After the archery contest, life returned to its familiar rhythm. I carried water at dawn and swept the courtyard with my brother. Yet inside, memories and questions whirled endlessly. I craved knowledge — the sacred rhythms of the Vedas, the secrets hidden in scribbles, even the language of the stars.
One evening, I lingered near the temple porch after my mother's prayer was done. A scribe inscribed a copper plate by lamplight, etching words in Sanskrit for a petition. Each motion of his stylus felt like a dance. I remembered strokes from old computer fonts — tiny lines that spelled worlds. My fingers itched to imitate them in the dust at my feet.
As the scribe finished, I watched him tie the plate around a pillar. When I touched it gently with my thumb, letters imprinted faintly in the chalk dust on my skin. The shapes seemed to glow in my memory. Were these letters real, I wondered? I closed my eyes against the cool dusk and let myself recall the luminous characters I once knew on a glowing screen.
When I opened them, a verse came to me. It was an old prayer — not one I had learned here — but I whispered it anyway. The words were strange on my lips, a melody from a dream. The priest walking past halted and turned toward me, his eyes wide. He asked my mother, "Did he just chant the Gayatri Mantra?" She hesitated, then nodded. I felt warmth on my cheeks as villagers began to murmur. "A child blessed," one said softly.
At night on my straw bed, I marveled at the prayer. Had I truly spoken that? Without understanding, I had made sacred truth flow from my lips. I smiled quietly: though I had not consciously willed it, it felt as if some memory had surfaced. Perhaps it was the gift, quietly growing.
Over the next weeks, whenever I heard any phrase I did not understand, I let it echo in my mind until meaning found me. A wandering minstrel taught me a simple Sanskrit greeting to a handful of farmers — by the time he left, I knew it. I scrawled an attempt at writing on sandy ground, and the shapes came out clear as if guided by some unseen hand. Each piece of old knowledge returned like light to a locked corner of my mind.
In secret, I began keeping a small record. Each evening I traced letters in the ash hearth's cooled ashes, forming words: Rama, Dharma, Vedam. The shapes faded, but I saw them in my mind's eye, solid and familiar. For now, it was just me and the stars knowing this.
No one else dared admit it, but to their eyes, I was becoming special. The priest blessed my palm with sandalwood paste, and my parents folded their hands in thanks. I kept my secret hidden in my heart: that even as my tongue and hands learned these truths, I was still only a humble potter's son by the laws of the world. Yet if fate had written a lie on my soul, I had at least learned to read between its lines.