Sita's Ascent by Vayu Naidu

creation about structure or control from
     your point of view?’
    The luminous figure glided on the
     owl’s wings as it flew across the clearing to its favourite tree.

Lava

    The first memory was never about words.
     It was sensation. Sleep in a warm fluid. Swimming. Kick-dancing, ever buoyant. It
     was perhaps dark, but then it was a great and deep sleep with some fleeting
     impressions on a mind not yet conscious. Sound? Yes. The first consciousness of not
     being alone. Or a sense of a presence around and out there. It was the sound of
     ticking. Ti-dhik, ti-dhik, ti-dhik, and on and on it went through the timeless
     swimming, with each instant, as the tiny body grew cell by cell with sap from
     Sita’s body. Then there was a voice that was familiar and constant.
     Sita’s humming. Resonant and rising from the depths with a musical air.
     The familiarity with the sound started a chord of communication for the tiny body
     when it heard the hum, and, like a snake charmed by a piper’s melody, it
     would pause from the great float and kick-dance. Sita would place her hand on her
     belly sometimes with laughter or would say, ‘Did you enjoy that? Want to
     hear some more? What would you like for dinner tonight?’ and the
     call-response of words from the outside in and kick-dancing from within to the
     outside would start again. It was the primal choreography of sound rhythms and foot
     flexes as dance, and an eternal dialogue of heartbeats and the motion of life.
    The brave new arrival into the world was
     dependent on the ripening of all body cells. Sita’s body was ready to
     release this configuration of a complete body from a dark, warm, fluid interior to
     an exterior of air and light. The head coming out through a contracting and
     expanding cave-shaped ring of flesh. For the tiny body, its eyes shut tight, it was
     sound alone that marked the first difference between the experience of the interior
     and the exterior.
    What a whirr, so different from the
     sound of the eternal swimming. Only later would he come to know they were human
     voices crying, singing and cheering, happy and exhausted. Then a tight slap on his
     back. It was the first trauma of air and sensation and flinching skin—a
     great change from being inside fluid and floating. The tiny body’s eyes
     opened. Now the sensation had changed, and it was of the warmth of a human hand, of
     being held. The tiny body, all crinkly, was being wiped clean as it screamed and
     kicked at all the dryness; having come out of a snug wet interior, this felt too
     prickly and dry. With his first gulp of air, the one sensation that took over all
     else was hunger.
    Hunger was screaming within him; the
     hunger to live. As the boy came into life, screaming in affirmation, his inner eye
     opened. The space he entered was bathed in light, and standing in the doorway was a
     luminous figure who touched the boy’s forehead. From that moment on the
     boy named Lava always saw a white luminous dot between his brows. He also remembered
     the moment his eyes first opened when he was born, and at times the sensation of
     swimming before his birth. As the luminous figure left, Lava heard around him the
     sound of ocean waves like the fluttering of owl wings. He saw his mother
     Sita’s face. The moment she took him in her hands and soothed his tiny,
     trembling body, holding him up to her face, and started humming
Om Namo Narayana
, he could recognize the resonant hum from when he was
     inside. His being registered this touch as
home
, safe
     from all others and embedded it in his memory as ‘Amma’.
    ‘Sita,’ said
     Urmilla, overcome with emotion, ‘he is every bit like the sun, born at the
     break of dawn. He will dispel every kind of darkness.’
    ‘Yes, my lovely darling will
     hold up truth like a mirror! May that always be your armour!’ replied Sita
     exhilarated, forgetting the agony and exhaustion of her labour till a few moments
     ago. She was made to