The first thing Angat became aware of was the silence. It wasn't the quiet of an empty room. This was deeper, heavier. It felt thick, like he was submerged in it, and it pressed in on him from all sides, soaking into whatever was left of him. There was no ground under his feet, no sky above. Just a formless, grey everywhere, and a faint hum in the air, like the world was holding its breath.
Then, a sound. It didn't drift into his ears...he wasn't sure he had ears anymore. It just… appeared in his mind, clear and whole.
''Narayan Narayan.''
He knew that chant. It was the sound of his grandmother's soft prayers in the morning, the dramatic theme music from the mythological serials he'd watched as a kid. But here, it was different. It didn't feel like a plea or a song. It felt like a fact. A single, clear bell cutting through the fog.
Confusion, sharp and sudden, cut through the numbness. It was his first real feeling since… since everything ended. Wait a second, he thought, his mind still clinging to the logic of his old life scrambling for purchase.
This isn't how it's supposed to go. Shouldn't there be a Yamdut the servant of death? He pictured the terrifying figure from stories: glowing eyes, a heavy club. I'm no saint. I've enjoyed those college parties. So where's my scary escort?
As if he'd summoned the thought into existence, a man stepped out of the nowhere. He didn't walk towards him; one moment he wasn't there, and the next he was, the impossible space between them simply gone.
And he was no Yamdut.
He looked, for all the world, like a CEO who'd just conquered the universe and found it mildly amusing. His black suit was so sharp it seemed to cut the gloom around them. His shoes shining like starlight. On one wrist was a strand of dark and glowing Rudraksha beads, and in his hands, he held a tablet that glowed, its screen shifting between flowing Sanskrit and plain English. A dark red Tilak with white U around it was precise on his forehead. His long hair was tied back into a bun, held by something that made Angat's brain stutter...
a tiny, perfectly carved Veena, its silent strings seeming to thrum with a song he couldn't hear. He had a clever, knowing face, and a slight smile that said he was in on a secret that involved Angat. The chant, Narayan Narayan, was a soft, constant whisper around him, like his own personal background music.
He stopped in front of Angat and looked him over. His eyes were old, really old, and saw right through him, but they held a kindness that was completely disarming.
"Hello, Angat," he said. His voice was warm and calm, like the first sip of sweet tea on a cold day. He glanced at his tablet, swiping a finger across it. "Well, that was a rather messy way to go, wasn't it? My sincere apologies for the bumpy ride. You see, we're doing some… essential maintenance upstairs, some system buffer overflow and during a big storm, the signals sometimes get crossed. There was a… well, a fundamental mix-up."
He looked up, his smile turning a little sheepish. "The whole lightning event was meant for the driver. His time was up. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A cosmic technical error."
Angat could only stare, his mind reeling. This is… Narad? THE Narad Muni? The divine messenger? He looked the part, but it was like the scriptures had been given a serious corporate makeover. He's here for me? And what the hell is a 'cosmic technical error'?
Seeing the whirlwind of panic on Angat's face, the entity's smooth expression softened into one of genuine understanding.
"Ah, sorry again," he said, tapping his tablet. The symbols on it shimmered and changed. "I'm dumbing it down. Old habit. I know you work with computers, right? Code, networks? So I'm trying to use words you'll get. If I spoke to you in my real language the deep, true Sanskrit of creation it wouldn't sound like words. It would be like trying to fit the whole ocean into a teacup. Your mind isn't ready for that yet. It would just… break you."
He gave a graceful, almost apologetic shrug. "So, 'system maintenance' 'system buffer overflow' and 'mix-up' it is. It gets the idea across. Now, about this particular error…"
Narad let out a sigh that sounded like it had been practiced for a thousand years. "Looks like we have to start from the very beginning. Simple question: have you ever actually read the Geeta? I don't mean just heard the words. I mean, have you ever really sat with it, wrestled with what it's saying?"
Angat gave a weak, nervous laugh that felt odd without a body. "My mother… she used to read it to me at night. When I was little. I remember the sound of the words, the rhythm of her voice… but what they actually meant?" He trailed off, the memory feeling hazy and distant.
