Anandi

Anandi was born on May 3, 1178, in a farming hamlet in the Awadh country of the middle Ganga plain. Revenue men came through for chiefs in the Gahadavala sphere centered on Kannauj and Banaras; village decisions ran through headmen, caste councils, and the men who controlled plough-oxen and seed. Her household kept its days with ancestor offerings, purity rules, and temple visits when there was grain to spare.

Her father, Jagan, held a modest plot and ploughed it with a pair of oxen he guarded carefully. Her mother, Sona, ground grain, cooked, and worked in the fields when weeds rose fast after the rains. Before Anandi’s birth, Sona had carried children who did not stay: Gauri, a daughter born in 1168, died in 1173 at five years old; Mahesh was born in 1171 and died the same day. When Anandi was little, those deaths lived in the courtyard in the way Sona watched for coughs and loose stools and in the way she kept a small corner of the house for ritual scraps—rice grains, a wick stub, a pinch of ash.

Two children survived long enough for Anandi to share chores with them. Hari, born in 1174, grew into a thin, quick-moving boy who drove cattle and ran messages to the edge of the market. Champa, born in 1176, stayed near Anandi and pulled her along. When they were small, Champa taught her how to keep lentils from spilling through the sieve and how to tuck cow-dung cakes into a neat stack that dried evenly.

From the time Anandi could carry a small pot, Sona put her to work. At four, she learned to stand near the grinding stone and keep away dogs while Sona worked the pestle. When Anandi cried from hunger or tiredness, Sona struck her with a thin switch cut from a branch and told her to be quiet. In the hottest months, when the fields demanded long days, Sona left her without food until mid-afternoon; the older children ate first, then the adults. Anandi learned to wait, then to eat quickly when her turn came—watery rice, salt, sometimes a bit of sour curd.

She avoided talk. When women gathered at the well, Champa traded gossip and small jokes, but Anandi stayed close to the rope and watched the water in the clay jar. She saved her words for the work that needed them: “Hold,” when the pot tipped; “Move,” when the calf lunged.

Kesar, Jagan’s mother, came from a nearby hamlet and died in 1190. Before she died, she pinched Anandi’s cheek hard and told her to keep household matters inside the household. After the funeral meal, Sona took Anandi to the family’s small ancestor corner. She lit a lamp with mustard oil, set a little rice and a few sesame seeds on a leaf, and spoke the names of the dead: Gauri, Mahesh. Anandi listened closely and repeated the names to herself as if doing so kept them in place.

In 1193, Hari died at nineteen after a fever that left him confused and shaking. Without him, Jagan had to hire help at peak times and owed favors he did not like owing. Champa took up more work, and Sona tightened her rules. Sona held Anandi by the shoulders and spoke of marriage without softness.

In 1194, when Anandi was sixteen, she married Deva. A year later, Champa died at nineteen. She had been healthy and then suddenly wasn’t; her belly cramped, and she could not keep water. Anandi was now the only surviving child in her natal family.

Deva was a cultivator from a village within a day’s walk. She moved into Deva’s family courtyard, where his kin watched her hands and her mouth. She rose before dawn, swept the yard, smeared the floor with wet cow-dung, and set the morning fire. She learned where the grain was stored and who had the key to the pot of ghee. Her own small pleasures were quiet ones: warm millet flatbread eaten beside the stove before others woke, and sitting on the edge of the threshing floor at dusk, rubbing chaff from her palms and letting the evening coolness settle.

Deva worked the fields and expected obedience. The first time he beat her was in 1194 after she asked to visit her natal village for a day to see her mother. He hit her in the courtyard and then again by the cattle shed when she spoke back. Deva’s uncle Biru told her afterward to keep her voice low and not pull trouble into the family. Anandi nodded, brought water, and set about cooking as if nothing had happened. She learned the pattern: a quarrel over grain stores, a comment from an elder, Deva’s hand or a stick, then an insistence that the matter stay inside the courtyard walls.

Her first child, Kamla, arrived in 1195. Anandi nursed her while grinding grain, shifting the child on her hip as she turned the stone. Kamla learned to toddle near the cattle and follow Anandi to the well.

