It was Shailaja’s misfortune to be constantly upbraided. No matter what she did or what she didn’t, early or late, now or never, someone found fault. Nor was it her habit to rail against those accosting her. She absorbed every insult which soaked into her small dark frame, concentrating them into a vile vial of future retribution, nestled benignly beside her gentle soul.
Well might you imagine how Shailaja was treated when flickering moonlight insinuated itself in her long, black hair. It chanced during Durgāpujā, on the evening of daśamī, shortly after the immersion of the Durgā image. While the others joined in the celebrations, she stood by the river and combed her tresses, calming her inner turmoil. Fate ordained a wayward moonbeam to enmesh itself in the tines of her comb and weave itself into several strands. She never noticed.
When she returned home her step-father furiously berated her.
“What mischief is this?” he cried, his breath reeking of cholai. “How will I rid myself of you in marriage if you cannot even take care of your hair?” And when she asked what he meant, he reached out and grabbed the moonlit strands, intending to shaked them in front of her face. But as he tugged up she rose with it, immediately growing more than a full foot in height. She gasped from the feelings this engendered within her.
This so startled her step-father that his fingers loosened. Shailaja slipped free and fled out the door, dashing between the houses in the village. His roaring imprecations filled the air behind her, fading in the night. She did not stop her headlong flight until she stood once more upon the verges of the river. Studying herself she uncovered no evidence that she stood any taller than her normal height, and assumed that whatever had been done was now undone.
Shailaja gathered her hair and examined in, discerning nothing of this unwelcomed radiance. Not until she turned from the bright face of the moon, casting a shadow, did she discover the new strands entwined into her tresses. They felt no different from her own hair, but flickered with a inner opalescence, like cold fire.
She recollected gazing directly into her step-father’s eyes, and the unfamiliar sensation that seized her body. The knot of darkness pressed against her soul stroked her curiosity until it ignited into action.
Grasping the luminous hairs she pulled down upon them, and then to the side. But nothing happened. Shailaja combed her fingers through them, curled them around her hand, studied them intently to win from them whatever magic they contained. In whispered words she beseeched them to repeat what they had done. And with that thought in mind she gripped them in her right hand, and tugged straight up.
In the twinkling of an eye Shailaja grew a little more than a foot taller. Intonations of raw power surged through her veins, causing her to writhe in unexpected ecstasy. With a cry like a frightened bird she released the enchanted strands, and slowly lost the height gained, dwindling back down to her accustomed form. A glance at the moon reassured her, and let her regain her composure.
Returning home was out of the question, but after years of abuse Shailaja was used to that, and had a place well-hidden to spend the night. She touched her hair, uncertain if this was intended to be a gift or a curse. She needed time to think.
Voices interrupted her reverie. Men calling out to one another, with her step-father loudest of them all. Shailaja quailed. The woods were far, and in the moonlight there could be no hiding. She turned to the river, and started towards it. Perhaps it would carry her in its currents.
A cry froze her in place. Her step-father appeared in the moonlight. In his fist he gripped a large machete.
“I’ve found her!” he cried, and he advanced towards Shailaja . More figures appeared, uncles and cousins, and men from the village. “See what I told you?” said her step-father. “See the demon lights in her hair? Hold her, and I shall remove it!”
There was no place to run, no place to hide. The men surrounded her. With her back to the river Shailaja held out her hands and appealed to them. “It is a gift from Durgā! I have had so little in this life. Do not take from me the only magic I have ever known.”
But the faces of the men were hard, and offered her no hope. With her heart pounding, Shailaja grasped her hair within her hand, and locked eyes with her step-father. “Approach any closer and I will only be answerable to the goddess.”
“What goddess would have you,” sneered her step-father. “Take her!”
With a silent prayer Shailaja pulled up on her hair as hard as she could. Before the astonished men she grew, her moonshadow reaching out towards them like an accusing finger. Her once small frame swiftly gathered height. In three heartbeats she stood twice as tall as the tallest man. Some stepped back, calling out for protection from evil. Her step-father roared in drunken anger and leapt forward with the machete raised high.
Shailaja lightly sprang over the men, landing with enough force to shake the earth. Her hand never slackened its grip, and she steeled herself against the intense passion wracking her body. From a height of four men she spun about and gazed down with dark eyes, while the knot of long held retribution throbbed and beat against her soul.
