Part 8 of 12 · 13 minThe Wives of the Seven Sages

Go outside on a clear night, far from the city lights, and look north. You will see seven bright stars in the shape of a big ladle, or a kite with a tail. Some people call them the Great Bear. Some call them the Plough. But in our homes we call them the Saptarishis, the Seven Sages: Kashyapa, Atri, Bharadwaja, Vishwamitra, Gautama, Jamadagni and Vasishtha.

Now look very carefully at the second star in the handle of the ladle. That is Vasishtha. And if your eyes are sharp, you will see, snuggled right beside him, a tiny, faithful star that never, ever leaves his side.

That little star is Arundhati, his wife. At weddings in our homes, the priest still takes the bride and groom outside after the ceremony and says, "Look, there is Arundhati." Do you know why? This story will tell you.

Long, long ago, before the seven sages rose into the sky, they lived on earth, in forest ashrams. An ashram is a home in the forest where sages live simply, study, pray and teach their students. The seven sages lived there with their seven wives, and together they were the keepers of the sacred fire.

A few days after that terrible night on Kailasa, when Parvati cursed the moon, the Saptarishis began a great yagna. A yagna is a big fire ceremony. The sages sit around a square fire pit, chanting the Vedas, and pour ghee and rice and grains into the flames, and the fire carries those offerings up to the gods.

The wives had work to do too. They cleaned the ground around the fire. They drew kolams, patterns of rice flour, on the earth. They brought the ghee in little brass spoons, and fed it gently into the flames, and kept the fire bright day and night.

The fire, as everyone knows, is a god too. His name is Agni.

Agni is the messenger of the gods. Whatever you offer into the fire, Agni carries it up to heaven. He is bright and warm and always a little hungry, which is why flames dance and reach and lick at the air. And for all the days of that yagna, Agni sat in the fire pit of the seven sages, receiving the ghee from the wives' careful hands.

And, slowly, Agni began to feel something he should not have felt.

He watched the seven wives working around his fire. He saw how kind they were to the young students. He saw how patiently they fed his flames. He saw how happy their homes were, how they laughed with their husbands in the evening. And Agni wished, with a sad and hopeless wish, that those good women belonged to him instead.

You know that feeling a little, don't you? When a friend has a toy you love, and you want it so badly that your chest hurts, even though you know it isn't yours and never will be? Agni's wish was like that, but a thousand times bigger. And because he was a god, and knew perfectly well that it was wrong, he felt ashamed. And because he felt ashamed, he told nobody. And because he told nobody, the wanting grew and grew inside him, until the great god of fire began to grow pale and weak.

His flames shrank. The yagna fire sputtered. Smoke rose where there should have been bright light. The sages frowned and poured more ghee, and it did no good.

"Something is wrong with Agni," said Bharadwaja.

"The fire is sick," said Atri.

Only one person knew why.

Agni had a wife of his own. Her name was Swaha. Here is a secret. Every time a priest pours an offering into the fire and says, "Swaha!", he is calling her name, because it is Swaha who helps Agni carry the gifts up to heaven.

Swaha loved her husband very much. She saw him fading. She saw where his eyes kept going. And she understood, with a hurt she never spoke aloud, what he was longing for.

Swaha sat alone and thought for a very long time. What she decided was loving, and brave, and also, as you will see, a very big mistake.

"If he believes his wish has come true," she whispered, "perhaps his heart will be quiet again. Perhaps he will get well."

So Swaha, who was a goddess and could change her shape, went to her husband late at night wearing the face of the wife of Kashyapa. The next night, she came wearing the face of the wife of Atri. Then Bharadwaja's wife. Then Vishwamitra's. Then Gautama's. Then Jamadagni's.

Six nights. Six faces. All of them Swaha underneath.

On the seventh night, she tried to take the form of Arundhati.

She closed her eyes and pictured Arundhati's gentle face. Nothing happened. She tried again, harder. Her shape flickered and would not change. She tried a third time, with all her power, and it was as if a wall of light stood between her and Arundhati's likeness.

Swaha sat down, amazed. "I cannot," she said. "Her faithfulness is so complete, so true, that nobody can wear her face. Not even a goddess."

And so there were only six.

The trick worked, at least for Agni. His sad wanting quieted. His colour came back. The yagna fire leapt up, bright and roaring again, and the sages clapped and chanted and said, "Agni is well!"

But the forest has eyes.

A young student had been awake one night, fetching water, and he had seen a woman who looked exactly like the wife of Kashyapa walking toward the sacred fire in the dark. He thought it strange. He told his friend. His friend told another friend, but by then the story had become "Kashyapa's wife goes to the fire at night." That friend told a cook, and by then it was "Kashyapa's wife and Atri's wife go to the fire at night." The cook told a woodcutter. The woodcutter told a cowherd. And every time the story passed from one mouth to the next, it grew a little bigger and a little uglier.

Have you ever played the game where you whisper a sentence into one friend's ear, and they whisper it to the next, and by the end of the line, "the cat is on the mat" has become "the bat ate a hat"? Gossip is exactly like that game, except nobody laughs at the end.

By the time the whispers reached the six sages, the story was "your wives have been unfaithful to you. They have been going to Agni."

Now, you would think the sages would simply close their eyes and find out the truth. They were the wisest men in all creation. When they meditated, they could see the past and the future as clearly as you see your own hand. On any other day, they would have known in one breath that their wives were innocent.

But you see, there was something the sages did not know.

On the night the whispers first began, the six of them had stepped outside their huts after the evening prayers to stretch their legs. And Kashyapa had pointed up and said, "Look how lovely the sky is tonight." And all six had looked up at the moon.

Nobody had told them about Parvati's curse. News travels slowly to a forest ashram, and the sages had been busy with their yagna.

