✵ I. The Boy Who Hated "Important Work"
By the time Narasimha Reddy turned four and then five, the villagers had grown used to seeing him everywhere.
He was:
in the courtyard, chasing other children,
on the steps, playing with his wooden lion,
under the banyan tree, listening to old men talk,
and very often… trying to escape "important work."
"Come, kanna," his mother would call, "help me fold these clothes."
"Ayyo, Amma," Narasimha would groan dramatically, flopping backward on the mat like a tiny defeated soldier. "Why did you give me two hands? If I had only one, I could say, 'See, I cannot fold properly.'"
His mother snorted despite herself.
"Even with one hand, you can fold, rascal. Get up."
He would help—eventually—but not without commentary.
"Amma, why so many clothes? If people wore less, work would be less."
"If they wore less, you would be the first to complain in winter."
"Then let them wear clothes that fold themselves," he would mutter, half-serious, half-joking.
His grandmother would cackle from her corner.
"Listen, listen. Even at five, our boy has started dreaming of magic clothes."
❖
He very quickly learned one thing:
"Important work" = "Boring work."
Whenever his father sat with scrolls, letters, and accounts, Narasimha would peek, stare for ten seconds, and then whisper to his mother,
"Amma… what sin did Dora do to get so many papers?"
His mother would hide her smile in the edge of her sari.
"Being leader is like that," she'd murmur. "It is not only swords and horses. It is also nine thousand words on one page."
"Then I never want to be leader," he'd declare. "I will protect everyone, but someone else can do the writing."
The adults laughed.
But a part of the universe quietly noted that sentence and filed it away for later.
❖ II. Games of Kings and Clowns
The children of the village, influenced by what they saw, often played "court" in the courtyard of the Uyyalawada house.
One would sit on the step as "king," others would come as "villagers" to complain, and someone would be the "cruel tax man" demanding grain.
It did not take long before they shoved Narasimha into the middle.
"You be Dora!" they insisted. "You're Dora's son. You sit there."
He sat on the stone step, back straight, trying to imitate his father's posture. For a few moments, he played the role unerringly.
A child stepped forward, clutching an imaginary sack.
"Dora, the tax man took all my crop," he said, overacting. "Please help."
Narasimha frowned seriously, eyes narrowing, every inch the chieftain's son.
"Then we will tell him no," he said gravely. "We will say, 'If you take all, what will my people eat?'"
The "tax man" child puffed out his chest.
"I will say, 'Company order!'"
Narasimha's brows knit deeper.
Then, suddenly, his mouth twisted into mischief.
He leaned forward and said in a stage-whisper,
"Then I will tell him: 'Company order? Good. Then go eat their stones. Leave my people's rice.'"
The children burst into laughter, rolling on the ground.
One of the older boys slapped his knee.
"Look at him! Talking like big man and joking like street fellow."
Narasimha grinned, dropping his "royal" posture and hopping off the step to chase them.
From the doorway, his father had been watching silently.
He saw two things at once:
the way his son instinctively took the central role when it came to "judgement" in games,
and the way he escaped that role with jokes as soon as he could.
"Hmm," the chieftain murmured to himself. "He has a king's presence… and a man's desire to run away from work. Dangerous combination."
Yet his eyes held pride.
✢ III. The Day Laughter Broke
It happened on a day that began almost too bright.
The sky over Uyyalawada was a clear, aching blue. The sun beat down on the red earth. Women moved like bright flowers between houses, carrying pots. Men in the fields wiped sweat from their foreheads. Children darted through alleys, their bare feet kicking up dust.
In the Uyyalawada house, the chieftain had left early that morning for a nearby village to inspect irrigation channels. He would not be back until night.
His wife managed the household, juggling a thousand tasks—ordering grain, soothing a crying servant's child, overseeing preparations for an evening puja. In the middle of all this, she still had to keep an eye on her child, who had grown swift-legged and sharper-tongued.
"Narasimha," she called, "do not go beyond the front gate. Your father is not home today."
"I won't, Amma!" he called back, already at the threshold, eyes shining with all the mischief that always precedes rule-breaking.
He stepped out into the street with a group of other boys, his wooden lion tucked under one arm like a tiny royal emblem.