The village men were forced to tip their heads back, their eyes wide with fear that mounted in accordance with her ever increasing height. Her sandaled feet crunched ominously as they expanded over the rocks and braken lining the river, the fronds shaking before vanishing from sight.
Eight men, standing one upon another would not have sufficed to measure Shailaja ‘s increasing immensity. Some of the villagers dropped to the ground in abasement. Some leapt into the river and swam away. But her step-father snarled a prayer to Maya to banish all illusion, and sprang at her toes, swinging his machete.
Shailaja deftly tipped her colossal foot up onto its heel, and as her step-father tripped and slid forward, she pinned him beneath it weight. From her vast height he looked like a bug, and the knot of wrath clutching her soul urged her to press down.
But she held back, smirking as her uncles tried to extricate the trapped man, pulling on his arms, screaming up at her to release him. And all the while her toes continued to grow, and her step-father felt the rough surface of her sandal sole expanding against his body. Ten men in height, twelve, fourteen. Shailaja’s youthful body crowed with savage vitality. Gusts of raw, unbridled power threatened to unseat her reason. But she never loosened her hold on her hair, and she continued to increase in size with every passing breath.
The very earth submitted to her sovereign presence, crunching and sinking beneath her feet. It took considerable effort to pin her step-father down without crushing his guts out. For the first time since the ordeal began Shailaja lifted her eyes and looked around. Glancing over her shoulder she spotted the hearthfires near to her village. Little dancing flames, like licking tongues, marked the locations of other villages. The moonlight shone like burnished silver off the canopy of trees, drawing her eyes towards the horizon, and the distant spires of the city.
Shailaja felt it more than ever, the implacable growth of her body. Even as she watched the view changed, revealing to her more and more of the world. Twenty men would not have sufficed to match her height now, and the feelings suffusing her body urged her to writhe in wanton pleasure.
Looking down Shailaja gasped when she was unable to see the men by her toes, and for a moment thought the worst. Lifting her foot she permitted a smirk to flash across her lips. Her sandaled foot had grown over them, but tipped as it was, did not press them flat. Her uncles sought to restrain her step-father, whose enraged screams reached up to her as a faint and distant annoyance.
Fighting the dark desires cozening her soul Shailaja lifted her foot higher and stomped down with all her strength. That foot, nearly the size of a bus, slammed violently against the riverbank, missing the men by scarcely more than two yards. The impact hurled them aside, sent them tumbling over each other in a screaming jumble of bodies. Shailaja laughed in delight, and stomped again, this time with her other foot. The ground shattered. Huge clods of dirt whirled into the air. The waters of the river jostled and churned as repeatedly stamped the earth around the men, pounding it, filling the air with thunder.
And all the time she tugged on those magical hairs, increasing her height, taller than thirty men now, and imbued with unlimited power. Shailaja’s stomping became a dance. The men cowered and screamed as she beat the earth around them, hammering out her passion with colossal resolve. She danced as Shiva might when calling down the Yuga. She danced as if she was Kalli, triumphant over a fallen demon. She whirled, and danced, and grew, and grew.
The darkness kissing her soul unknotted and spent itself in a paroxysm of wrath. Shailaja assailed the very rocks with all the long years of her subservience. The river danced with her, hurling gouts of water high into the sky, boiling and roiling, splashing over the terrified men. Shailaja let go of her hair, lifted her fists into the sky, and screamed defiantely. Her voice resounded and echoed to the horizon.
She panted as she looked down. Her brow furrowed until she spotted the mud covered men, struggling like worms in the effluvium cast up from the river bottom.
“I have decided to leave home,” said Shailaja. A pang of doubt at those words darkened her heart, but looking at the world anew from her vast height, she banished all questions with a smile. “It is my desire to leave you with the most useless thing in all the world. So you may keep your lives.” And unable to resist the impulse, she pressed her massive sandaled foot onto the thick mud, squirting and splashing it over the trembling villagers.
It was easy enough to step over the men and the river. Shailaja ignore their wails as she strolled through the forest, crushing trees beneath her feet. She had no destination in mind. Perhaps the city would be fun to visit. It didn’t matter. She was on her own, and for the first time in her life felt capable of anything.
As Shailaja walked she dwindled in size. But though her body’s size diminished, her heart grew great within her, and the glory of her smile shone like the sun.