The Raja Swing

The morning mist had begun to roll down the wooded slopes of the Eastern Ghats, wrapping Jeypore in a quiet, cool embrace. From our verandah, the surrounding mountains stood like ancient sentinels beneath a sky turning the deep, saturated grey of wet slate—heavy with the unspent promise of Ashadha. In this valley town, that particular shadow over the hills never signaled gloom; it heralded Raja.

In our house, the festival did not merely arrive on a calendar date—it was breathed into existence by my mother.

Days before Pahili Raja, our kitchen would transform into a sanctuary of smoke, laughter, and sweetness against the damp mountain chill. My mother, draped in an old, soft cotton saree tucked firmly at her waist, would sit before the clay hearth. The air was thick with the scent of freshly grated coconut, crushed black pepper, cardamom, and thick jaggery simmering into a dark, fragrant syrup. She would wrap the batter carefully in banana and sal leaves brought down from the hill forests, burying it beneath glowing embers to bake the Poda Pitha. Overnight, the outer leaves would char into a smoky crust, while the inside remained tender, rich, and warm.

"Don't step hard on the soil tomorrow, and keep your slippers off the grass," she would remind me every year, her eyes crinkling with gentle authority. "The Earth is resting. She is a woman, just like your mother. Let her heal."

She would wake before dawn broke over the peaks, drawing delicate lines of crimson Alata along the contours of her feet, preparing betel leaves stuffed with sweet spices and folded into neat triangles pinned with cloves. Whenever the neighbor girls ran through our front gate, their laughter echoing against the quiet hill air, their palms painted with fresh mehendi, my mother would call them inside. She would feed them the sweetest wedges of pitha and tie bright ribbons into their oiled hair.

Her sarees were an inseparable part of who she was. She never cared for stiff silks or heavy gold borders. Her daily sanctuary was pure handloom cotton—fabrics that had been washed in the fresh stream waters and dried in the mountain sun until they felt like a second skin. They smelled of dried rice, turmeric, camphor chests, and the unmistakable warmth of home. When I was a boy and fell grazing my knees on the gravel paths, it was the end of her pallu that wiped away my tears. When the sudden afternoon rains caught us outdoors, she would pull that same cotton over my head, creating an impromptu tent against the downpour.

Then came that unforgettable Jyeshtha Purnima.

It was the sacred day of Debasnan Purnima, when Lord Jagannath, along with His siblings, was being bathed on the grand Snana Bedi with one hundred and eight sacred pots of scented water drawn from the golden well. Across Odisha, the conch shells were blowing and bells were ringing to mark the divine bath, after which the Lord retreats into his fifteen days of quiet, secret healing in the Anasara, opening the gateway to the monsoon month of Ashadha.

On that very day, while the heavens and earth were washed in prayer, my mother took her quiet leave from this world.

She departed just as the Lord entered His silence, leaving behind a threshold of rain and grief. Grief did not arrive like a sudden landslide; it settled over our home like a permanent mist descending from the peaks. After her passing, the house shrank. The kitchen lost its rhythm, and the rooms grew cavernous with silence. In her bedroom, the old steel almirah remained locked for months. When I finally found the courage to open it, there were no jewels of immense value, only stacks of her cotton sarees, folded neatly into squares. I buried my face in them, weeping into the faded maroon, indigo, and mustard threads that still stubbornly held the ghost of her presence. I could never bring myself to give them away. They were not garments; they were tangible proof that she had once walked these corridors, that she had loved me.

There is a quiet, devastating gravity that settles over a person in their forties and fifties. When we were children running through these valley lanes, we spent our days desperately yearning to grow up, believing adulthood was the ultimate sanctuary of freedom—a horizon where no one commanded your days and the world belonged entirely to you. But that long-awaited freedom comes with a dark, heavy price. You wake up in middle age and look around, only to realize that the towering giants of your childhood have withered. The uncles and aunts who once hoisted you onto their sturdy shoulders, who carried you safely in their arms through festival crowds and summer storms, now reach out with trembling hands, waiting for a supportive forearm just to stand up and walk across the room. The fortress of elders that once shielded you from the harshness of the world begins to crumble, and one by one, you watch them leave forever. You realize that adulthood is not about running free; it is the quiet terror of suddenly finding yourself standing on the front line, with no one left ahead of you to take the blow.

Years had slipped by in that quiet routine. In my own mind, I was still the neighborhood child who addressed every elder leaning over the stone boundary walls as "Uncle" and "Auntie"—someone who received care rather than gave it.

It was the morning of Pahili Raja—arriving right after the sacred bath of Jyeshtha—when that illusion broke.

A sharp, impatient tapping rattled against our wooden front door. I put down my morning tea and opened it.

Standing on the threshold was a little girl of around ten years old. She wore a bright yellow frock that fluttered in the cool mountain breeze, her tiny feet lined with fresh red Alata, a pair of silver anklets chiming softly as she shifted her weight.

She looked up at me with round, serious eyes and said, "Uncle! Can you help us?"

I instinctively turned my head back toward the quiet hallway, expecting my father to step out from his room to answer the call. For an entire lifetime, the men called "Uncle" on this street were older, wiser figures—men who fixed rooftops before the monsoons, resolved neighborhood matters, and tied festival swings. But the hallway was empty.