The air smelled of dust and hot stone. Somewhere, a drum sounded faintly from a temple further away.
It was the kind of day when nothing seemed likely to go wrong.
❖
They were in the side lane, halfway between the chieftain's house and the banyan tree, when they heard the first shout.
It was not the playful shout of children.
It was the hoarse, desperate cry of a man in trouble.
"Please! Leave her—"
The children stopped.
Narasimha's head snapped toward the sound instinctively.
Another voice erupted—this one harsh, unfamiliar, heavy with foreign consonants and contempt filtered through broken Telugu.
"You pay! Everybody pay! No excuse!"
The boys exchanged uneasy glances.
"That is from Rangaiah's house," one murmured. "His father's fields failed this year…"
"Let's go back," another said quickly. "My mother will beat me if she finds me near trouble."
They began to turn away.
All but one.
Narasimha's feet refused to move backward.
Somewhere deep inside him, a thin, cold thread tightened around his heart.
He moved toward the sound.
"Narasimha!" his friend hissed. "Where are you going?"
"Just to see," he said, voice oddly flat. "Only seeing is not wrong."
Without waiting for argument, he turned the corner.
✶ IV. First Cruelty
The world at that corner was different.
A British patrol had come in that morning—not to the chieftain's house, but directly to the poorer lanes.
There were four red-coated sepoys and one British officer in a pale, sweat-stained shirt. The officer's sunburnt nose was peeling; his patience had peeled even faster.
Rangaiah's father, a thin, exhausted farmer, knelt on the ground in front of his small house. His wife clutched the doorway, their young daughter pressed behind her.
"You've had two years," the officer spat, pacing. "Two! The Company is not a charity. You pay what is written."
"I gave what I could, Sahib," the man said, voice breaking. "There is nothing left."
"Nothing left?" the officer repeated, turning to look at the house. "You have a roof. You have pots. You have a wife and daughter. You have… ornaments. Very pretty."
He nodded at the girl's small silver anklet.
The mother instinctively shifted, covering her child with her body.
"Please, Sahib," she whispered. "She is a child…"
One of the sepoys, eyes averted, muttered something under his breath in his own tongue. He did not like what he was seeing—but pay and punishment shaped his spine straight.
The officer's lip curled.
"They will learn," he said. "You people only learn when pain comes."
He gestured at a sepoy.
"Take the anklets. Sell them in the town."
The sepoy hesitated.
"Sahib, they are… for the girl's—"
"I gave an order, private," the officer snapped. "Do I need to repeat it in your language? Take the ornaments. Or perhaps you want me to take you instead?"
The sepoy swallowed hard and stepped forward.
It was at this moment that Narasimha arrived quietly at the edge of the scene.
He saw:
the kneeling man,
the officer's smug posture,
the mother's trembling,
the sepoy's reluctant steps toward the little girl.
For the first time in his short life, he saw a cruelty that was not a story, not village gossip, not a harsh word—but something that was about to leave a scar on a child who had done nothing.
His breath caught.
The world around him suddenly felt too sharp, too bright.
The wooden lion in his hand dug into his palm.
A heat—not of fever, but of something deeper—rose in his chest.
✹ V. The Aura Breaks Free
The sepoy reached for the anklet.
The girl squeezed her eyes shut.
In that instant, a voice rang out—from a small throat, yet carrying far.
"Stop!"
Everyone turned.
The red-coated men.
The officer.
The kneeling farmer.
The girl behind her mother.
They stared at the little boy standing at the lane's mouth—dust on his feet, hair falling over his forehead, a carved lion clutched in his hand.
The officer blinked, annoyed at the interruption.
"And who is this?" he asked, switching briefly to English. "Another beggar?"
A sepoy, squinting, recognized the child's face.
"Sahib," he said quietly, "that is… the Uyyalawada Dora's son."
The officer's eyes narrowed.
He studied the boy again.
Narasimha walked forward, small steps steady, each one harder than he had ever taken in his life.
His heart pounded so violently he thought his chest might burst.
His legs wanted to tremble.
They didn't.
He stopped between the sepoy and the girl.
Up close, the man in red loomed like a tree. His gun, slung over his shoulder, gleamed dully.
