Pāpi walked westward.
Not with urgency, nor with hesitation—but with the quiet persistence of one who had already lived many endings. The land of Aṅga stretched before him, wide and uneven, stitched together by dirt paths, grazing fields, forests thick with old trees, and villages that appeared like islands of smoke and sound in a sea of green.
He did not understand the language spoken around him—not fully.
Words reached his ears broken, bent by unfamiliar accents and older rhythms. Still, he grasped fragments: tone, intention, emotion. From gestures and silences, from laughter and shouting, he understood perhaps thirty or forty out of every hundred words. It was enough.
Enough to know when someone was angry.
Enough to know when someone was lying.
Enough to know when someone suffered.
It took him more than fifteen days on foot.
The sun rose and set again and again. His feet hardened, his body adapted. Hunger came, but it did not weaken him. He ate fruits freely given by trees—guava, mango, berries whose names he did not know—and drank from streams, ponds, and whenever possible, from the Gaṅgā herself.
At night, he slept beneath open skies. Sometimes beneath trees. Sometimes beside rocks still warm from the day. He dreamed little. Because his body made of medicinal & poisonous plants, insects like ants, animals like frogs didn't go near him.
Along the way, he saw three villages—never entering them, only watching from afar.
In the first, he saw a house whose roof had collapsed after rain. By morning, several men and women had gathered. No one argued over payment. No one asked whose responsibility it was. They worked together, laughing, passing tools, sharing water.
In the second village, he saw suffering.
A man of lower caste was dragged to the middle of the road, accused of impurity. He was forced to bow while others shouted verses of dharma they themselves did not follow. Nearby, a man of higher caste struck another in anger—and was praised for his "discipline."
Pāpi watched.
His heart did not race. His fists did not clench.
This is normal, he thought calmly.
In Kali Yuga, he had seen worse. There, people hid behind laws and customs. Here, they hid behind dharma's name.
Yet in the third village, he saw something different.
A woman fainted in the marketplace. Strangers rushed to help her. Someone brought water. Someone else shaded her with cloth. No one demanded reward. No one asked who she was.
Help was given because help was needed.
In Kali Yuga, such acts were rare enough to be remembered.
Here, they were quiet.
That difference stayed with him.
On the sixteenth day, he saw Mālakā.
It was a modest village. No walls. No guards. Houses stood close but not crowded. Smoke rose gently from cooking fires. Fields lay nearby, carefully tended.
Pāpi did not enter.
He watched.
For five more days.
From the shade of trees. From the edge of fields. From behind huts where no one noticed a small child with observant eyes.
He counted.
Ninety-seven people lived here.
All were śūdra—farmers, potters, laborers. Yet there was order. Calm. No visible fear.
The village chief was Ākāśa—a man whose voice carried authority but not cruelty. People listened to him, not because they feared him, but because they trusted him.
And then there was Madhu.
The only physician.
Old—eighty, perhaps eighty-three years. Thin, bent slightly by time. His hands trembled when idle, but when he treated a patient, they became steady as stone.
He had never married. His house was small. His possessions few.
Yet people waited hours for him.
Madhu taught three students Avi, Nath & Dhanu, guiding them in the art of physical medicine—herbs, roots, balance, and patience. Every morning, without fail, he walked toward the forest to gather medicinal plants.
Pāpi noticed something else.
Near the river path lived a large dog.
Scarred. Strong. Old. It followed no master, guarded no home, yet claimed the riverbank as its territory. Children avoided it. Adults respected it.
And so, Pāpi made a plan.
The next morning, he approached the dog cautiously. He picked up small pebbles—not large enough to wound, only enough to annoy.
One pebble landed near the dog's paw.
The dog growled.
Another landed closer.
The growl deepened.
The third pebble struck the ground beside its leg.
The dog barked—loud, offended, and furious.
Pāpi ran. He ran towards the path Madhu would take in his search of medicinal plants.
He ran straight toward a large neem tree.
The dog chased him eagerly. Teeth snapped. Dust flew. Pāpi climbed with all his strength.
Just in time.
The dog jumped and snapped—missing Pāpi's flesh by a breath.
But the dhoti was not as fortunate.
With a victorious tug, the dog tore away a long strip of cloth.
Pāpi clung to the branch, heart pounding—not from fear, but realization.
My dignity has been injured.
Anger flared.
Then calculation.
Then performance.
He began to cry.
Not softly.
Not politely.
He cried as though the world itself had wronged him—loud, desperate, echoing across the river path. The dog barked once more, then sat below, confused.
Minutes passed.
Footsteps approached.
Madhu arrived, staff in hand, breath uneven.
"Hey! Go on! Shoo!" the old man shouted.
The dog, unharmed and uninterested now, trotted away.
Madhu turned—and froze.
Before him stood a child clinging to a neem tree, half-clothed, eyes shining like polished stone, tears streaking his dust-covered face.
Such a child.
Madhu's heart twisted.
"Come down, little one," he said gently.
Pāpi cried louder.
Madhu asked questions—where were his parents, where had he come from—but the child only sobbed harder.
Madhu sighed, removed his own upper cloth, wrapped it around the child, and lifted him carefully.
"Enough," he murmured. "Enough crying."
And thus, without knowing it, Madhu carried both a child and a trial into his home.
Chapter End