“Mother!” cried Pinki. “The stories brought you back!”
“Not in the way you are thinking, my silly demon-drop of an evil daughter,” Ai-Ma cooed, holding her see-through hands above Pinki’s head in a blessing. “No, my silly-billy chitty-boo of a booger blossom! I am gone from this plane, but as long as you are all alive, my story is not ended.”
“You gave your life in that undersea detention center to save me, but I wish I could save you!” Pinki had tears streaming down her face, and I felt my own heart breaking at her sorrow. How could I have been so wrong about her? Some villains, like Sesha, choose not to change, but some, like Pinki, do.
“You already have saved me,” Ai-Ma called as she vanished more and more into the ether. Where her body had been was the gold and platinum stardust we had experienced down in the underwater hotel. The glittery rain fell all over us, and when it hit Neel’s face, he finally opened his eyes.
“Ai-Ma?” he said, his eyes uncertainly straining toward the spot where the dear rakkhoshi had just been.
“Live in joy, my toadstool baby bats! Sing your varied stories, my dung-covered lily pads!” Ai-Ma’s disembodied voice crooned from the darkness. “And tell of me, and how much I loved you, to all who want to hear!”
And so we would. To tell her story was to tell our own. We would tell it, and add to it, and let it nourish us forever.
Even though the wedding was called off, the second sangeet was a huge success. The groom wasn’t present, but the entire Kingdom Beyond decided to have a giant song-and-dance performance in the royal palace square. The Raja had returned from exile and was now gathered on the dais to watch the performances with his four sons: Lal and Neel, Buddhu and Bhootoom. To the other side of the dais sat Mati, Naya, and a lot of the PSS crew.
As a surprise, Neel sent Bunty as well as the pakkhiraj horses Snowy and Raat to go get my parents, Jovi, and Zuzu from the right version of New Jersey and bring them to the festivities. Ma arrived in her second-best sari—since she’d brought her wedding sari for me to wear. She’d also dressed the real Jovi and Zuzu in full lehenga choli and Indian jewelry. Baba was elegant in his pajama-panjabi.
“How’s the store?” I asked Ma as she helped me pleat and pin my outfit.
“The store? Oh, it’s wonderful, my little piece of the moon, my princess, my darling,” Ma replied. “We will have to all go back soon to help your father with the inventory.” I was relieved to see her hair was in its usual impeccable bouffant bun. She waggled her eyebrows at me. “Now, you tell me about that handsome Neelkamal!”
When I saw Baba, he gave me a huge bear hug and wiped away his own tears on my hair. Finally, he let me go enough to look weepily at me. “You’re looking tired, darling. Have you been eating enough fiber? Are your bowels regular?”
In the past, I would have been furious at my parents for being so embarrassingly loving, so ridiculously themselves all the time. But I’d learned to appreciate all their strangenesses. They might be weirdos, but they were my weirdos, after all.
With Jovi and Zuzu, it was a little bit harder. “I had to explain to Jovi about everything, who you are, where you’re from,” said Zuzu, pulling me aside. The bright blue lehenga choli Ma had put her in beautifully complemented her hair and eyes. “She’s confused; she’s not even sure why she’s here. Are you guys even friends?”
“Well, she’s on the fencing team with you, isn’t she?” I grinned, taking my friends’ hands. “I’ll explain later, but I’m really glad you’re both here.”
“I am too. These outfits are tremendous!” Jovi spun around, her green skirts spreading dramatically wide. “And everyone here seems awesome!” she said, giving Priya a little wave. It must have been a good wave, because the rakkhoshi Priya, who had been super embarrassed about her whole Princess Petunia episode, actually smiled and waved back.
The sangeet was amazing. No one wore disguises, so the rakkhosh clanspeople danced in their full fangs and tusks, twirling their wings and tentacles to their hearts’ abandon. Singing and dancing weren’t the only thing on the performance roster, though. Some of the PSS girls did a skateboarding show, setting up a half-pipe, and proceeding to drop, whirl, and fly for the roaring crowds.
The last performer at the sangeet was quite a surprise. It was Neel’s mom, the Demon Queen, decked out in her elaborate wedding finery. Her red silk sari was heavily embroidered with gold, her sparkling nose ring connected by a gold chain to the shining butterfly clips in her dark hair, her ears and neck dripping with jewels that sparkled like the stars.
“I needed a place to wear this, right?” she explained with a snap of her teeth and a righteous belch. “But before I go onstage, Kiranmala, find me an antacid, won’t you?”
The humans in attendance were a little nervous at first, but Pinki’s song-and-dance number was a huge hit. There were strobe lights, images projected behind her, and a huge entourage of backup dancers in elaborate costumes.
“Everything is connected to everything,” she sang.
“But how?” sang her backup dancers, doing super-coordinated twirls and jiggles.
“By the love of those who came before!” crooned Ai-Ma in our hearts.
“But how?”
“By the love of family,” sang Ma and Baba.
“But how?”
“By the love of community,” said our extended friends and family.
“But how? But how? But how?” asked the backup dancers, swirling and leaping, sashaying and flossing, step-ball-changing and doing all the jazz hands.
“By love,” I told Neel, smiling.
“By love,” he agreed. All around us, I noticed, were the blue butterflies, dancing as if to their own magic rhythms.
And as the festivities continued, long into the night, we felt the multistoried multiverse pulsing and swirling all around us, in an ever-expanding cosmic dance. Because there was love, there would be more stories, and a multiverse that kept growing and thriving. Love and stories, stories and love, these were the stars that lit our way forward.
The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond Book 3) is an original story that, like the first two books in this series (The Serpent’s Secret and Game of Stars), draws from many traditional Bengali folktales and children’s stories. These are stories beloved in West Bengal (India), Bangladesh, and throughout the Bengali diaspora. I’ve used many of these stories as a basis for inspiration while writing the books in the series, and as a way to tell my own story as an immigrant daughter.
Thakurmar Jhuli and Rakkhosh Stories
Folktales involving rakkhosh are very popular throughout all of South Asia. The word is sometimes spelled “rakshasa” in other parts of the region, but in this book, it is spelled like the word sounds in Bengali. Folktales are of course an oral tradition, passed on verbally from one generation to the next, with each teller adding spice and nuance to their own version. In 1907, Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar collected, wrote down, and published some classic Bengali folktales in a book called Thakurmar Jhuli (Grandmother’s satchel). This collection, which involves separate stories about the Princess Kiranmala, the brothers Neelkamal and Lalkamal, and the monkey and owl princes Buddhu and Bhootoom, is also full of tales involving rakkhosh and khokkosh, as well as stories about the Kingdom of Serpents. The giant birds Bangoma and Bangomee make an appearance in the story of Neelkamal and Lalkamal, as do pakkhiraj horses. The Demon Queen appears in the original Neelkamal and Lalkamal story, as does the lovably goofy rakkhosh grandmother, Ai-Ma. Lalkamal and Neelkamal never meet Kiranmala in their original stories, but brave Kiranmala does have two brothers named Arun and Barun whose lives she must save. A version of the Serpent King appears in this collection as well, although not exactly as he appears in this book. Of course, a magical version of Thakurmar Jhuli plays a role in The Chaos Curse, as it is the time-traveling and otherwise protective object given by Albert Einstein-ji to Neel and Kiran. Although this book didn’t help me actually time travel when I was younger, the stories in it were magical to me and as such, I wanted to honor the collection in this way.