Narasimha's hand shook a little… then tightened around his lion.
"Leave the anklet," he said. His voice was not loud, but it did not waver. "She is a child. Take… something else."
The officer's brows shot up.
"Oh?" he said. "And who are you, little rajah?"
Narasimha swallowed. He did not answer with his father's title. He simply said,
"I live here."
One of the other boys, who had followed at a distance despite fear, watched with his own breath stuck in his throat.
The officer walked forward slowly, crouched so he was closer to the boy's height, and let an ugly smile spread on his face.
"Listen," he said softly in broken Telugu, "so you understand early: Company takes what it wants. Big men, small men, women, children. All same when coin is needed."
He reached out as if to pat Narasimha's cheek mockingly.
He never touched him.
Because at that moment, something in the air changed.
It was subtle at first.
The small hairs on the sepoy's arms rose.
The shadows in the lane seemed to deepen.
The sound of distant chatter in the village faded, as if someone had shut a door.
Narasimha felt it as a pressure building behind his eyes, a tightness in his throat, a burning in his chest that could not become words.
His vision tunneled.
He looked at the officer—and something in him roared silently.
He did not know it, but his aura—dormant till now, soft and diffuse—flared.
It surged out, not in visible light or flames, but in a wave of primal instinct that brushed every nerve in the little lane.
To the sepoy about to take the anklet, it felt like standing in front of a lion's open mouth.
Nothing physical changed. No giant beast appeared. No sound was heard.
But some deep, animal part of his brain screamed:
Danger. Do not offend this one.
His hand stopped short of the girl's leg.
His breath quickened.
Even the officer, who did not have the same sensitivity, felt a strange chill crawl up his spine. For a split second, he had the bizarre impression that he was a small, soft animal standing in front of something very large and very patient, whose patience had limits.
He jerked his hand back from the boy's face, scowling to cover the flinch.
"What is this…" he muttered under his breath. "Heat makes me… imagine things."
The lane's air, which had thickened, slowly returned to normal weight.
The pressure behind Narasimha's eyes eased slightly.
He did not understand what had just happened. He only knew that his heart hurt and his eyes stung with angry tears he refused to let fall in front of these men.
The officer straightened.
He looked at the anklet, the trembling girl, the kneeling father… and the boy whose gaze did not drop.
Then he made a calculation.
Uyyalawada was not just any village. It was a node of resistance. People were already attached to this boy. Harassing him directly might cause more trouble than a pair of anklets was worth today.
"Fine," he said abruptly, waving a hand. "Leave the anklets. Take the pot instead."
A sepoy grabbed a large, good clay pot from the doorway.
The mother winced, but it was better than her child's ornaments.
The officer turned to leave, face tight with irritation he did not fully understand.
As he passed Narasimha, he muttered in English,
"This place breeds defiance. We shall have to be more careful."
The sepoys followed, their steps faster than necessary, as if they wanted to be out of that lane quickly.
The moment they left, the sounds of the village seemed to return—the distant call of a woman, the creak of a bullock cart, a dog's bark.
Narasimha exhaled.
Slowly, the tension went out of his shoulders.
The girl's mother collapsed to her knees, pulling her daughter to her and sobbing with the release of terror.
Rangaiah's father stared at the boy.
"Nayana…" he whispered, voice hoarse. "Why did you come here?"
Narasimha opened his mouth—then closed it.
What could he say? That his feet moved because his heart could not bear injustice? That something inside him had snapped at the sight of cruelty toward someone smaller?
He settled for something simple.
"They were wrong," he said, lip trembling slightly now that the danger had passed. "That's all."
The man bowed his head, eyes filling.
"May Narasimha Swami watch over you," he choked out.
The boy swallowed hard and looked away, suddenly overwhelmed by emotion that felt too big for his small chest.
He turned and walked back toward his house, his steps slower now.
Behind him, the girl peeped out from her mother's embrace to look at his retreating back—the small figure who had stood between her and humiliation.
A part of her would remember that shape forever.
✹ VI. The Scar You Cannot See
By the time he reached home, the adrenaline had drained, leaving him oddly cold.
His mother, who had been anxiously looking for him, rushed forward.
