The Mists of Brahma

by CHRISTOPHER C. DOYLE

  Mirza had picked up the photocopies and studied them. ‘These are new passports,’ he said. ‘No prior passport numbers.’ He looked at Kapoor. ‘If they didn’t have passports while they were living in Allahabad, we will need to use their photographs and search the DL database manually to find out where they lived. That is, if they had driving licences in the first place. Even the DLs are new and not transfers from UP, according to the application forms here.’

  ‘Or,’ Kapoor had countered, ‘you can try using these photographs in the WhatsApp networks that you have identified.’

  Over the last nine days, Mirza had managed to identify the WhatsApp administrators of not only the akhara groups but also the alumni of the two schools where they presumed Singh and Updadhyay had studied.

  Mirza had smiled. ‘Of course, sir. And I’m going to check out the stationery shops right away.’

  He had struck gold. The owner of one of the stationery shops had recognised Upadhyay’s photograph and helpfully informed Mirza that the man in the photograph had taught at St. Joseph’s College. He did not know the name of the teacher he had identified, but he had no doubt about his identity.

  This was a positive development. Upadhyay had told Kapoor that he had taught Vishwaraj in Allahabad. Kapoor had been told by the Reverend Father Oscar D’souza, the principal of St. Joseph’s, that Vishwaraj had studied in that school. And now, there was a positive identification that Upadhyay had, in fact, taught there. All the facts matched.

  And yet, if Upadhyay had indeed taught at St. Joseph’s College, as the stationery shop owner insisted, why was he not in the school records?

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Happy Birthday!

  The Assembly Hall

  The Gurukul

  Panna National Park

  That it was a special occasion was obvious. The Assembly Hall was decked up with wreaths and strings of marigolds and a general celebratory air prevailed.

  It was the birthday of five students today.

  Including Arjun.

  It was the day of the winter solstice.

  The five children—Arjun, Maya and three novices—had risen earlier than usual today. Their day had begun with an abhyangasnan—a bath with an oil massage—followed by offering obeisance to their parents and elders. The parents of the novices had specially travelled to the Gurukul to shower their blessings on their children. Since Maya had no living parents, the Mahamatis in the Gurukul stood in for them while Kanakpratap stood in for his late brother, Arjun’s father.

  This was followed by a public celebration in the Assembly Hall, where all the residents of the Gurukul had gathered after the morning assembly and prayers.

  When the rituals were completed, the children were offered a sweetmeat each, and sweets were distributed to the rest of the community before they dispersed for their respective classes.

  Maya caught up with Arjun before they parted ways—he for his training with Agastya in the Kshatriya practice field and she for her lessons with Satyavachana.

  ‘So,’ her eyes sparkled with happiness, ‘how does it feel to be fifteen and starting on sixteen?’

  Arjun grinned back at her. ‘I don’t know, but one step closer to being considered a real grown up, I suppose?’

  ‘You aren’t legally an adult till you are eighteen, you know,’ Maya reminded him.

  ‘What’s two years? They’ll fly past.’

  ‘Arjun!’ Kanakpratap’s stentorian voice broke up their conversation and Arjun hurried away with a smile and a wink.

  Maya looked around for Satyavachana. He had made it a point to be present as part of the elders’ community to bless her. Knowing how uncomfortable the Maharishi was around anything to do with the Sangha, Maya appreciated his gesture from the bottom of her heart. Somehow, the Maharishi had filled a vacuum in her life; a hole that had been created by the loss of her father. While she knew that no one could ever replace her father, Satyavachana had become her rock: solid, reliable, and always there for her.

  She spotted him and waved frantically to catch his attention.

  The Maharishi smiled at her, a twinkle in his eye, and beckoned to her to join him.

  Then he disappeared.

  Maya smiled. The Maharishi was hundreds of years old, but he still behaved like he was a student at the Gurukul. Perhaps that was why she liked him so much. He was like one of the children rather than one of the Mahamatis.

  She closed her eyes silently recited the Pratismriti mantra.

