Yatra Strī Praśna Bhavati, Tatra Dharma Muṣyati."(Where a woman becomes the question, dharma begins to sweat.)
The hall was not a courtroom.
Not officially.
It was the auditorium of a Sanskrit university in Delhi, draped in red velvet and surveillance.
But the audience?Academics. Politicians. Spiritual leaders. Anchors. Litigators. Feminists. Fringe monks. And two trembling girls in school uniform clutching notebooks as if they were shields.
The event was called a "Dialogue on Devi, Desire, and Decay."
But everyone knew what it really was:
The Trial of Devika Anand.
She sat alone on stage.
No podium.No microphone.Only a low cot draped in white, like a widow's prayer mat.
Opposite her sat five men and one woman — the "panel."
They introduced themselves with titles.She introduced herself with a breath.
The first question came like a shiv.
"You claim to have uncovered a Tantric scripture through bodily remembrance. Do you have any textual proof?"
Devika smiled.
"I have a hundred bodies," she said. "Each one proof. Each one denied."
The room stirred.
The woman on the panel interjected.
"But sacredness cannot be proven by sensation."
Devika nodded gently."Then what do you call the shiver that runs down your spine when you chant the Devi Stotra at dusk? Is that not sensation?"
Silence.
Another panelist, a saffron-robed scholar, leaned forward.
"Your so-called Grantha is not Vedic, not Agamic, not Siddhantic. It speaks of thighs, breasts, menstrual blood—"
"—and so does the Rig Veda," Devika interrupted.
He flinched.
She continued.
"The Yajurveda speaks of ritu.The Kamakala Tantra maps the nipples.The Bhagavata Purana celebrates Rāsa as divine moaning.We remembered what you footnoted."
A murmur ran through the audience.
Cameras zoomed in.
One panelist turned hostile.
"Isn't it convenient that the verses only awaken in women's bodies? What about men? Why does the Grantha exclude us?"
Devika's eyes locked on him.
"Because you've had centuries," she said. "Entire civilizations collapsed under the weight of your unchallenged remembrance. It is not exclusion. It is **rest."
The room turned from discussion to witnessing.
Someone shouted from the back:
"She's awakening witchcraft!"
Another yelled:
"This is pornography in the name of Tantra!"
But above the noise, a girl — one of the two schoolgirls — stood.
Quiet. Barely audible.
But her voice cut like a needle.
"I bled last week for the first time.And I heard a verse.I didn't read it. I felt it.And I'm not ashamed anymore."
The audience went still.
Even the panel didn't breathe.
Devika rose.
Walked to the girl.
Knelt.
Placed her palm on her heart.
And whispered:
"The Seventh Syllable just remembered you."
That night, every news channel ran footage of the exchange.
Headlines screamed:
"Academic or Arsonist? Sanskrit Scholar Sparks Outrage"
"Erotic Tantras: Blasphemy or Bhakti?"
"Who Is Devika Anand?"
But deeper than news, in WhatsApp groups and closed women's circles, a new line traveled like wildfire:
"She speaks in glyphs.But they bloom in us."
Meanwhile, in a locked archive in Pune, a government official retrieved a sealed scroll labeled "Kāmachchā-103." It bore the red stamp:CLASSIFIED: SHĀKTA-SUBVERSIVE.
And at the bottom:
"Mentions the forbidden Ananga Grantha. To be destroyed if verified."
But the scroll pulsed warm in his hand.
And for the first time, he couldn't let go.