Day 4: Rarepair
Tagging @sundaralekhan.
Content warning: dubious consent, unequal power dynamics, unethical workplace behaviours, toxic relationships, unrequited love.
1.
“Sairandhri,” Sudeshna calls. “Sairandhri, come help me with my hair.”
Sairandhri comes. She is not smiling, because Sairandhri rarely smiles, and Sudeshna is not pleased.
“When will your husband come?” she asks, because she can, because it makes her Sairandhri flinch, like a wild animal curling into a ball, trying to hide a soft underbelly.
“Husbands,” Sairandhri corrects her. “I cannot say, my lady. Perhaps in another year.
Because it feels good to think her husbands will not come back.
“You should stay here till then,” Sudeshna offers generously. She looks over her lady-in-waiting, with her great dark eyes like lotus petals, and the loveliness of a face indescribable by human words. “It is not safe for someone as beautiful as you to wander unprotected.”
Sairandhri hums noncommittally, and answers not.
2.
“Sairandhri,” Sudeshna calls. “Sairandhri, come help me with my hair.”
Sairandhri comes in quietly, bows. The combs are laid neatly on the dressing table, her boudoir is empty. Sairandhri has to reach around her to get them; and as she bends over, Sudeshna notes, “You seem like you are rather unused to bowing.”
The slim, dark hand over the comb stills only for a moment, but it does, and it does not escape Sudeshna’s eyes.
“Forgive me, my queen,” Sairandhri says. “If you wish to educate me in courtly manners, I will be honoured to be your pupil and learn.”
“You have such refined speech; I do not think I have much that I can teach you.”
“My queen is in a flattering mood.” Sairandhri bows her head. The fingers threading through Sudeshna’s hair tremble.
Who are you? she wonders. You are too lovely to be a lowly maid.
“Who are you?” Sudeshna asks out loud.
“Your lady-in-waiting, my queen,” says Sairandhri, and speaks no more.
3.
“Sairandhri,” Sudeshna calls. “Sairandhri, come help me with my hair.”
Sairandhri comes to her in tears. They streak from her lotus eyes to her dimpled cheeks, dripping from the edge of a sweet, curved jaw. Her lips tremble, her long-fingered hands wring each other.
“Sairandhri?” Sudeshna asks, “what is wrong?”
Sairandhri hiccups, a strangely endearing thing. Then she says, “My queen, your brother– ”
Sudeshna does not hear the rest. She is seized with an anger so great it takes the sight from her eyes and renders her mute and deaf. Kichak! And he had picked her Sairandhri! Were there no other girls in the palace? How did he even see her?
“I told you not to roam around,” she finds herself saying, harsh and stern. “Sairandhri, how could you be so careless.”
“He says I must go to him,” Sairandhri weeps. “He says I mustn’t say no!”
Sudeshna’s heart burns with rage and betrayal. “Then go,” she orders coldly. “It is best not to resist. If you are obedient, he will be kind.”
Sairandhri lets out a howling sob and runs away. Sudeshna’s hair sits undone.
+1.
“Sairandhri,” Sudeshna calls. “Sairandhri, come help me with my hair.”
Sairandhri comes, and she is almost smiling. Did it truly go so well with her brother?
Something hot and sour burns in her chest. Sudeshna does not pry for details. In a way, perhaps this too is kindness.
Halfway through, another maid rushes in, panting. “My queen!” she exclaims, and hitches in a desperate breath.
“What is it?” she demands unhappily. Will no one let her and Sairandhri have some peace?
“Outside my queen!” the maid mutters nonsensically. “Your brother– my queen– !”
Sudeshna runs all the way to his chambers, forsaking custom and propriety. Sairandhri, she is pleased to see, comes along.
Kichak is lying on the balcony, under the open sky, irreversibly dead.
“Who could have done this?” her useless husband wails. “Oh! Oh! What misfortune!”
There is quite a crowd gathered around. Sudeshna turns to her lady-in-waiting. “Sairandhri, is this the work of your husbands?”
Sairandhri says nothing. She does not need to, her smile says it all.
0.
(“My husband has many sons,” Empress Draupadi tells her. “And you have a daughter so enraptured by my husband her father seeks to marry her off.”
Sudeshna looks up at her, unable to believe what she is being offered. And yet motherhood calls her to defend Uttaraa’s honour.
“It is not like that,” Sudeshna protests. “She is only a girl, and fond of her teacher.”
Empress Draupadi laughs, loud and clear as a bell. “I know,” she agrees. “Her and Abhimanyu, they are already pleased to see each other. They will suit.”
“…yes.” Sudeshna looks at her again and again. Even in her royal attire, she is the same Sairandhri Sudeshna has known for over a year.
Empress Draupadi catches her glances with something close to exhausted pity. She looks about quietly, and then tilts her head to Sudeshna’s boudoir. “Will you do my hair?”
Her hair is already done up, pinned and veiled and scented with oils. Sudeshna’s hands sweat; she nods anyway.
They arrange themselves in a strange reversal of roles, Sairandhri seated by the dressing table, Sudeshna standing behind her. There is a sick thrill of shame cutting through her, but even that shame is sweet, and stains the back of her tongue.
“Well?” Sairandhri asks gently, mercifully, and Sudeshna puts her hands on her warm, soft hair.)
