The High Priestess Never Marries: Stories of Love and Consequence by Sharanya Manivannan

Author:Sharanya Manivannan [Manivannan, Sharanya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Short Stories (Single Author)
ISBN: 9789352640881
Google: uj5RvgAACAAJ
Amazon: 9352640888
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Published: 2016-10-19T23:00:00+00:00

The first thing I made for myself was a mango orchard. The first thing, in my entire life, that I dared to give the world stamped with my name.

The rootstocks of the Mysore Badami arrived in a beautiful wooden box, wrapped as though they were bijoux of glass. With them came three nursery trees, four feet tall with coronas of dark leaves that I held delicately between thumb and finger and stroked. It was a sensation I would repeat three and five years later, with a more vivid intensity, with the births of my children. But that day, when my first trees came into my life, was the first time I came close to that feeling.

When I had to ask for the blossoming eucalyptus to be chopped down, I had known nothing of agriculture. I thought it was a heartbreak, but the advice was irrefutable. The eucalyptus would drain the soil, allow little else to partake of nourishment. Only by relinquishing it could I create lushness.

So there, in that newly cleared apportionment of land I had staked out and claimed, I planted.

I placed the contained trees into the furrowed earth and buried their roots. Then I moved on to the rootstocks. And finally, the seeds I had unhusked and disinfected in the sterility of the city and carried with me like tender offerings. I held their curved weight in my palms and almost kissed each one before I concealed them in the soil. I was embarrassed by the ceremonial dignity and emotion with which I worked that day. I thought Shravan’s uncle and his bevy of attendants would laugh at me, but of course they did not. Eventually, I understood: they already knew.

Two days before my wedding, I stole away and drove down to the farm by myself. It would be almost a year before we moved in finally. Only the foundation of the main building had been laid, but there was a caretaker’s quarters and the cowshed, and a plethora of verdure in bloom. There, in that April heat, I ripped the first fruit open with my nails and ate it by myself, standing right there beneath the tree that bore it. I had tears in my eyes.

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