Parbati
Parbati was born on August 14, 1063, in a farming settlement near Kalpi on the Yamuna. The village answered to local chiefs who collected grain and labor in the name of larger dynasties to the south and east, and officials arrived with measuring ropes when they chose to enforce it. Her family spoke a Munda tongue at home and used the local Indo‑Aryan speech in the market and with outsiders. They kept a small plot and lived in a simple house of mud walls and a thatch roof, with a packed-earth courtyard where grain dried and dung cakes lay in neat rounds.
Her mother, Suri, carried most of the household order. She ground grain on a stone quern, kept the cooking fire fed, and sent children for water. Her father, Hira, worked the field with a wooden plough, a pair of oxen when he had them, and with help from neighbors during the heaviest days. The family’s worship was close to the ground: a smeared stone under a tree for the village goddess, a small corner inside for household offerings. On Fridays Suri placed rice, a pinch of vermilion, and a few marigolds before the shrine and touched Parbati’s forehead with red powder.
Parbati grew up with losses that were ordinary in her courtyard. A brother, Kanha, had died before she could remember him. Her older sister Ganga died when Parbati was a small child. She kept one clear image: women squatting near the doorway, oil lamps set low, her mother’s face stiff and dry. After that came babies who did not stay. Madan lived long enough to toddle after the goats before a fever took him. Chanda died soon after birth. Sona reached two years old; Parbati had carried her on one hip while sweeping the threshing floor, and then one week Sona stopped taking food and her body went light in Parbati’s arms.
Only Tulsi lasted. Tulsi was three years younger and survived childhood. The two girls shared work. They sat shoulder to shoulder sorting stones from lentils and flicking insects off drying grain. Parbati talked while her hands moved. She narrated the market gossip, repeated songs heard at festivals, and made Tulsi laugh by copying the stiff walk of the revenue measurer who came to the village with his rope and his ledger man.
Parbati liked bustle. She chose the well at the busiest hour and lingered to trade news. When the women went together to cut fodder or gather fuelwood, she walked in the middle of the group, speaking to each person in turn. She also disliked being corrected. If someone suggested a new way to store grain or a different herb for a child’s cough, she answered with what her mother had always used and did it that way.
Her marriage was set when she was fifteen. In 1078, she left her parents’ house for a hamlet close enough that she still saw Tulsi at festivals and sometimes at the weekly market. Her husband, Keshav, had a small plot and a pair of oxen shared with a cousin. He expected a working wife and got one. Parbati was short—her head came to his shoulder—but she moved quickly and carried loads without complaint. She learned the habits of his household: where he kept the sickle, how he liked his millet gruel salted, which neighbor he distrusted. The marriage was practical. Parbati was warm with other women and easy with visitors, but with Keshav she kept a certain distance that neither of them named. She bore his children and managed his household, and he provided, but there was little tenderness between them when the day’s work was done.
Dulari the midwife attended Parbati’s first birth in 1079. A daughter, Gauri, arrived during the hot months. Parbati rested for a few days on a mat, then returned to the courtyard work with the baby tied against her ribs. She enjoyed the morning hour after the animals were fed, when the air still held some coolness and she could sit on the doorstep with a pot of curd and roasted gram.
A son followed in 1081, Harilal. With two small children, Parbati’s day tightened. She measured the household grain with practiced fingers, kept the water jars filled, and went to the field when weeding demanded hands. She laughed easily and smoothed small quarrels, coaxing her husband out of sulks with food and a quick apology even when the fault was not hers.
In 1083 she gave birth again. The boy, Nand, did not live. Parbati washed and wrapped him and let Dulari direct the rites. Afterward she went to the village shrine and made a vow to the goddess—oil, a length of red cloth, and a promise of a goat if a future child stayed alive. She did not change her routines. She kept the same fast-days Suri had kept. She repeated the same words in prayer.
Kamla was born in 1085. By then Parbati had started falling sick each rainy season. In 1086, with the first standing water in the low places and mosquitoes thick at dusk, she woke shaking with chills. They came with chills that shook her teeth and days when she could not carry a full water pot without stopping. When the fever left, it left her thin and tired. She adjusted without complaint. In the months when her legs felt weak, she stayed closer to home: grinding grain, winnowing, mending baskets, and directing Gauri in small tasks. When she was stronger, she returned to the field and moved among the women, talking to keep pace.
Bhima was born in 1087. He survived infancy, but he did not grow sturdy. By his third year he coughed most mornings, a hard cough that left him retching. Parbati fed him thin porridge and warm milk when she could spare it. She took him to Bhairavi at the goddess shrine and paid with a small measure of grain for ash and a thread to tie around his wrist. She held him through nights when he slept in broken pieces and woke crying for water.
Another daughter, Sita, was born in 1089 and died the same day. Parbati returned from that loss straight into hard years. The monsoons failed in 1090 and again in 1091. The stalks stayed short; the heads filled poorly. Officials came anyway, measuring, insisting, threatening to seize grain. Keshav and Parbati borrowed seed and food from Raghunath, a better-off cultivator with a larger storehouse. They paid interest in grain. When they could not meet it, they surrendered part of their crop and a goat in 1093. Keshav took seasonal hauling work, carrying loads for merchants and for the men who moved revenue grain.
In 1092 Parbati bore Madhav, a boy who lived. She nursed him through her fevers and through the hungry months when she thinned the gruel for everyone and watched the grain basket with a steady hand. Her pride sat in small places: a clean threshing floor, a pot of lentils saved for a festival, children whose hair was oiled even in lean times.
In 1094 Bhima’s illness worsened into something that shaped whole days. He tired after a short walk and lay on the cot while his siblings worked. Parbati kept him close, wiping his face, warming water for him, and bargaining for remedies. She made offerings at the shrine—oil lamps, rice, and a coconut when she could afford it. She also found time to talk at the well, to hear whose child had recovered and whose had not, and to trade a joke with Tulsi when Tulsi visited. Tulsi teased her for speaking to everyone, even the goats. Parbati answered by teasing Tulsi’s husband’s beard and made Tulsi laugh until she slapped her own knee.
Suri died in 1096. Parbati attended the rites at her parents’ village, then returned home. That same rainy season, a fever took Keshav’s brother and his wife in a nearby village. Their child, Jai, was brought to Parbati’s door. She took Jai in without debate. She fed him from her stores, put him to work fetching water and watching Madhav, and corrected him with a soft voice rather than blows.
Hira died in 1098. Parbati had no parent left to lean on. Her own fevers continued each monsoon. In 1101, Bhima died at fourteen. Parbati washed him, set a lamp near his head, and followed the instructions of the men who handled the cremation. She returned to a household that still needed her hands every hour.
By 1099 Keshav’s widowed mother could not manage her own body. She could not draw water, could not grind grain, could not rise without help. Parbati washed her, fed her, cleaned her, and kept her medicines—herbal decoctions and warmed oil—near the fire. Kamla and Gauri helped, but the daily burden stayed with Parbati. She continued to greet visitors, to keep peace with neighbors, to speak respectfully to measurers when they arrived. She repaid debts when she could, even when it left little.
In early 1104 Parbati was pregnant again. In March, after the birth, heavy bleeding began and did not stop. Dulari packed cloth, pressed hard on her belly, and heated water, but the bleeding continued. Parbati died on March 31, 1104, in her house courtyard room, with Keshav and the children outside the doorway.
Her body was washed, wrapped in cloth, and carried to the cremation place near the river. Keshav and the men of the kin group burned her on a wood pyre and placed a small offering of rice and flowers at the edge of the ash.