In 1197 she bore a daughter, Lila, who died the day she was born. The midwife Sukhdei cleaned the blood from the floor and told Anandi to drink warm water with salt. Anandi did as she was told and returned to work as soon as she could stand.

A son, Raghav, was born in 1198 and lived. In 1199, Kamla died at four after days of diarrhea. Anandi washed her, wrapped her, and watched the men carry her to the burning place. That night she placed a small mound of rice on a leaf near the ancestor corner, set a lamp beside it, and spoke the child’s name once in a low voice.

Another daughter, Saras, followed in 1200. Anandi’s days filled with carrying children, feeding them, and keeping them from the cooking fire and the tethered ox. When neighbors came to borrow seed, she measured carefully and gave what was agreed—no more, no less. Biru once hinted she could short-measure a family who had cheated them at threshing time. She shook her head and gave the full amount. People noticed. They began asking her to hold small items—beads, a coin, a brass bangle—because she returned what was not hers.

In 1202, Anandi bore another daughter, Ganga, who died before she could nurse. Two years later came Champa, who lived. Anandi named her for her dead sister; when she called the child in from the courtyard, the old name came back into the air. In 1206 she gave birth to a daughter she called Gauri, after the sister who had died before Anandi was born. That baby died the same day. Anandi wrapped her and handed her to the men without speaking.

In 1207, when Anandi was twenty-nine, a wave of sickness moved through the villages after the rains. Deva fell ill with fever and diarrhea that did not stop. For weeks she boiled water, made thin rice gruel, cleaned soiled bedding, and carried his waste away from the well path. Nanda, an older neighbor woman, helped her fetch extra water and warned her not to let the children drink from shallow puddles. Anandi slept in brief stretches and kept the household’s animals fed and tethered. Deva recovered, but the days left her exhausted and tighter in her movements.

Mohan, her youngest son, was born in 1208. That same year, word came that Jagan, her father, had died. Anandi’s in-laws allowed her a brief visit to her natal village. She brought a small offering of rice and sesame, placed it at the ancestor corner in her childhood home, and spoke his name with the others Sona had taught her.

By 1209, Raghav had grown into a strong youth and took on more plough work. When he reached marriageable age, a young wife named Rukmini came into the courtyard. Two married couples now shared the same cooking fire.

Anandi managed not only her own children but Rukmini’s work. She taught the girl where the grinding stone sat level, how much water the stored grain could take before it spoiled, which neighbors returned borrowed tools and which did not. Rukmini moved slowly and sometimes left tasks half-done. Anandi corrected her without harshness, repeating instructions until the patterns held. When a wandering healer offered a new herb paste for children’s coughs, she refused it and used the same warmed oil and steam method Sona had used.

The beatings from Deva continued into her early thirties and ended only when Biru intervened after a public argument about grain stored for seed. Deva listened to Biru in ways he did not listen to Anandi. After that, Deva’s anger came out in hard words and withheld help rather than blows.

In 1212, Sona died. Anandi made the walk to her natal village, placed offerings of rice and sesame at the ancestor corner, and returned to her husband’s household the same day. She was now the last of Jagan and Sona’s children.

In 1213, Saras was married to a family in a village half a day’s walk distant. Anandi saw her rarely after that—once a year if the rains cooperated, sometimes less. Champa and Mohan grew taller and took on more work. Rukmini bore a son. Anandi held her grandson in the afternoons while Rukmini ground grain, the same way she had once held Kamla.

In late May of 1215, after a hot week, Anandi developed severe diarrhea. She drank water and vomited it back, then could not keep even thin gruel down. Nanda brought water boiled with salt and a little jaggery, and Sukhdei came and pressed her belly, muttering about heat and impurity. Anandi could not stand without swaying. She died on June 2, 1215, in the courtyard room where she slept with her children.

Her husband’s family washed her body, wrapped it in cloth, and carried it to the burning place outside the village. After the cremation, Deva’s household set out a simple offering—rice, sesame, and water—for her at the ancestor corner.