"Narasimha! Where were you?" she scolded. "Did I not tell you not to go far when your father is away?"
He opened his mouth, ready to weave some half-truth.
Instead, for the first time, the words did not come easily.
He saw again, in his mind's eye, the kneeling farmer, the officer's outstretched hand, the girl's terrified face.
His throat tightened.
His mother, sharp-eyed, saw something different in him. Not just a child returning from mischief, but a boy whose gaze had seen something it should not have had to.
"Nanna?" she asked more softly now. "What happened?"
He took a deep breath. Then another.
Finally, he muttered,
"Nothing… Amma. They just… took a pot."
He said it in such a flat tone that it made her heart ache.
She wanted to press for more, but something told her not to—yet. So instead, she sat him down, poured water over his dusty feet, and let him drink.
That night, he did not sleep as quickly as usual.
He lay on his mat, staring at the rafters, listening to faraway sounds.
Outside, somewhere, a fox barked. A night bird called.
Inside his chest, something kept repeating:
They were wrong. They were wrong. They were wrong… and still they took.
For the first time, the world had shown him an injustice that was not corrected in front of him. His father had not been there to balance the scales. His own presence had managed only a small reduction in cruelty, not a full reversal.
A thin, invisible scar formed on his heart.
It did not close.
It would not, for a long time.
✪ VII. The Gods Take Notice
In the higher realms, the moment his aura had flared, the effect had been noticed.
In Vaikuntha, Vishnu paused mid-discussion about a distant world's crisis.
"Kalyani," he murmured. "Did you feel that?"
Lakshmi looked up, eyes softening with worry and pride mixed.
"Yes. His outrage awakened more of what we planted in him."
Saraswati nodded.
"First, the mind sees injustice. Later, the will decides what to do with it. This was his first true seeing."
Parvati's fists, which had clenched when she sensed the officer's intent, slowly relaxed.
"He could not stop it entirely," she said softly. "But he stood there. Small, shaking, but he stood."
Maheshwara inclined his head.
"The first roar is rarely heard by the world. But the forest remembers."
Brahma, gazing down the threads of potential futures, saw subtle changes—tiny shifts in the way Narasimha's path angled. The boy would not be able to forget today's event, even if his conscious mind pushed it down. His decisions, years later, would carry the imprint of this moment.
"Another weight added to his side of the scales," Brahma murmured. "The side that says: 'No more.'"
✦ VIII. A Talk Under the Stars
The chieftain returned late that night, tired from walking fields and inspecting half-dry channels.
His wife met him in the courtyard, face shadowed.
"How was it there?" she asked.
"Dry," he said. "Too dry. The sky listens to no man."
She hesitated, then added quietly,
"Your son… saw something today."
He stilled.
"What?" he asked.
"We will talk after food," she replied. "He should hear too."
❖
Later, when the house had quieted and only a few lamps remained lit, father and son sat together on the steps of the courtyard.
Above them, the stars were clear. The air had cooled.
"So," the chieftain said finally, not unkindly, "you went out when your mother told you not to."
Narasimha's shoulders hunched.
"Yes," he admitted. "I only wanted to see…"
"And what did you see?" his father asked.
Silence stretched.
Then, in a small voice, he said:
"They… were going to take a girl's anklet. She had done nothing. They took a pot instead. Her father begged."
His father closed his eyes briefly.
He had seen such scenes before. Many. Too many.
"What did you do?" he asked.
"I… stood there," Narasimha said. His voice grew tight. "I told them to stop."
He expected anger, perhaps a scolding about getting involved.
Instead, his father's hand came down gently on his hair.
"You did well," he said quietly.
Narasimha's head snapped up, surprised.
"But I could not stop them," he burst out, anger and shame mixing. "I only… changed what they took. They still took."
His father looked at him for a long moment.
"Listen to me, Narasimha," he said slowly. "In this world, there will be many times where you cannot stop an injustice completely. Sometimes you can only reduce it. Sometimes you will fail entirely. If you decide that because you cannot do everything, you will do nothing… then you become one of them."
The boy's small jaw clenched.
"I don't want to be like them," he said fiercely.
His father's lips twitched with a sad smile.
"I know."
They sat in silence for a while, the weight of the sky above them.
