The green fields glistened in the sun. A gust of wind kissed the fields playfully, making the leaves sway delicately. Rano was going to remember this day forever.

The trio reached their house, and stopped short when they heard the cry of a baby.

‘She is here!’

The grandmother screeched happily and ran inside.

Rano stood, awestruck at the scene. Her tired looking mother and father were holding the baby.

‘It’s a girl.’ Kartar announced to the mother. Patting the baby’s head. And added almost immediately.

‘I have to leave tonight. I am taking up the Himachal delivery.’

‘Stay tonight. It’s Rajjo’s first day at home,’ Saroj whispered.

‘Rajjo! You mean Durga!’ The old woman screamed. She kissed the baby five times, gazing at it like it was a treasure. Saroj weary and tired, wanted to whack the old woman and go to sleep.

She was gobbling up the gud in her excitement at seeing the baby.

The baby was crying.

The thunder hit the skies and sweet rain drenched the entire village.

The old woman screamed. ‘Don’t you see, the heavens are welcoming her! She has come and the drought has gone!’

‘Yes! I can hear the bugles all the way from heaven!’ Saroj muttered, annoyed.

The old woman, unperturbed by the jibe, danced with Rano like a child as the rain spattered into their courtyard.

Saroj cursed the woman as she picked the baby girl and went to sit under a shade, worried about her clothes hanging on the clothesline getting soaked in the rain.

‘Girls clear everything from the courtyard! Now!’ Saroj asked in a tired voice.

‘Durga Durga Durga!’ The old woman screamed. Making the girls giggle at their grandmother’s outburst.

And that was when it happened. The rain kept falling but the old woman stopped shrieking and fell dead.

A silence followed, only to be broken by the gurgling laugh of a baby who seemed amused. Saroj looked at the strange scene unfold in front of her.

‘Let’s name her Durga,’ said Kartar, closing his mother’s dead eyes gently. She looked happy. That was a relief. Tears streamed down his face.

Saroj just left the gurgling baby on the cot and went inside. She needed to breathe. The baby started crying again, till Rano took her in her tiny arms and cradled her to sleep.

It rained the entire night. The girls cried for their grandmother and so did Saroj. The baby girl slept peacefully through the night and the morning after, a few villagers came to pay their last respects to Biji.

Saroj quietly collected Biji’s things and put them in a box. She was not ready to let it go just yet so she shoved the box under the bed. Her hand lingered a minute longer to touch the cold steel of the case. A tear escaped her eye till her newborn baby claimed her attention with its shrieking.

Durga a.k.a. Rajjo had announced her arrival into the world.

3

RAJJO, all of five now, was sitting with Rano, now nine, and their surly beautiful sister Reet, who was ten. They held on to their books half-heartedly as they sat watching the fields. They watched their neighbours, uncles and aunts work. They could smell the ripened, golden wheat cut and placed in tiny mounds, dotting the shaved fields.