"I got the stories about doing your duty and being good. But the big picture, the real deep stuff… that always felt like a constellation I could never quite connect the dots on."
"So, you'd say you're an atheist, then?" Narad asked, not accusingly, but with the gentle curiosity of a doctor figuring out a symptom.
"No! It's not that," Angat said, the denial automatic, a reflex from his upbringing. "I do believe. I just… I never expected a direct hotline. It's one thing to believe in radio waves; it's another thing to have a clear voice suddenly call your name through the static."
Narad laughed, a sound that was genuinely joyful and seemed to make the void feel less empty. "Exactly! You've hit the nail on the head. God isn't some separate guy in the sky. God is the sky. And the ground. And you. You're not a tourist in this reality; you're a part of it. A temporary, beautiful shape in a grand pattern."
A flood of questions, ones he'd suppressed his whole life with logic and reason, burst out of him. "But what about all the others? The different religions? Jesus? Allah? What about the old gods, like Zeus? Or the thousands of gods in China?"
Narad made a fluid, sweeping gesture with his free hand. "They're all real. Think of it like… a huge, global company with countless branches. Different departments, managing different parts of creation, different universes, each with its own way of doing things. The big boss is the same, but the management styles are different. And yes," he added, a twinkle in his eye as he saw Angat's next question coming, "there are other universes. A never-ending number of them. The multiverse isn't a theory; it's just how things are built."
Angat felt a pure, geeky thrill, a spark of his old self. "I knew it! So… the Avengers? The Sacred Timeline? That's all real, right?"
Narad pinched the bridge of his nose, the universal sign of a teacher dealing with a smart kid who's missed the point. "A wonderfully fun story. Great fiction. But no, not like that."
Angat's face fell. "But Loki… his sacrifice at the end… it was so powerful. He died for his friends."
For a glorious second, the divine bureaucrat vanished, replaced by a total fanboy. "Oh, the drama! The camera work! Tom Hiddleston was brilliant!" Narad caught himself, straightening his suit with a cough. "Ahem. To be clear, the ideas of Loki and Thor are… based on something real. But what you saw on screen is just a story. And yes," he said with a wink, "I binged the whole show. I thought the time stuff was very clever, even if it was mostly nonsense."
He got serious again. "Which brings us back to you. The Geeta isn't just a holy book. It's the ultimate instruction manual for your soul. It's the one who made all of this, explaining how it works to one very confused person. Millions of people have the manual on their shelf. Very, very few actually open it and follow the directions."
He raised the tablet. The screen glowed with a soft light, showing two lines of truth.
"अहं सर्वस्य प्रभवो मत्तः सर्वं प्रवर्तते।
(I am the source of all creation; everything comes from me.)
"अव्यक्ताद् व्यक्तयः सर्वाः प्रभवन्त्यहरागमे।
रात्र्यागमे प्रलीयन्ते तत्रैवाव्यक्तसंज्ञके॥
(With the dawn, everything emerges from the unseen. With the night, it all dissolves back into that same unseen.)**
Narad's gaze held Angat's, and in those depths, Angat saw no judgment, only a vast, patient love. "You've heard these words before. But now, you have to do more than hear them. You have to live them. This isn't a philosophy debate anymore. This is the truth of what you are now."
He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a whisper that vibrated in the very core of Angat's soul.
"All of it. The whole crazy show. The love and the loss. You. Me. The memory of your father's quiet disappointment, your mother's fierce love, your sister's big dreams," he said, a kind, knowing smile touching his lips. "And yes, that specific, wonderful feeling you get around Priya. It's all a part of the same one thing. You came from that source, and when your part in this story is done, you'll return to it. The 'you' that you think you are,,,your name, your personality, your worries..that's just a temporary role, a character that mistakenly thinks it's writing the whole play."
He paused, letting the sheer weight of this truth settle into the silence around them. Then, he ended with the perfect, simple poetry that made all the explanations unnecessary.
"बूँद समानी सागर में, जानै कौन अपार।
सागर में जो बूँद गिरी, सो बूँद कहाँ उभार॥ _ Kabir
The drop has vanished in the ocean; who can measure that vastness?
The drop that fell into the sea, where is that drop now? It has become the sea.**