  Then she too disappeared.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Atma Travel

  In the Skies above Satyavachana’s Ashram

  Madhya Pradesh

  ‘So, where are you taking us tonight?’ Satyavachana asked Maya.

  They—or rather, their atmas—were hovering above the treetops that closed over the Maharishi’s ashram. After a long break of almost three months—Maya knew Satyavachana had been spying on Shukra during this time—the Maharishi had finally resumed lessons on atma travel with Maya.

  She didn’t understand why Satyavachana had given up on his surveillance of Shukra, but welcomed the chance to learn more about atma travel. She had had just nine days of lessons before the Maharishi had suspended them in favour of watching Shukra’s movements.

  ‘Um … I don’t know,’ Maya responded, communicating with Satyavachana purely through the power of thought.

  ‘Let’s spy on the Sangha, shall we?’ Satyavachana suggested. If he had been in his physical form, Maya was sure this suggestion would have been accompanied by a chuckle and a wicked twinkle in his eye.

  She loved his attitude. She now knew that he was several hundred years old—exactly how old, no one had been able to tell her, not even Maharishi Gurumurthy at the Gurukul archives—yet he was as impish and impulsive as a teenager.

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ Maya agreed, delighted by the thought that no one in the Sangha could see her. So what if the Sangha had Maharishis? Maya could travel in spirit form and they wouldn’t even know.

  ‘But what will we spy on?’ she wondered. ‘Everyone will be asleep.’

  ‘Not everyone,’ the Maharishi told her. ‘The Akshapatalikas will be up. They don’t sleep much.’

  ‘The who?’ Maya hadn’t the foggiest what he was talking about.

  ‘So they haven’t told you?’

  ‘About the … the Aksha pataalas? No.’

  ‘The Akshapatalikas,’ Satyavachana corrected her. ‘The Keepers of the Archives.’

  ‘I thought Maharishi Gurumurthy was the Keeper of the Archives.’

  ‘Yes, he is. At the Gurukul, that is. But he is not an Akshapatalika. He is a Maharishi tasked with the responsibility of looking after the archives at the Gurukul, just like the Keepers of the archives at the other Gurukuls.’

  Seeing that Maya still looked confused, the Maharishi continued his explanation. ‘The archives at the Gurukul are meant for students. Children who have not yet qualified for the Gana. They contain material that helps you to graduate to the Gana. The Akshapatalikas, on the other hand, are the Keepers of the Archives of the Sangha. Their title came into being around 4,000 years ago, during the rule of the first Mahamatra, Tribhuvan, who organised the Sangha into the organisation that you see today. They are the ones who have, for the last 4,000 years, maintained the records and knowledge of the Sangha; archives which may be accessed only by members of the Sangha or the Gana. Students are not allowed there.’

  Maya’s mind boggled. She suddenly felt small. Here she was, hunting for clues to Brahmabhasha in the archives at the Gurukul, housed in two storeys of a cottage, when 4,000 years of knowledge were locked away in a much larger archive.

  One that she would never be able to access.

  Unless she graduated to the Gana.

  Her determination to learn and succeed grew even stronger at this thought.

  At the same time, the idea that she could, in her atma form, spy on these otherwise out of bounds archives, appealed to her.

&nb
sp; And, if Satyavachana was suggesting it, who cared about the rules of the Sangha? If it was okay with him, it was okay with her.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Discovery

  In the Skies above the Bhimbetka Caves

  ‘That was very good,’ Satyavachana praised Maya. ‘It took you just one lesson to get it right!’

  The Maharishi had explained to Maya that there was no fixed entrance to the archives. To maintain secrecy and the highest level of security, the entrance kept changing at random intervals. He had disclosed to Maya their destination—the current entrance to the archives, which lay concealed among the caves below them—and Maya had used her lessons to bind their atmas together and transport them at the speed of thought to their destination.

  ‘Thank you, Mahamati.’ Maya focused on the dark ground below, trying to make out the caves that Satyavachana had told her about. She had never heard of their existence before, but the Maharishi had informed her that they contained rock paintings that were 30,000 years old, rivalling the renowned rock paintings in France and Spain.

