Savitri’s Dilemma: A Retelling

Trigger warning: self harm, mental health, sexual content

A wave of nausea hit me like I was in a dilapidated boat. No one else existed, yet the darkness didn’t feel like a friend. The sea under me, livid, was desperate to swallow me whole.

I’m pregnant with our fourth child and I can’t carry on. There’s another life cannibalizing my body. I dream of a cannon splitting my stomach wide open. I could live, brain fractured from body, neither valuable to anyone but me. Hollow but free. Then the incessant kicks return, reminding me that I was bringing yet another entitled prince into this world.

It was my fault. My husband Satyavan was destined to die within a year of our marriage. I, Princess Savitri, daughter of King Aswapati, decided to marry him anyway.

Life before Sattu was simple. The outcomes of my choices were always rigged in my favor. It freed me up to live in the moment, like a dog. I always enjoyed the first and juiciest mango of the season, napped deeply, swam with the sky above me as open and joyful as I was.

The futility of my life hit me soon after. I could make all these small decisions that seemed momentous to me because my life was one of confinement with the illusion of freedom. I could choose what horse I wanted, what shoes to wear, weigh in on what we should serve at the royal ball. But I didn’t know what it was like to love someone beyond myself. To accept someone with their foibles, their quirks. And that didn’t matter because daddy was to choose a suitable prince for me. It would be a union between him and the prince, and I’d be the face of it.

The string of suitors I met were exceedingly dull. Beady eyes and big guts. They had slipped on the banana peel of time and landed straight into uncledom by their mid-20s. Their parents wrote the script of their lives, advisers strategized on their behalf, servants picked out their clothes. I despised these boys, who earned nothing for themselves. But was I any different?

That thought was what perhaps drew me to Sattu. His dad had lost his kingdom quite foolishly, so Sattu lived in the forest with his parents in a cool treehouse he singlehandedly built. He was deliciously ripped with a messy topknot and a mischievous smile.

But perhaps his best attribute was that daddy thought he was unsuitable on the account of him being poor and susceptible to a quick death after marriage. I felt a deep quiver when I dreamt about sneaking up on Sattu, yanking that topknot loose, my mouth running hungrily down his taut back until he succumbed to me.

“Let’s run away,” I told him, breathlessly, and we did.

I didn’t care that he was fated to die. I didn’t believe in this prophecy anyway. Were people so self-important to think they could utter some nonsense in a sharp voice and it would actually work? Apparently an ascetic had cured Sattu’s mother when she was pregnant with him, but was turned away when it was time to reward him. That’s when he muttered his half prophecy/half curse, before disappearing in a poof of eye-watering smoke.

I could bet all this was a fever dream Sattu’s mom had when she was ill. Let me tell you, my trusted handmaiden Bina was also “cursed” by her jilted lover. He said she’d turn into a toad if she got with anyone else. That was mean, because she already resembled one. It didn't help that she accidentally caught flies in her mouth that perpetually hung open in confusion, admiration or disgust.

Anyway, she was as happily married as she could be to the clueless guy who peeled vegetables in our kitchen. She was still very much a woman by the way. Yup, curses didn’t work and prophecies were designed to drive fear into our hearts, to make us think we didn’t have control over our own lives.

So imagine my shock a year later when I saw the God of Death Yama drag Sattu away. Part of the surprise was that Yama was so young. Barely in his mid-thirties, rakish, deep dimples, a good head of hair. The way he rubbed his hands together nervously made him cuter. You know the rest of the story. I’m quite famous in your so-called modern times for the way I got Sattu back.

I knew Yama had a soft spot for me. Sattu and I were mid-coitus when he swooped in to snatch his soul. Yama let me finish before he announced his arrival. I caught him watching me on top of Sattu. Our eyes locked and I put on a performance for him, arching my back so my breasts jutted out further. My nipples got harder, crinklier, as I soaked in the attention of two men.

Yama cleared his throat from behind the bed when I was done. Sattu leapt up, pushing me off him and covering me with a blanket like I was his secret paramour. I could almost hear his heart beat unrhythmically as he fought to steady it.

“You’re coming with me,” Yama told Sattu coolly after hasty introductions were out of the way.

I was not ashamed of the desire I felt for both men just minutes ago. But as the finality of Sattu’s death began to sink in, so did the possibility of my life ending. I would be banished from the kingdom, live in the outskirts like a vagabond, begging for alms. My royal upbringing, my beauty, my education in philosophy and archery would mean nothing without a husband. The slip-knot in my stomach rose to my throat and I let out a shaky gasp. I flung myself at Yama’s feet. He let me cry while he stared at Sattu and watched the life leak out of him, one twitch at a time.

“There, there,” he patted my head somewhat patronizingly. “We all have to go some day, at least you gave him some glorious last moments.”

“I will be nothing without him, you know that,” I said haltingly, between sobs.

“This is why I retrieve souls when they’re alone, it gets awk-ward when we have company,” he mumbled in a resigned voice.

I thought I saw a veil of distant sadness cloud his eyes as I continued to plead.

“Dear, I can’t give you his life back, but how about I grant you three wishes?,” he conceded.

