💥 𝓢nap-𝓢horts 💥

Shaken to the Core

 Ashwin inhales deeply, exhales slowly, calming his galloping heart to a steady beat. 

Awake he can now reflect on fragments of his night-mare  ...chasing an elusive light in the fugitive shadows ...his invisible steed always rears back  at the brink of an abyss,  reined to safety by a sky-riding doppleganger.  

The bedside clock flashes 2 a.m. He reclines, gazing through his apartment window, at the high-rise  offices, lone lights in the cityscape.  

Above him the sapta-rishi beams its septet constellation; visible now that the monsoon clouds have dispersed.  Right now he longs for those seven stellar sages to ignite his flagging spirit. Distant or dead stars maybe, but their past illuminates present-day Aswin's eyes with visions of the future.

  Thought-impulses rampage his mind, like the maruts;  his body tensed with a raudra  that  cannot be assuaged with yoga-nidra.

   A satellite winks its cyclopean trajectory thousands of kilometres overhead,  tracing the earthly goings-on.  A part of Ashwin feels like an orbiting surveillance of his routine self.  

But his life is far from routine, since his posting as an archeological inspector  of the cave sites.  After one or two  visits  he senses a change in his perceptions. 

He should wear a mask next time,  to avoid breathing dust of the past . But in the photos he'd taken  of the site , there was something odd... a light that was not a flash or anything he could pinpoint to a physical object. Something was affecting only his perceptions, as he had surreptiously checked with a colleague to see what he saw. Or didn't.

02.15 on the clock. 

Those distant city-office lights ... Ashwin can  see and hear into the recesses of those faraway rooms.  Nothing clear, just snatches of conversation, glimpses of others. Later in the day he is in the vicinity of that apartment block; he hears more clearly, sees more clearly the perceptions of the previous night, like pre-cognitions. The sleepless nights  increase but he avoids medication: raja-yogic meditation and hatha-yogic asana remain his trusted twin physicians, the ashwins of Ashwin. But there is something else he notices, a restoration of youthful vigour, despite his lack of sleep and loss of appetite.

Accompanied by the dawn chorus and a stray barking , Ashwin jogs to work through the park. 

An unscheduled early morning meeting with the boss. He is fired. The Institute will not allow the eccentricities of its employee to alienate overseas funders.  Ashwin's enquiries into the geological anomalies of the sites have not endeared him to the multi-national higher-ups, who are more interested in milking the land for valuable minerals to line their own pockets.

'Your stories of lost cities and a stolen Light are just fables that have gone to your head because of the heat, there are no secret messages in those Vedas, they are simply sacred texts of your culture no more, ' mocks his CEO, stroking his henna-beard.

Stepping outside the building, later that afternoon, Ashwin is aware of an unearthly stillness, no chirping of birds, the stray barking has turned to a whimper.

A roll of thunder. The blue sky is wide open. 

And so is the earth. Wide open. 

Ashwin stands at the brink of the crater, where the Institute and the rest of the city used to be , a  lake blinks its luminous dark eye, in it an infant sun ripples with laughter.

Looking down into its depths he sees  the sparkling roofs of  fluid structures among which forms of gold can be seen gliding...

Then he dives deep down. Into or out of himself. 

There it is. 

A new world emerging from the ruins of the old?