"Yatra Nāri Bhītā Bhavati, Tatra Smṛtirapi Gahanaṁ."(Where a woman fears her own awakening, remembrance becomes a jungle.)
The protest began quietly.
Not from men.
From women.
In a forgotten town on the outskirts of Bundelkhand, three schoolteachers petitioned to stop the spread of "vulgar memory."
"These girls are dreaming of verses and touching themselves like possessed creatures," one said, her voice taut with shame."They are defying the gods," another added, "and blaming it on inheritance."
They submitted affidavits.
Called Devika's work obscene. Blasphemous. Western-influenced. An attack on "dharma."
The district collector, confused, phoned the culture ministry.
But by then, similar complaints had surfaced in seven states.
None from priests.
None from politicians.
All from women.
In Kashi, Devika sat beside the Ganga, her knees pulled to her chest.
Ahalya's daughter remained silent beside her, combing sindoor into her hair with her fingers.
"You were right," Devika whispered. "The scripture chooses, but not everyone wants to be chosen."
The other woman didn't answer.
She simply reached into her sari, pulled out a folded piece of cloth, and handed it over.
Devika opened it.
Inside was a worn strip of bark.
A single glyph painted in ash and turmeric.
"It is the mark of the Hushed Ones," Ahalya's daughter said softly."Women who remembered—and then chose to forget."
The next day, in a village near Maheshwar, Devika entered a house where four women sat in a tight circle, their heads bowed, chanting quietly.
The youngest among them—maybe fourteen—saw her and gasped.
"You're her," she whispered. "The one whose mouth sings the missing verse."
Devika knelt before them.
"I don't come to teach," she said. "I come to listen."
The eldest woman raised her gaze.
Her eyes were steady.
"We remember the Grantha," she said. "But we do not recite it. We protect its silence."
Devika blinked. "Why?"
"Because every time we uttered a verse, someone took something from us—our child, our husband, our name."
She reached forward and touched Devika's chest, just above the glyph.
"You carry the fire. We carry the ashes."
That night, Devika dreamt of her mother.
Not young. Not dying.
But in a courtyard. Laughing.
Her sari half-fallen. Her breast bare.
A man knelt before her, lips on her navel, and she was speaking—chanting—something Devika couldn't hear.
When she awoke, her pillow was wet.
Not with sweat.
With milk.
In a town near Thrissur, a group of devadasis who had become temple sweepers in old age began to hum forgotten ragas in unison.
No one understood why.
But birds gathered on the rooftops when they did.
And one afternoon, a girl walking past the temple stopped and spoke aloud a line she'd never heard:
"The thighs do not lie. The hymns are between them."
A woman slapped her.
Another gasped.
But the line remained.
Etched into the wall behind her, in wet turmeric.
Ahalya's daughter found Devika in a forest shrine, sitting under a tree.
"You look hunted," she said.
"I am," Devika replied. "By those I thought would rise with me."
"There are no sides," Ahalya's daughter murmured. "Only echoes. Some choose to sing. Others to sleep."
Devika stood.
"Then I will walk where they sleep. And I will whisper the verse."
That evening, in a dusty house outside Jabalpur, Devika sat with four widows.
None spoke.
None moved.
Until one—eyes covered—began to sway.
A hum escaped her lips.
A rhythm that belonged to no known meter.
And Devika—without thinking—joined.
Two voices.
Then three.
Then five.
Their palms opened.
Their mouths parted.
And a verse, never written, rose like incense:
"He who cannot moan the seventh cannot name me.She who remembers me need never speak again."
And across the land, temples trembled—not from revolt, but from rising heat.
Because remembering had taken on form.
Not just word.
Not just womb.
But flame with skin.
And Devika no longer walked alone.