Misso missetum icchati Isisiṅgam Alambusā
(Mixed Alambusā Wants Ṛśyaśṛṅga To Mix)
“You are a woman!” Ṛśyaśṛṅga guessed.
The visitor sighed. “Have you seen one already? I thought, for once I could make a different first impression, meeting a hermit boy out here in the wilderness.”
“No, I have never seen any human except my father,” Ṛśyaśṛṅga admitted. “But we have a cow over there to provide ghṛta for our daily yajña. I squeeze her teats twice a day. I know what makes her different from a bull.”
“Everyone’s an expert,” the visitor muttered. Aloud, he said, “So, you know how she got her calf too?”
Ṛśyaśṛṅga nodded, looking very serious.
“Would you like to try it with me?” the visitor invited him.
Ṛśyaśṛṅga immediately came closer, face-to-face, and inhaled deeply, over and over. The visitor giggled.
“Do we not have to start by sniffing each other?” Ṛśyaśṛṅga asked, frowning. “I like how your tangles smell, like sandalwood.”
“Humans do it a bit differently,” the visitor explained. “It’s called kissing. And my hairstyle is called braids.”
Stretching his fleshy neck upward like an aiṇeya antelope, he pressed his body against Ṛśyaśṛṅga’s, lifted one arm so that his bracelets called out like geese taking flight, clenched a fist in Ṛśyaśṛṅga’s tangled hair, and bent his face to meet his own.
Ṛśyaśṛṅga knew right away that he liked kissing the visitor: the soft lips, the freshness of teeth scrubbed with a nimba margosa-twig, the smacking noises, the tugging on his hair, everything! His arms wrapped around, pressing those hairless alābu gourds against his own firmer chest. When their mouths parted, Ṛśyaśṛṅga said, “Cows don’t use teats for mating - I never knew humans do!” Then they were kissing again.
“What are you called?” he inquired when the visitor had pulled away to look boldly into his eyes. Those tendrils encircling the visitor's ankles tinkled like raindrops to mark his footfalls, and his wide eyes were like those of cakora partridges. Ṛśyaśṛṅga’s hands now rested where the visitor’s hips broadened, smooth like polished akṣa myrobalan fruits. This womanly body was fascinating to explore!
"My name is Alambusā - Enough Stuff,” the visitor replied. “I don’t like having teats like a cow. My chest would be better without them.”
“I like them. You are beautiful,” Ṛśyaśṛṅga told him honestly.
“Every man tells me so, but I don’t feel beautiful when I look at a darpaṇa,” Alambusā replied. Mother had taught him this line to play the modest ingénue and prompt the male suitor’s ego toward making his conquest feel special. However, it was also the truth, for Ṛśyaśṛṅga’s artlessness had a disarming effect on Alambusā.
“What is a darpaṇa?” Ṛśyaśṛṅga asked.
“You’ve never seen one? It’s something that shows you what you look like.”
“Oh. Like the big pond.” Ṛśyaśṛṅga tried to understand.
“Right, but you can hold a darpaṇa in your hand,” Alambusā clarified.
“Really? When I was little, I tried to lift my reflection out of the pond, but my hands made it shatter.”
“Well, every time I see my reflection in a darpaṇa, I want to pull it out and shatter it. It hurts to know that people see me like that,” Alambusā confided.
“Do you not look like other women?” Ṛśyaśṛṅga felt confused. He could tell apart animals of the same species and same sex when he encountered them in the forest, but compared to their individual markings, sexual dimorphism was so obvious. Most animals who looked like females behaved like females. Once, there had been twin calves, male and female, of which the female grew up to approach other cows like a bull, never calved, and never gave milk. Could Alambusā’s body be unusual? Was kissing a mating ritual that only Alambusā practised? Ṛśyaśṛṅga reflected that he might never meet another woman. This might be his only chance to learn about variation within his own species.
“Other women wish they looked like me, and I wish I could give my feminine beauty to one of them, if that meant I would look like a man!” Alambusā answered. “Full beard, hairy chest, narrow hips, arms and thighs that can get bigger … in my imagination, I have everything! I know I can be a successful vārayoṣā like Mother, but that’s not what I want to be.”
“What do you want to be?” Ṛśyaśṛṅga inquired. He was trying to imagine Alambusā with a bushy beard like his own, and with sturdy arms and legs like his own, accustomed to climbing trees and chopping wood … Would it still feel exciting to kiss Alambusā if he didn’t have round teats to press? Would Alambusā’s tangles - no, his braids - still smell like sandalwood, or would they smell of rotting leaves and bits of bark, like Ṛśyaśṛṅga's tangles?