When I looked back down, the little girl was still staring directly at me, waiting.

"Uncle," she repeated, pointing toward the covered porch across our narrow lane, set against the green backdrop of the hills. "The ceiling hooks are up there, but we don't have a swing. We don't have a rope. Can you fix it for us?"

The word uncle settled heavily on my shoulders. In that single, unceremonious syllable, youth had handed over its baton. I was no longer the boy who ran under the jackfruit trees; I was the elder at the door, the guardian of the street.

"Do you have any rope at home?" I asked, my voice sounding unfamiliar and deeper in my own ears.

"No," she replied, shaking her head earnestly. "My grandmother had only thin packing twine, but it will snap. We want to swing high."

I walked around to the back of the house, rummaging through the storage shed. There was nothing—only tangled garden wire and rough synthetic cables that would tear a child's hands. I was about to walk back and apologize, to tell her that Raja would have to pass without a swing this year, when my eyes caught the half-open door of my mother's room.

I walked to the almirah and stood before the stack of folded cotton.

A quiet hesitation gripped me. These were sacred relics. To take one out into the dust and tie it to rusted metal felt almost like a betrayal. But then my eyes rested on a soft, handwoven maroon cotton saree. It had been one of her favorites—thickly spun, resilient, yet extraordinarily soft.

I could almost hear her voice cutting through the stillness: What good is cloth locked in the dark when there are children outside waiting to touch the sky?

I took the saree from the shelf. I walked out into the courtyard, where three other girls had now gathered, whispering excitedly among themselves.

I fetched a sturdy wooden plank from the shed and carried a stool under the iron ceiling hooks that hung from the opposite porch. I twisted the long expanse of the maroon saree, dividing its length with careful, double-looped knots. I looped each end securely through the iron rings above, letting the fabric fall down like two sturdy pillars, knotting them firmly beneath the wooden seat.

"Try it," I said, stepping back and brushing the lint from my palms.

The little girl who had knocked on my door sat down tentatively. Her friends gave her a gentle push from behind.

At first, the swing moved hesitantly, a shy pendulum testing its strength. But the handloom cotton held effortlessly. Within moments, the pushes grew bolder, and the swing surged forward. The little girl soared into the air, her silver anklets singing, her hair catching the mountain draft that swept down from the ridges.

Soon, the courtyard filled with the unmistakable rhythm of Raja. Their voices rose together, carrying over the rooftops and toward the misty valley:

Banaste dakila gaja, Barasake thare asichhi Raja...

Watching from my verandah, a tightness formed in my throat. The maroon saree billowed wide in the breeze like a pair of wings. Every time the swing rose into the sky, framed against the towering green hills, it was my mother's cloth carrying those little girls higher; every time it descended, it was her fabric cradling them safely. She was not absent from Raja. She was right there, woven into the laughter echoing against the damp stone walls.

The three days of the festival passed like a vibrant dream. Sweets were shared across courtyards, songs were sung into the twilight, and the swing never stayed still for long.

Then came the heavy mountain rains of Ashadha and Sraban.

The monsoon in the hills is relentless. Day after day, dense rain clouds descended from the peaks, pouring torrents over the town. The slopes turned a deep, glistening emerald, the red mountain soil ran thick with water, and the neighborhood retreated indoors behind shut wooden shutters and steaming glasses of tea. The girls no longer came out to play; the swing hung alone under the porch, drenched by the wind-driven rain, weathered by the ceaseless, damp mountain chill.

Weeks melted into months. The season shifted, the clouds drifted higher, and daily life hurried along with its endless demands of work, chores, and solitude.

Yesterday evening, I returned home just as dusk was settling behind the ridge. The rain had finally paused, leaving the valley air crisp and smelling of wet pine, red earth, and twilight.

As I reached into my pocket for the front door key, an instinct pulled my gaze toward the porch across the lane.

I stopped.

The wooden plank had long since fallen away. The long, beautiful maroon cotton that had once caught the wind and held the weight of children was gone. The constant two-month deluge of hill rains, friction, and wind had worn the fibers down to nothing.

All that remained was a single, frayed scrap of maroon cloth, no larger than the palm of a hand, clinging stubbornly to one of the rusted iron hooks. It fluttered quietly in the cool mountain breeze, solitary against the darkening silhouette of the hills.

I stood there on the verandah for a long time, watching that tiny scrap dance.

A sudden ache touched my chest, but behind it came an overwhelming sense of peace. Things of this world—cotton, wood, iron, and even human bodies—are fragile. They cannot endure the relentless passage of time and rain. They wear thin; they dissolve; they return to the earth from which they came.

The saree was no longer there. But it had not been lost to neglect in a dark cupboard to be eaten by moths. It had given everything it had to a season of pure, untainted joy. It had dissolved while lifting children toward the open sky.

My mother’s physical presence had vanished from this valley on that sacred full moon, just as her saree had vanished from that hook with the turning of the rains. Yet, looking at that tiny scrap fluttering against the mountains, I knew that what is truly given with love never disappears. The saree was gone, but the swing remained. My mother was gone, but the love she wrapped me in would hold me up forever.