1966, somewhere in the Terai mountains of Bengal
The woman remembered watching the thunderbolts fall. She remembered blankly walking to the police station. Then she remembered standing on the frigid ground, a three meter wide crevasse before her and a dense fog preventing her from seeing further.
"I suppose you came to seek greater things than abolishing self doubt," a hermit came to her side.
The woman looked down at her attire. She wore a salwar kameez with a black coat tightly wrapped around down to the heels. The hood was pulled over and her mouth was covered with a scarf.
The Hermit, however, was bare-bodied, with ash smeared over his chest and a dhoti covering him waist to knees. Then he extended his left leg, his pelvic region bent to adjust the widening muscles, and the hermit crossed the crevasse in one step. The hermit stopped on the other and looked back at the woman, raising his brow.
The woman pulled up her scarf to her nose. There is a time to think all about it and a time not to think at all. The girl too breathed deeply and jumped aiming at the other side. She closed her eyes while in the air. Then she could feel the impact and a strong grip on her right arm. The woman shot her eyes open, to see herself standing on the crevasse ledge with her toes, the hermit strongly holding her hand. The woman pulled back to climb on flat ground.
The Hermit walked away and the woman followed. The snowy fog eventually cleared to reveal a leaf-shaped cave opening, with a small pool of water in the front.
"I met you once," the Hermit put down his water pot, "at Sirisha devi's Andarmahal in Coochbehar."
"That was nearly 15 years ago!", exclaimed the girl, "you must've got a great memory!"
The Hermit didn't respond. Instead, he brought out a rug from inside and placed it over a rock at the mouth of the cave. Then he sat on it with his legs folded.
"Sirisha di told me of Asta Siddhi....!" the girl lost her rhythm doubting if she should've opened with those words.
The hermit smiled, "so you're searching for a new sense to this world, how did your old one break down?"
The girl hesitated, then she spoke, in a voice colder than the mountains, "someone died. He was not a nice man but....", the girl paused to think.
Kalicharan knew that he was not getting the jeep. He knew the tank was not full, he wanted to escape by a police jeep. The only thing he missed in the great endeavour was the policeman's willingness to kill him.
The girl looked up and continued, "The moment he died, I felt like forgiving him. I started hating the person who killed him.....I think he lived life the way he wanted, I think...."
"....he was more evil than you were good!?" said the hermit, "tell me why is it that you think good should fight evil?"
"That's the way it is," the girl answered immediately realising she didn't believe in those words anymore.
The Hermit slowly closed his eyes. The girl followed suit and realised that she was not sitting straight.
"Is this a test of my character, if I'm worthy somehow?"
"You think, I'm mocking you?" the hermit spoke a little louder, "that somehow I know the conclusion you'll arrive at and I'm pleasing myself to watch you comprehend it....!?"
"Sirisha di said, you don't involve yourself in mortal matters!"
"Some things don't concern me!", said the hermit, "you'll get what you want and what you want will get to you! I'm merely playing my part in it....!"
The girl and hermit breathed slowly in rhythm. Short inhalation and long periods of exhaling. They fasted their breath, lowering the ambient temperature of the body, adjusting more naturally to the surrounding.
"Why is that good should fight evil?" the Hermit repeated.
"Because...," the girl lost rhythm once again.
Unknown to the woman the hermit raised his right hand, holding a shard of ice, then he asked the question again. The girl stammered while answering.
"I think," the woman began seeing white spots in the endless blackness of her closed eyes. Then the spots exploded, she didn't feel like opening her eyes, something strange gripped her, "people! People do the best they can! There is nothing good not evil, it's just people and stories...!" the girl opened her eyes and looked up. She saw that the hermit pressing a pointed shard of ice onto her forehead.
"Siddhi is realisation...," the hermit drew back the ice, "a construct that goes beyond words and all descriptions and all interpretations. What you realise is reality...!"
"But it wasn't the event that made me come here, I'm meant to do this..... looking back at my life, I was always meant to do this, I'll even make the skies bleed.....!"
"Prakarma Vristi, one who could bring rain at will," mused the Hermit, "Still not embracing your reality, I see....."
"But I've realised, people must be controlled.....!"
"The moment you try to control something, you acknowledge your being outside the soul!" the hermit said slowly, "too much incidental, that something can easily be used to control you...!"