The doctor’s words were simple.
“The newborn has pneumonia.”
My parents took me to doctors and priests. Also to people who claimed to have alternate remedies. Place to place, trying everything, trying anything.
My mother was not uneducated. She held a BA in literature, yet taught mathematics and sciences all her life—no mean feat. A self-made woman. The seventh child of her parents, and the only one who survived infancy. She understood what it meant to lose a child.
Then someone told them about a lady. A devoted bhakt of Kaali, said to have powers. She gave them the ritual.
Under a banyan tree, my mother began the jaap—the chanting of the Mahamrityunjaya mantra. Incessant. Without stopping.
My father stood with her during this ritual. Not happy about these steps.
She saw something. A flame, like a candle flame, flying through the darkness of that place. It flew toward me. It entered me.
I cried.
I survived.
My mother, for years—until her death in 2013—believed that lady gave me my life.