A year was nothing to me, a generation the blink of an eye.
The godlings treated me with respect and admiration, and they brought new life and joy to my shores even as I lay furious in Shiva’s grasp. They played games in the rocky shallows and I sent small waves to caress their glowing bodies. They cooled themselves in my water and I calmed my raging currents to give them pleasure. I could change myself to make the Vasus happy, for we were united in our immortal life in this mortal realm.
Although at first I took little notice of the creatures around me, the godlings took great delight in their varied shapes and forms. In time I brought these friends for my godlings too: Long-snouted gharials that tossed fish into the air, snapping them up, and which the godlings delighted in chasing. Gray-pink dolphins that jumped and danced through my waters, chirping their songs to the godlings, who would chirp back with joyful abandon. Thick-hidden rhinoceroses and elephants, which they would race along my banks. Proud striped tigers that they would wrestle with like playthings. Although this world was not filled with the magic of the gods, I found pleasure in these fanciful inhabitants of the mortal realm.
So it was that when the first humans found me, I thought perhaps we might be friends. It was a sage, Jahnu, who came to me first and drank deeply of my waters. For all I had seen of them from the heavens, humans were strange creatures indeed, walking on two legs and speaking not with their souls but with their mouths. With noises. But the sounds this man-made were not unpleasing. He was quiet, his melodious song blending with the voices of the forest from which he emerged. He drank and drank, as though he would never be sated. He thanked me for coming, for ending a drought. He blessed me, and prayed to Lord Vishnu that my waters might be purified. It was amusing to me then, the way humans thought the heavens worked, but I was also touched. Perhaps there was a purpose to me coming here, if this was what humans needed of me.
It continued in this way for some time, grateful humans flocking to my shores. I gladly gave them water and respite, sheltered them as they swam and scrubbed at their skin, and watched as they wept their thanks to me, whom they called saviour.
The godlings had never conceived of such a notion as a human, but they enjoyed observing them, mimicking their gait and appearance and speech. They played tricks on the humans, scaring them with faces made of bark and leaf, and laughed at their new playmates. But they also sheltered the humans from the storms and heat and wind of the world when they could not shelter themselves. We did not realize then the power of these creatures that had come to us, did not understand that humans could move the land in horrifying synchronicity with their own lives.
The first incident happened far from the river. It took time for word of the event to reach me, to hear the anguish of the Vasus, who had loved that particular grove and given it the full attention of their gifts. Why? they asked me, crowding at my banks as the panic spread among them. Why?
They congregated around me, for they could sense the endless depths of my power. But I could not help them, for held by Shiva as I was, I could not even observe the humans’ actions. My awareness did not reach so far.
But eventually, the humans cut their way to my banks.
They came with tools, fashioned out of rock, and struck the wood off the trees again and again. Of course, we had seen lions hunting deer by my banks, watched river sharks lay waste to fish and stingrays. We understood such things for pure animalistic survival. But this was different from the stalking of prey, the skilful dance of life. Lions did not eat with restraint, but they ate to live. When the splinters flew from the trees and they bled out their lifeblood in sluggish sap, there was no reason for it. The humans let the waste litter the forest floor, intent only on their prize. It was a deliberate, chosen violence.
The humans did not eat trees. They slept sheltered under the sprawling awning of nature. These humans had no will we could touch, no divine strength, but they had a well of desire so deep we could hardly fathom its depths. Surely, I still believed, this was as fleeting as the rest of the whims of mortal creatures.
If you stay by me, you will be safer, I told the worried Vasus. Even so, I knew they would not abandon their groves, those sacred places where their power shone brightest.
Come to me when you need to.
The next time word reached me of the humans, it felt as though the godlings had only just left. But the humans had built something out of the trees they stole, had smoothed the wood and placed it in new configurations to shelter themselves. I could see, grudgingly, that this had its use for their frail bodies, and I thought perhaps this would be the end of it. They would be content.
But that contentment we knew in the heavens was not the lot of the humans. I might have pitied them for this restlessness, for the ambition that clearly burned a ceaseless ember in their souls, if they had not hurt the Vasus so. They set their sights on a new goal, on becoming the master of all they surveyed, and so they cut down the forests to make fires of their own and fight the land itself. The ground burned so the humans could grow fat, could plant their crops in uniform rows rather than rely on the earth to nourish them.
There was one Vasu whose very breath made the earth grow greener, and when he watched the forest burn, he threw himself headlong into my waters. It burns! he cried out, and his anguished pain became my own. But I was unable to stop it, or shield him from pain. The other Vasus followed, retreating with him into the safety of my presence.
It was as though their immortal souls had aged at what they had seen. They were the best things this world had to offer, and the humans discarded their bounties as though they were worthless. I would protect the godlings, for without them I would be alone.
Excerpted with permission from Goddess of the River, Vaishnavi Patel, Hachette India.
