Tikkipala by Sara Banerji Page A

did not need it any more.
    She sighed, smiled, and started back. She came down the mountainside carefully, like a pitcher that had been filled to the brim with something very precious and that must not be spilled or broken. She would never need to come up here again, she knew. She would not have to search for the Ama. It did not matter that Ganesh was broken because she did not need him now.
    The Raja put down his binoculars and let out a sorrowful groan. For a very short moment he had felt that his child might be found. Of course he had not believed, for a single moment, the silly superstitious stories that the local people told of a magic stone called ‘Ama’ but all the same… all the same.
    It took Sangita more than an hour to reach the place where her husband sat, sorrowful and once again despairing. She was smiling still. Her slippers smacked loudly on the marble floor. He looked up, scowling, annoyed at having his grief disturbed by the infantile entrance.
    â€˜Husband,’ she said. ‘You need not look for Anwar anymore because he is back. He has returned to my womb.’
    The Raja sank lower into his chair and let out a sob.

Chapter 6
    Several weeks after the woman brought the Coarsechild to the tribe, the people, who were always watching out for their Ama and guarding it with their minds and eyes, looked down, and saw a female Coarseone near the sacred shrine.
    At first they could not believe that the Coarseone had really found their sacred stone. For a long time they gazed down at her, their breaths held, their hearts pounding. Then, with a great despair they saw the Ama light burn on her face.
    â€˜Perhaps she will put it back,’ cried the people of the tribe. ‘She will see, from the swinging bag, that it belongs to someone else.’
    But the female did not return the Ama to its swinging bag. After a long period of scrutiny they saw her leap to her feet and, with a scream, hurl the Ama down the rock side. With horror in their hearts, they saw their most precious thing fall flashing through the air then disappear from sight.
    â€˜People must go down at once and look for it,’ ordered the elders.
    That night the four of the greatest of the subtle ones went down the tunnel, taking with them the sling of diamonds that had been made a thousand years before, for the carrying of the sacred Ama, for it was a sacrilege to touch the stone with naked fingers.
    The people were afraid but also hopeful as they waited. After two weeks the subtle ones returned. They looked as though they had been walking in the pits of death. As though they had fallen through the mouth of the volcano. ‘We have looked in every place we could,’ they said. ‘We laid our ears to the ground to listen for its singing. Butthe Ama is very small and the area is large. Also there are Coarseones roaming there, so we had to search secretly. But we could not find it. Our Ama has gone.’
    After that, for a long time, a great despair came upon the people of the tribe. They were even becoming less hopeful about the sacrifice, for the taming and purification of the Coarseones’ child was proving to be more difficult that they expected.
    By now their hunter was enough recovered from his illness to go and bring meat for them again, but his strength was small and although the Animals managed to surround buck and sambhar several times, he had neither to strength to kill them nor to carry them back to the tribe. He could only bring them small meat, lizards, frogs, beetles, nothing that could possibly please the Tikki. For that they would have to wait till the Coarseones’ child had become pure enough. It was the only thing they had to offer now. But perhaps that would never happen, they sometimes feared, for when they gave the child live lizards for its meal, it would not eat them but vomited the struggling reptiles from its mouth. It screamed when the people tried to spit chewed black berries into its