“A sculptor.”
As Ṛśyaśṛṅga didn’t recognize the word, Alambusā elaborated. “Someone who carves rocks or wood until a shape appears is called a sculptor. I know I could create beautiful bodies out of any material - like the body that I want to have.”
“Who is stopping you from being a sculptor? Does your mother command you to be … that other thing you said, she is a successful …?” Ṛśyaśṛṅga had forgotten the word.
“Vārayoṣā,” Alambusā pronounced the word carefully. “That’s a woman who can be assigned to mate with anyone. You’ve been a hermit all your life, so you don’t know, but if you follow this River Kauśikī outside the wood, you will reach the River Gaṅgā and the kingdom of Aṅga, where many sorts of people live together, and that is called society. If I didn’t do what society expects me to do, someone would report me to King Lomapāda, and he would punish me.”
“You live far from here, right? Was visiting me what society expected you to do?” Ṛśyaśṛṅga deduced.
“Yes,” Alambusā admitted. “Thousand-eyed Parjanya hasn’t rained in Aṅga this year. A pious brāhmaṇa told Lomapāda that Parjanya will rain instantly if you, Ṛśyaśṛṅga, visit Aṅga. So, the King summoned every leading vārayoṣā and asked them to bring you to him.”
Ṛśyaśṛṅga felt piqued that Alambusā had taught him kissing to please someone else. Kissing was fun, and he wanted to learn to mate with Alambusā, but how many other people were in this society that assigned mating partners? It was too complicated.
Alambusā continued. “Every vārayoṣā was afraid that if she disrupted your tapas, your father would curse her. Only Mother volunteered to save our kingdom, and she assigned me to meet you.”
“You had no choice?” Ṛśyaśṛṅga was crying by now. “I thought you wanted to get a calf from me, but you do not like your womanly body. You only came to meet me because, otherwise, the King would have punished you. You think Father will curse you when he finds out that I sniffed you, but that is not your fault.”
Alambusā put his arms around Ṛśyaśṛṅga. “You understand everything and nothing at all. I did want to kiss you. I’m not a woman, but I enjoy kissing men and a lot more that I can show you. Interested?”
“Yes!” Ṛśyaśṛṅga said, instantly happy again.
“Good!” Alambusā grinned. “I want to take you to my āśrama that floats on River Kauśikī like a vimāna floating in the sky. That’s how I came here, with Mother and many other women, each as beautiful as an Apsaras. Our āśrama is covered with flowering plants and fruit-trees. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes!” Ṛśyaśṛṅga said again.
“Then I will take you to my āśrama tomorrow. However, before I can do that, tonight, you have to tell your father about me visiting you and kissing you.” Alambusā gave this instruction to Ṛśyaśṛṅga with a conspiratorial wink.
“Will he not curse you for disrupting my tapas?” Ṛśyaśṛṅga wondered.
Alambusā laughed excitedly. “Oh, I hope so! Do you know what sages do when they curse someone? They transform his body. And that is exactly what I need your father to do to me. This womanly body isn’t right for me. Let your father perceive me as a tapas-disrupting Rākṣasa and curse me to become one. Then, as a Rākṣasa, I will have the power to assume any shape I want. I can have the manly body that I was always supposed to have.”
“Why not ask Father to bless you instead?” Ṛśyaśṛṅga wondered.
“Blessing or curse, he would have to expend his tapas to transform me. A sage is not supposed to expend tapas frivolously. The favour that he wouldn’t do for a stranger out of generosity, I hope he will do to an outsider out of intolerance. So, to give your father the idea to curse me with manhood, I want you to describe me as a man - even as a pious brahmacārī. Call my braids tangles and my teats mounds. Pretend that you never realized that I have a woman’s body.”
Ṛśyaśṛṅga giggled at the idea, and soon Alambusā was tickling him. After a while, they had done what Alambusā wanted to show Ṛśyaśṛṅga.
“Will you have a human calf from what we did?” Ṛśyaśṛṅga asked, wondering why the male-twinned cow had never calved, although bulls had approached her - or him. Was mating without calving a natural consequence of being born female but feeling like a man?
“It’s the right time in my cycle,” Alambusā admitted. “There could be a baby Ārśyaśṛṅgi or Ārśyaśṛṅgī in nine months. I hope I’ll be a man before that can happen, or at least a shape-changing Rākṣasa!”
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