Prophecy

The night of Dev’s twenty-second birthday, he was invited to sit with the elders after dinner.

- Kanak Kapur

The summons was conveyed by Bhakti Bai, the maid, who called Dev into the kitchen once the dinner plates had been cleared, and placed in his hands a tray of glasses filled with water. “They’ve asked for you,” she said.

Dev glanced at the tray of crystal he was holding. It was time for things to open, he thought, windows and doors. His head swam with the onion stink of the kitchen. Then there was a force at his back, pushing him toward the blazing chatter beyond the doorway. “Be good now,” Bhakti Bai said.

In the living room, the graying heads of Dev’s uncles turned right to left in conversation, their words crude and fast, heavy with the consonants of money talk. “Four lakhs!” his grandfather said, and it sounded as if he were calling for an assassination. Dev set the tray on the coffee table and took a seat, welcoming the noise. Countless nights he had lingered in his socks behind the main wall of the living room, listening to the men. Standing there, he’d been invisible to his uncles but obvious to Bhakti Bai, who would click her tongue in irritation at the room’s rising volume, the inevitable trumpeting of men without women.

“I’ve heard it before,” Dev’s father said now. “Cow urine has healing properties. In ancient times, they used to drink it.”

“Yes, yes, just a splash in your morning chai and it’s a wonder,” an uncle agreed.

The men roared at the silliness, or perhaps the seriousness, of the idea. Dev wasn’t sure. He channelled his own endorsement into an ambivalent up-down of his right foot. His presence did not appear to have been noted, and he wondered whether they had decided in advance to ignore him. Sitting beside his father, Dev took comfort in the sound of Bhakti Bai preparing the nightly tea and biscuits. When she finally emerged to see Dev among the men, he knew, her tray would give a rattle, and the old woman, who had fed and bathed him as an infant, would send him a wink of good luck.