Eating Wasps

by Anita Nair

But it was a dry day in Kerala. Apparently the first day of every month was. All liquor sales were halted for the day so men didn’t drink their salaries away and women could cadge enough from their vagrant husbands to pay the rent and school fees, buy the groceries and dock in another instalment for the fridge, TV, inverter, borewell or gold loan.

Once, a long time ago, a powerful king asked the wise men in his court to make him a ring that would help him overcome any sort of tragedy. They brought him a slender band of copper on which was inscribed, ‘This too shall pass’. The king wore it on his thumb and turned it each time a sorrow came to perch on his shoulder. And then came a day when the king fell in love. The skies were striated with rainbows by day and at night, the stars, as big as oranges, were just as luminescent. A hoopoe sat on his shoulder and his love at his side. The breeze blew with the scent of frankincense and, occasionally, saffron and sandalwood. She fed him pomegranate seeds from her mouth and he ate them thinking there couldn’t be anyone happier than him. Then his gaze fell on the ring. This too shall pass, it said.