The Guest Death Could Not Refuse

The guest death could not refuse

Yama and Yamuna were brother and sister, born of the same father, and their lives went in opposite directions.

She became a river. He became death.

It is not a job that leaves much room for visiting. Yama was needed everywhere, all the time, and nobody in the three worlds was ever glad to see him arrive. His sister asked him to come to her house. He said yes the way people say yes. Then years went past and he did not come.

She kept asking.

And one day, the second day after the new moon of Kartika, he came.

What happened next is the whole festival, and it is not dramatic.

Yamuna was delighted. She bathed him. She put a tilak on his forehead, garlanded him, sat him down and fed him. She had cooked far more than one person could eat, the way people do when somebody they have been missing finally turns up. And Yama had been received in every house in creation and welcomed in none of them. He sat in his sister's house and was simply somebody's brother for an afternoon.