Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #59: "Prosperity"

Inanna

I write about mythology a lot. In more recent days, it has become a niche area for my writing and, recently, I have published stories about Inanna, Sumerian goddess of beauty and fertility; Edesia, Roman goddess of hospitality; Pele, Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes. I am composing a story about the Greek god of war, Ares; a couple of blogs ago, I talked about the story "At Your Desire," about the goddess of sex and beauty, Venus. Ancient deities are perpetually fascinating. So are gods and goddesses. The story "Prosperity" fell into this category, and was about a goddess still being worshiped.

The tale takes place during colonial times when the British ruled India. Lyle Durham, a British engineer who owns a boiler factory in India and is trying to perfect a high-velocity steam engine that can propel boats against the swift current of the nearby Wardha River. Making little progress, he receives a visit one morning from a beautiful Indian woman who introduces herself as Parvati Jaspreet and is responding to his need for a translator (he has not advertised this). He is surprised a woman, and one from a high caste, has applied for the job, since India was at that time a very traditional society and women generally did not work, especially upper class woman. Parvati tells him her husband is open-minded and she wants to see the city prosper. 

Things immediately begin to improve. The workers respect the woman—Durham assumes because she is high caste. Able now, through her translation, to make tasks and procedures clear to his workers, he begins to make significant progress on development of his steam engine. Not only this, but his workers' fortunes improve as well. They begin to prosper. One man, whose wife has not been able to have children for years, sees her give birth to a son. He throws a party, invites Durham, and tells her Parvati will be there as well. He agrees to attend—once more surprised that an Indian worker would invite him into his home, since segregation by race was the rule during that time.

 

He goes. During the party Parvati is friendly. He has not brought a gift so she gives him a bag of coins that seem almost to miraculously appear. She calls him by his first name and the two of them go for a walk. He knows the absurdity and immorality of thinking there might be something between them—but he is alone and lonely and she is beautiful. During the walk she places her hands on his head and then they return to the celebration.

Next came a part of the story my writer's group did not like. After the party, Aishwarya, one of Parvati's servant girls, comes to Durham's house on orders from her mistress and offers him a "blessing." The blessing is that she will give her body to him. Appalled, he refuses. She begins to sob.

            “What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked.

           “I don’t want to die.”

           “Die? You’re not going to die.”

           “If you refuse the offering of the mistress through me, I must kill myself.”

           I could only gape.

           "Please, let me bless you as I am instructed. Please don’t send me to my death.”

Aishwarya

His Victorian prudery and sense of ethics (she is very young) extends the argument, but when it's clear to him that she will indeed commit suicide if he refuses her, he consents.

Some people in my writer's group thought this was gratuitous. Some thought it was a bigoted representation of Indian culture. My intention was to show that the ways of another culture, and of a divinity, are different from those a person from another culture, and who is mortal, might hold. Aishwarya becomes Durham's mistress.

And his fortunes continue to change. He develops the engine but cannot find boat propellers that can take the stress from it. A German engineer happens to drop by to see Durham's factory and tells him he has just such propellers. His steamship is a success and opens trade up in the area, bringing prosperity to Durham and the people of the city and province in which he lives. He meets a young English lady living in India and marries her. His steam engine sells worldwide and he becomes a wealthy man. The area of India he lived in prospers as well

Years later, he and his wife go into an Indian temple and see an icon of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealthy and prosperity. Durham is stunned. The statue looks like Parvati. He knows, of course, that the resemblance is coincidental. Sculptors would make an image of Lakshmi beautiful, and ideas of what is beautiful are consistent in a culture, so the statue would look like a woman such as Parvati. Still, he remembers, the sudden appearance of gold coins at the party (did they fall from her palms?). He remembers the turn of fortune in his factory, and his life after she appeared—the sudden turn to prosperity. He cannot entirely dismiss the notion that he—the rational Victorian engineer—has encountered a goddess.

The story appeared in Catesbury Review, which is no longer in print. No archive of the publication seems to exist. Another story perhaps to re-market.

 A lot of mythic writing has come through my pen (I  write in longhand and then transfer it to a word processor). For a book of modern myth on an ancient race of beings with supernatural power, get a copy of Sinfonia: the First Notes on the Lute, a vampire story. Available here.

For more titles, check out my Writer's Page.
 
 I would love to hear your comments.

Happy reading.