Week 6 Story: "Ganga's Arrest"

"Handcuffs". Source: Pixabay

"Sir, we found her. We got the woman here who been drowning babies."

Sergeant Talbot looked up from behind his news article. Other police reports and more important documents were strewn on his desk, but he'd been staring at that same article for hours. The news report had been about a cold case from earlier last year. His department had gotten all the flack for not wrapping the ends of that mystery. A witness had seen some deranged woman drowning her babies in the river and the article showed a very blurred picture of the scene; one which had haunted him for a long time. They hadn't been able to track this mad creature, that was before now. Talbot cracked his knuckles involuntary, and nodded.

"I'll be in the interrogation room in a moment," he said and dismissed the arresting officer, Felix. Although he wouldn't show it, Talbot knew Felix was highly pleased with the arrest. Talbot himself was more so relieved. There had been quite a bit of media attention on this case, and it had damaged his image. Their area had seen some strange occurrences recently. Besides the baby drowning, there were some people who had attempted to massacre a motorist group because they believed them to be what they called 'rakshasas'. Just last week, they confiscated a monkey from the illegal pet trade, being worshiped as some god named Hanuman. Every case was stranger than the next, and every one made Talbot question a very early retirement. 

Upon reaching the interrogation room, Talbot was confused at the woman they had in custody. He quickly looked over the female handcuffed to the table on the other side of the glass mirror. He couldn't believe she was a child murderer. She held a youthful, replenished sort of beauty, but her pretty blue eyes were much too old. They seemed to be aged, the blue itself a dark hue and he felt himself pulled into their depths. Even with the pure annoyance written across her face, this couldn't be the face of a killer. Another officer sat across from her, probably thinking the same thing from the puzzled expression on his face. Officer Felix had long been a part of his department and was a good man, so he had no doubt that if she had been arrested it was on sound reasoning. Still...

"She's already admitted to the crime, Sir," Felix mumbled from beside him. 

"Do we really have to do this again?" she said to the officer inside with her after he asked something, and her voice was the strangest sound. It was something like rain falling, or maybe running water. Talbot looked to Felix to go on, trying to ignore the woman's unusual voice.

"The children were also her own," Felix said, unable to keep the bewilderment out of his voice,  "She said, and I quote sir, she drowned them to release them from this mortal existence."

Ganga rolled her eyes at the officer in the room with her, after he asked her to repeat the story.

"I told you, it's only seven of them that will receive this fate. The last one will be confined and bound to live on Earth as human like you."

Talbot sighed deeply. He would talk to his wife when he got home about early retirement plans. Felix clenched and unclenched his fists in obvious frustration. 

"Fanatics," Talbot muttered. Even though they had a confession, any defense could plead insanity after a psychological evaluation that would obviously work in her favour. Talbot shook his head.

"What's her name?" 

"She said it's Ganga," Felix whispered. 

"Ganga?" Tablot again looked at her in disbelief. As if sensing his stare, she turned towards the one way mirror. Though he knew this 'Ganga' could not see him on the other side, it felt like she was peering directly through his soul.
"You don't mean-?"

"Yes, sir, like the river," Felix reassured him, referencing the river Ganges that had long lost its beauty under the hand of modern development in the area. The same river she had been caught drowning the babies in. Ganga suddenly frowned at the glass mirror, clear distaste on her face.

"Not like, Sergeant Talbot. I am the river."

Reference: R K. Narayan. The Mahabharata, [Print].

*Author's Note: In the first part of The Mahabharata version I read, Narayan tells the story of Ganga and Santanu who becomes her husband under the condition that he never question her. After they are married, Ganga drowns every child they have up to baby number eight. She explains that they are vasus, essentially another group of divine entities and that they were cursed to be born on earth. By drowning the first seven, Ganga releases them from mundane life but the eighth must remain on earth. Ganga is the goddess of the river, Ganges, which flows in India and is considered sacred by many. In this retelling, I imagined how this story might have played out in the modern day. While she continues to drown her children over the years, someone sees her doing it, and she is later arrested for the crimes. I wanted to suggest that in this small area this isn't the first instance of some kind of 'divine intervention' in human life. Additionally, the tired and fed-up sergeant here had actually seen some strange cases recently. This is the first time I've retold a story in this style, and it was fun to explore the idea of some characters interacting with the justice system because of things they've done (in their original stories) that might not be accepted just off the bat today.