thakrar