Then Narasimha muttered,
"If I become leader one day… I will not allow this."
His father coughed, trying to hide a flicker of amusement and pride.
"Ah, so you do want to become leader now?" he teased gently. "What happened to 'I don't want to do paperwork, Appa'?"
Narasimha glared half-heartedly, cheeks flushing.
"I will make someone else do the paperwork," he said. "I will only do the… shouting."
His father laughed softly, the sound easing something heavy in both their chests.
"Remember this feeling," he said after the laughter faded. "Not just your anger, but the pain in your chest when you saw their fear. A Dora who forgets that pain becomes worse than any foreign officer."
Narasimha nodded, eyes unusually serious for a five-year-old.
Inside, a strange duality began to form:
One part of him wanted to stand in front of his people like his father did, shielding them,
Another part wanted to run far away from endless papers and numbers and helplessness.
He did not yet know that both parts would grow together.
✵ IX. Small Jokes, Heavy Heart
The next day, the world continued as always.
The sun rose. The British officer woke with a slight headache and dismissed yesterday's strange chill as heatstroke. The sepoy thought uneasily of the boy, then forced his mind away, burying his discomfort under his uniform.
In the village, people resumed talking under trees, drawing water, cooking, gossiping.
Narasimha played again with other children.
He laughed.
He ran.
He joked with them more loudly than usual, as if trying to prove to himself that laughter still belonged here.
At one point, during their usual "court game," one boy, acting as "Company officer," strutted around demanding imaginary tax.
"I will take everyone's pots!" he declared.
The other children pretended to beg.
The usual script was to let him "bully" for a bit before the "Dora" came in.
This time, Narasimha didn't wait.
He walked up, snatched the imaginary "document" from the "officer's" hand, pretended to examine it, then tore it dramatically.
"New law," he announced. "Anyone who bullies children… has to clean the village toilets for seven days."
The children shrieked with laughter.
"But where will I write complaints now?" one boy joked, pointing to the torn "paper."
"Write them on the sky," Narasimha retorted. "Even gods are tired of your face."
The laughter doubled.
From the doorway, his mother watched, a faint, proud sadness in her eyes.
He was already doing what he would one day do as a man:
using humour like a shield, keeping others' spirits up while something darker coiled quietly inside, waiting for the right time to be unleashed.
✦ X. A Lion Cub Wakes
Far away, in the hidden places of the world, those who watched such things updated their silent observations.
The elder sorcerer in the mountain sanctum marked a line.
"First emotional awakening," he wrote. "Not magical, but… resonant. Note for future."
An Eternal glanced once more at her console, saw the same small spike of anomaly, and muttered,
"Still growing. Still bounded. Leave it."
In Vaikuntha, Parvati Devi watched as Narasimha joked with children in sunlight, even as his eyes occasionally turned serious when adults spoke of Company cruelty.
"He will not be only one thing," she said softly. "He will be many."
Lakshmi nodded.
"In court, he will wear a lion's mane," she mused. "Among enemies, he will bare his teeth. At home… he will complain like a boy who never wanted a throne."
Saraswati smiled.
"And still, he will show up for his duties, even if he grumbles about them."
Vishnu chuckled quietly.
"I have seen many leaders who love power and hate responsibility. This one, I think, will hate power and still carry responsibility. That… is rarer."
Maheshwara watched a faint line of asura-like force flicker within the boy's aura, the seed of the future battle-form they had granted.
"Yes," he said. "When he stands before his enemies one day, they will not see the boy who hates paperwork. They will see something that walks like a man and roars like a god."
Brahma closed his divine book for a moment.
"The first wound has been given," he said gravely. "From such wounds, great vows are born."
On the ground, in a small, dusty village in Rayalaseema, a boy wiped his nose on his sleeve, laughed with his friends, and later that night lay awake, staring at the ceiling, remembering a girl's anklet and a pot that had been taken unfairly.
He did not yet have words like dharma, revolution, or resistance shaped around his feelings.
He only knew:
"When I grow up… I don't want anyone to kneel like that in front of those men. Not if I can help it."
The lion cub inside him stirred.
And the world, slowly, began to shift to make room for the roar that would one day come.