Only Vasishtha had stayed inside, sitting with Arundhati, reading by lamplight.

The curse of Parvati, which had been floating through the worlds like a seed on the wind, found six upturned faces, and it landed.

It did not make the sages wicked. It did something quieter and worse. It clouded their wisdom, the way smoke from wet wood fills a room. When they tried to meditate, they saw only fog. And when they heard the whispers, the whispers felt true. Their wives' tired faces looked like guilty faces. Their wives' tears looked like the tears of liars.

So six of the wisest men in the world went to the women they had lived beside for ages and said, "You went to Agni in the night. You have shamed us. Leave our ashrams."

The wives could not believe what they were hearing.

"I never left your side," said the wife of Gautama. "I was grinding rice flour for the kolam. You saw me."

"Ask the fire," said the wife of Atri, weeping. "Ask Agni himself."

But the sages would not ask, and would not listen. And six good women, who had done nothing, nothing at all, gathered their few things and walked out of the only homes they knew, with the whole forest whispering behind them. The birds seemed to whisper. The leaves seemed to whisper. The students turned away when they passed.

At the edge of the ashram, they found Arundhati waiting for them.

Vasishtha had not sent his wife away. How could he? No one had ever whispered a word about her. But Arundhati did not stay comfortably at home. She wrapped her shawl around the wife of Kashyapa, who was shivering. She took the hand of Jamadagni's wife, who could not stop crying. And she walked with them into the forest and sat with them under a banyan tree all night, and she said only one thing, over and over.

"I know you. I believe you. The truth has long legs. It will catch up."

That is what a true friend does. When everyone else is whispering, she sits beside you and holds your hand.

When the devas in heaven heard what had happened, they were horrified. They hurried to Brahma, the Creator, grandfather of all beings, who lives on a lotus and has four faces looking in four directions, so that nothing in his creation is hidden from him.

"Grandfather," said Indra, "the wives of the Saptarishis have been driven out of their homes. The whole world believes they did wrong. How could such great sages be so blind?"

Brahma closed all eight of his eyes, and looked. When he opened them, all four of his faces were grave.

"It was not the wives who went to Agni," he said. "It was Swaha, wearing their faces, because she loved her husband and wanted to heal him. The women are completely innocent."

"Then the sages are cruel!" cried Vayu, the wind god.

"No," said Brahma. "The sages are cursed. On the night the whispers began, they looked up at the moon. And the curse of Parvati did exactly what she said it would. It brought false blame on the ones who looked."

The devas were silent. Then Indra said, very quietly, "Grandfather, if this can happen to the seven greatest sages in the world, it can happen to anyone. The moon rises every night. Every night someone looks at it. A farmer will be called a thief. A child will be called a liar. Soon nobody in the three worlds will trust anybody."

"Then there is only one who can help," said Brahma, rising from his lotus.

So a very long line climbed the road to Kailasa. First Brahma on his swan. Then the devas. Then the six sages, now told the truth, their heads hanging with shame. And then, walking together with Arundhati in the middle of them, the six wives.

Parvati received them in the courtyard. And sitting in her lap, with a snake tied neatly around his round belly, peeling a banana with his trunk, was Vinayaka.

Brahma told her everything. When he finished, the six sages fell at their wives' feet.

"We did not listen," said Kashyapa. "We, who teach the whole world to seek the truth, did not even ask. Forgive us."

The wives looked at each other for a long moment. They were still hurt. Hurt does not vanish just because someone says sorry. But they looked at Arundhati, and Arundhati nodded gently. And one by one, they forgave their husbands.

Then everyone turned to Parvati.

Parvati's anger had been as hot as Agni's fire. But looking at the tear-stained faces of those six women, she felt it cool.

"I did not curse the moon to hurt the innocent," she said slowly. "I cursed him because he laughed at my child."

Vinayaka tugged at her sari with his trunk.

"Amma," he said, "Chandra shouldn't have laughed at me. That was mean. But…" he looked down at the snake around his middle, "I did eat an awful lot."

And for the first time that day, everybody laughed. The wives laughed through their tears. The sages laughed with relief. Brahma's four faces all smiled at once.

Then, from up in Shiva's hair, came a very small, very sorry voice.

"Devi," said Chandra. He had been grey and alone for many nights, and nobody had looked at him even once. "Vinayaka. I laughed at someone for being different from me. It was the ugliest thing I have ever done, uglier than any spot on my face. Forgive me. I will never mock anyone again."

Parvati looked down at her son. Vinayaka thought about it very seriously, the way elephants think, all the way down. Then he nodded.

"Very well," said Parvati. "A curse spoken by the Mother cannot be erased. But it can be made smaller. Hear me, all of you. From now on, the curse shall not fall on those who look at the moon on ordinary nights. It shall fall only on those who see the moon on one night of the year: the fourth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada, Vinayaka Chavithi, the night he laughed at my son."

The devas bowed. The sages walked home with their wives, holding their hands this time. Swaha, it is said, went to the six women herself and told them she was sorry, and they forgave her too. And that night, very slowly, the moon began to glow again, and people slowly began to look up at him again. He was a humbler moon ever after.

Oh, and Arundhati? Because nobody in all creation could even pretend to be her, the gods placed her in the sky beside her husband forever. That is why brides are shown her star, so they remember what it means to be faithful and kind.

But one worried question still hung in the air, and it was the youngest of the devas who asked it.

"Mother," he said, "what if someone sees the moon on Chavithi by accident? What if they look up without thinking? What if they are only a child?"

Parvati smiled.

"Then there will be a way," she said. "But the gods will not find it. It will be found by someone who falls under the curse himself, many, many ages from now."

And far away in time, a boy who would one day steal butter, play the flute, lift a mountain on his little finger, and rule a golden city beside the western sea had not yet been born.