  But there was one thing that Bhimbetka had, which the caves of France and Spain did not: one of the entrances to the Hall of Archives of the Sangha.

  ‘Descend with me,’ Satyavachana instructed her.

  By now, Maya had learned to ‘see’ the Maharishi’s atma, another feat that Satyavachana had praised her for. Apparently, only yogis whose siddhis were very highly developed were capable of this. Strictly speaking, Maya should not have been able to sense or ‘see’ any other atmas, but she could.

  Maya could still not understand why she was able to accomplish feats like this while the ability to master offensive mantras, or mantras to manipulate matter, remained elusive. And while Satyavachana had acknowledged her growing abilities in atma travel, he offered no explanation for her inability to use certain classes of mantras. So, Maya had reasoned that the important thing, the fact, was that she could do it. And that was what mattered, eventually.

  Maya followed the Maharishi as he whizzed off among the boulders, under the overhangs and through an open cave, until he came to a stop before a cliff wall that towered above them. All around was thick forest. Maya had observed that, in this part of the woods, only the tips of the tallest rocky outcrops were visible above the trees; so dense was the forest that hid the caves from the eyes of humanity.

  ‘This is the entrance?’ Maya asked.

  ‘Indeed, it is. It is concealed using the same device as the one used for our Gurukuls, at least those that are built near a cliff or a mountain.’

  Maya understood. This was how the sadhs never got to know what lay hidden in the midst of their material world. You needed a mantra to enter. And only the Sangha or Gana members knew the mantra.

  ‘Should we return?’ she asked, realising that they could go no further.

  ‘Return? My dear child, aren’t you curious to see the archives of the Sangha? The repository of knowledge carefully collected, curated and conserved for 4,000 years?’

  ‘But how do we enter? Do you know the mantra, Mahamati?’ Maya wasn’t sure how he could, since he had, himself, long left the Sangha. But she felt sheepish even as she asked the question. After all, the Maharishi had known the location of the entrance to the archives.

  If Satyavachana had been in his physical form, Maya was sure he would have snorted. ‘Mantra? My dear child, we are atmas, not physical bodies. Have you forgotten that you can go where you like and nothing can stop you?’

  ‘Of course!’ Maya felt stupid. She had got so accustomed to re-entering her own body after a night of atma travel that she had taken for granted the fact that she quite easily passed through walls to do so.

  A sudden surge of curiosity tinged with a strong sense of guilt took hold of her. She was about to see something that was supposed to be out of bounds for her. She was about to break the rules. But she was also dying to know what lay beyond the cliff wall.

  ‘Right, then,’ Satyavachana said. ‘Here we go.’

  Maya waited but, to her surprise, the Maharishi stayed put. He didn’t move. She wondered if something was wrong with her senses; if she was seeing him even though he had passed through the wall.

  She decided to enter the Hall of Archives herself.

  ‘Wait.’ The curt instruction stopped her in her tracks.

  She had been right, then. Satyavachana was still here. He had not gone through the cliff wall.

  What was holding him back? Why did he want her to wait?

  ‘Can you sense that?’

  Maya strained to understand what Satyavachana was referring to.

  ‘Something’s wrong.’ The Maharishi’s thought felt troubled.

  Without warning, she felt herself bound to his atma and, before she knew it, they were both hurtling up towards the sky, away from the entrance to the archives.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  What’s Happening?

  In the Skies above the Bhimbetka Caves

  ‘There,’ Satyavachana said.

  Somehow, Maya knew exactly what he was referring to, almost as though he was physically pointing to it.

  When they had arrived here, there was darkness below them. Nothing had moved, nothing stirred.

  But now, there was movement.

  Blue and red lights. Advancing towards the caves.

  ‘What are they?’ Maya wondered.

  ‘Vikriti lights.’ Satyavachana’s thoughts felt grim. ‘Vikritis cannot create the pure golden lights that we do using mantras. They are worshippers of Kali, after whom Kaliyuga is named. Their mantras are dark and tainted by the influence of Kali.’

  Maya realised what he was saying. The blue and red lights were being used by the vikritis to illuminate their way in the darkness.