I felt like I was obliged to use my first two wishes to ask for blind father-in-law’s sight to be restored and for him to have his kingdom back. I could tell Yama was disappointed by my third wish, the one that immortalized me and my story for centuries to come, made everyone hail me as an ideal Indian wife. Pativrata, or extreme devotion to your husband, was a concept born from my actions. I’m sorry about that; I promise I was mostly looking out for myself.

“I know you said I can’t ask for his life back. But I want to bear 100 sons with him, that’s my last wish,” I told Yama.

“With him? Are you sure?,” he said, as we both gazed at a lifeless Sattu, his mouth hanging open ungracefully as he lay slumped to the side.

Yama, realizing he had been outsmarted, shrugged. He had to return Sattu to me.

My husband wasn’t the same after. He claimed he met his ancestors when died for seven minutes. They wanted him to usurp more power, he said. He hiked taxes on farmers so the royal coffers were lush and he could fund more hostile takeovers. He wasn’t around when I gave birth to our three sons, each less than a year apart.

I thought Yama understood that the 100 sons clause was metaphorical. I shuddered. Was I really going to carry 96 more babies after this fourth one popped out?

I heard a chortle so loud that my bed shook.

“Yama, is that you?” I asked, dismissing the handmaidens so we could chat privately. With my husband away all the time, we hung out pretty often. He regaled me with stories of heaven and hell, of times centuries before and after ours.

“Please tell me you’ve come in official capacity, to take me away so I can be dead and free,” I said.

“I can’t let you perish just yet, mother,” a muffled voice said.

“Yama, that’s quite enough,” I said.

“No, I’ve had enough of you,” the voice gurgled angrily, a tiny leg stretching the limits of my womb, wishing it would reach my face. I attempted to grab it but it had already twisted away from me.

“Whining, whining, whining all the time,” it chided me. A hand emerged next, slipping back into place before I could catch it.

“Shame for a hero to be born to such a weak mother,” lips jutted out, pouting, and then melted away like they were made of unbaked clay that had been messed up with too much water.

My screams alerted the handmaidens who were standing right outside. Like a large fish swimming away from the tide, the fetus slithered deeper into a pool of consciousness within me, falling silent.

“You had a nightmare, Rani ji,” Bina reassured me. “You’ve been cooped up in this room for far too long, perhaps a walk in the gardens will do you good?”

“I’m not a bad dream, mother,” I heard the voice again.

“Did you hear that?” I sprung back up.

Bina exchanged a worried look with the junior handmaiden, quick to mutually decide that I was batshit crazy.

“Perhaps you need to rest a bit, Rani ji, maybe we can take a walk early tomorrow then,” Bina said.

The voice would have none of it.

“Walkie time, mother, walkie time, let’s gooo,” the voice said impatiently.

In the weeks that followed, the voice got harsher and more demanding. I suddenly wanted to be held by the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, with her caressing my womb and whispering sweet nothings to me. I began wolfing down fruits that made me break out in hives. The voice implored me to eat mud. It laughed as it made me chew through the tiny stones and sediment. I bit the insides of my cheeks so it could taste the blood I swallowed.

If I fulfilled its demands, it chatted happily, telling me how it was destined to kill its elder brothers and be the deserving heir to the throne. If I ignored it, it got cacophonous, its words pounding the walls of my head, its hands punching me until I did its bidding.

I was held captive in my own body. My thoughts weren’t mine anymore. It could hear everything I was thinking, sometimes even before I could articulate it to myself. I began to train myself to cordon off a part of my mind to myself, to act without thinking so it wouldn’t have an inkling of what’s next.

“You’re awfully quiet, mother,” the voice mocked me one day as I stealthily grabbed a sword. “Are we going somewhere? I’m bored.”

Its hand was quick to grab the hilt of my sword as I was about to drive it into myself. “Not so fast.” Its grip was surprisingly strong already as it wrestled the weapon out of my hand.

“It’s not your time, yet, mother,” the voice said, eerily even-keeled. “It’s mine.”

I collapsed on the bed, sword falling to the ground, wailing from the uncontrollable pain that knocked me out. I was in an empty room, walls rapidly closing in on me. When I was almost smashed together, the room heaved a sigh of relief, walls relaxing just enough to spare my life. When the walls contracted again, a tall shadow looked down at me, growing longer as the walls threatened to flatten me again.

I opened my eyes again, this time in a well-lit room, sun streaming in from the window, a koel bird in the distance reassuring me of the changing seasons.

Bina came in, smiling, wordlessly putting a baby into my arms.

A pair of sharp eyes looked up at me, then went out of focus as it closed again, fussing before sliding into slumber. Bina left the room as I arose to put the child into the cradle. I studied it for any similarity to the creature that haunted me for months. The more I gazed at it, the more my heart softened. It was just a baby, a tiny blank canvas begging to be protected. I caressed its cheeks gently as it continued to rest.

I was about to turn away with a hum building in my throat when its eyes suddenly flew open, a mad glint taking over.

“Oh mother," it said in a soft, sing-songy voice. "I'm hungry!"