  ‘What are they doing here?’

  ‘I don’t know. They can’t get into the archives even if they try. They cannot use our mantras. The portal will not open for them. One thing is for certain. They are up to no good. But how did they know where the entrance to the archives is located?’

  ‘Shall we try to stop them?’

  ‘No. It’s too dangerous. Especially for you in your atmic form. We need to warn the others.’

  Once more, without warning, Maya was swept away in a whirl of motion, travelling at high speed.

  The blue and red lights disappeared.

  Slowly the blurry motion around her began to coalesce into familiar forms and the Gurukul came into focus.

  ‘Go,’ Satyavachana instructed her. ‘Return to your body and go back to sleep. I have work to do.’

  Maya knew that his work was connected with what they had just seen in Bhimbetka.

  She also knew that she would have no part in it. That was the reason Satyavachana had deposited her here.

  She made up her mind.

  She had done it before. She would do it again.

  Maya waited.

  The Assembly Hall

  ‘I have to contact the Sanghanetras,’ Jignesh said, his face registering shock. ‘This is a matter for the Sangha Council.’

  Satyavachana had reappeared at the Gurukul a short while back, rousing Jignesh from slumber and asking for an urgent meeting of the Mahamati Council.

  When the familiar circle of faces had assembled in the hall, he told them what he and Maya had seen.

  ‘There is no time,’ Satyavachana said frankly. ‘We need to act. Now.’

  Jignesh looked at him. For the first time as Mahamatra, he felt tested.

  ‘We do not have the resources to act,’ he told Satyavachana. ‘We are a Gurukul, not the Sangha. These are students, not accomplished warriors. I cannot ask them to face the vikritis when they haven’t even graduated to the Gana!’

  ‘Do we have a choice?’ Satyavachana asked him. ‘Even if the vikritis cannot enter the Hall of Archives, they need to be stopped.’

  ‘You speak sense,’ Jignesh acceded. ‘We do not have time on our side.’


  ‘But you have me on your side,’ Satyavachana told him. ‘It takes more than eight hours to drive to Bhimbetka from here. But if I go with you, we can get there in a matter of seconds.’

  ‘In that case,’ Kanakpratap spoke up, ‘we should not lose any more time.’

  ‘Your ward is not ready,’ Jignesh told him.

  ‘No one can ever be completely ready to face the unforeseen,’ Kanakpratap shot back. ‘And Arjun is no different. But he is well prepared. I am the one who has held him back. He has been champing at the bit, wanting to break free. How long will we protect him? If he is the true scion of Yayati, his blood will shine through tonight. And if it does not, then perhaps he does not deserve to lead us.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ Jignesh said. ‘Rouse the students. But we will take only the eight with us. They are the only ones who are even remotely prepared to face the threat that we will encounter tonight.’

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Preparation

  The Assembly Hall

  Eight bleary-eyed children sat and gazed upon the quintet of Jignesh, Satyavachana, Kanakpratap, Parth and Usha. They had been hastily woken up and summoned to the Assembly Hall for a meeting with the Mahamatis.

  ‘We have called you here at this odd hour,’ Jignesh began, ‘to prepare you for an urgent mission. You are the senior most students in the Gurukul. This is the moment that you have spent your lives training for. The moment of truth.’

  Arjun’s heart leapt as he listened. What was in store for them? Had the Sangha finally changed its mind about the Saptas? But then, why weren’t Maya and Amyra present? And why were the three other Rishis here instead? Gopal, Anisha and Sonali were the Rishi partners for Varun, Tanveer and Adira respectively. He knew that.

  ‘The Hall of Archives, where the records and documents encompassing 4,000 years of knowledge are kept, is under attack as we speak,’ Kanakpratap explained. ‘We will go there together to defend it. There is no time to assemble a larger force or alert other members of the Sangha. With the constant fear of another attack by Shukra or his proxies, we cannot spare any more members from this Gurukul. But we are the closest to the archives and the only ones who can get there in time, thanks to Maharishi Satyavachana.’ He looked at the eight faces before him. ‘It will be up to us to drive away the intruders.’