The Boy from Bihar Who Became Time
The Soil of Memory: Birth in the Shadow of Nalanda
Alok was born not merely in a village, but in a living archive. In Bihar's Nalanda district, was a place where the very soil seemed to remember its own greatness. The air, thick with the scent of ripe wheat and monsoon damp, also carried the ghost of ancient scholarship. Centuries ago, this land had pulsed with the intellectual energy of the world's first great university. The ruins of Nalanda were not a tourist attraction to him; they were a second home, a playground of ghosts and gods.
His father, a humble schoolteacher with the soul of a historian, would take him there. "Touch these stones, beta," he would say, guiding Alok's small hand over Sanskrit carvings worn smooth by time. "These are not just rocks. They are the bones of giants. Scholars from across the world once walked here. They debated the nature of the cosmos, of consciousness, of truth itself. This was a light for all mankind, and it was extinguished by invaders who feared its flame."
This narrative was not taught; it was absorbed. It seeped into Alok's bones alongside the Bihar dust. Where other children saw broken walls, Alok saw a phantom library. The silence of the ruins was not empty; it was a pregnant pause in a conversation that had been violently interrupted. He grew up with a subconscious, simmering grief for a glory he had never known, a profound fear of cultural amnesia. He was a child of a proud, wounded heritage, and that wound would define him.
The Spiritual Forge: Krishna's Many Faces
His home in Khetalpura was a sanctuary of devotion. His mother's day began with the gentle clang of a brass bell and the fragrant smoke of sandalwood incense curling around a small, beautifully adorned idol of Lord Krishna. This was his first introduction to the divine: Krishna the benevolent, the compassionate, the source of all love.
But it was his grandmother, a woman whose skin was a map of a long life and whose eyes held a timeless light, who introduced him to the god's complexity. In the cool evenings, on the charpai under the neem tree, she would unravel the epic.
She told him of Makhan Chor, the mischievous butter thief, whose laughter echoed through Vrindavan's lanes. She sighed over the tales of Krishna the divine lover, whose flute promised a love that was not of this world. But her voice would drop to a reverent, powerful whisper when she arrived at the battlefield of Kurukshetra.
"And there, Alok," she would say, her finger tapping his forehead gently, "Krishna did not raise a sword. He raised an idea. His chariot was dharma itself. His weapon was wisdom. He told Arjuna, 'Do not fight for hatred, or for victory. Fight because it is your sacred duty to protect righteousness. When adharma rises, to stand aside is to participate.'"
These stories were the bedrock of his soul. By twelve, he wasn't just reading the Bhagavad Gita; he was in dialogue with it. The verses were not ancient scripture but living, breathing counsel. And then he encountered it—the verse that would echo through his life like a fateful drumbeat.
"कालोऽस्मि लोकक्षयकृत् प्रवृद्धो लोकान्समाहर्तुमिह प्रवृत्तः।" (Kālo'smi loka-kṣaya-kṛt pravṛddho lokān samāhartum iha pravṛttaḥ.) "I am Time, the mighty world-destroyer, matured, come here to annihilate the worlds."
The words did not frighten him; they electrified him. Under the vast, ancient banyan tree by the village pond, the boy from Khetalpura had a terrifying epiphany. God was not only the source of love but also the architect of apocalypse. Destruction was not the opposite of creation; it was its necessary counterpart. Righteous fury was not a sin; it was a divine imperative.
The Scholar in a World of Forgetfulness: Delhi University
When Alok arrived at Delhi University, he was an anomaly. In the bustling, cynical, career-oriented atmosphere, he carried the quiet gravity of Nalanda and the spiritual fire of the Gita. He was handsome, brilliant, and charismatic, but it was a charisma edged with intensity. In debates, he didn't just argue points; he preached a worldview. He spoke of Chanakya's realpolitik, of Ashoka's remorse, of the Nalanda scholars who died protecting manuscripts.
To most, he was an anachronism, a fascinating but irrelevant relic. To one, he was a revelation.
Shree was not a simple admirer. She was his intellectual equal, his spiritual mirror. Where he was fire, she was water—calm, deep, and clarifying. She didn't just listen to his passionate discourses on dharma; she questioned them, refined them, and understood their source. She saw the profound devotion behind his fierceness. In her, Alok found not just a lover, but a sanctuary. She was his Radha, the one who comprehended the entirety of his Krishna—the flute and the sudarshan chakra. She was the balance to his emerging cosmic force.
The Unraveling: When the Flute was Shattered
Shree's death was not a tragedy; it was an apocalypse. It was not an event that happened to Alok; it was an event that unmade him. The news, when it came, did not bring tears first. It brought a silence so absolute and terrible that it seemed to swallow the world. The carefully constructed philosophy of his life shattered.
He remembered the Gita. "The soul is eternal. It is not slain when the body is slain." But the intellectual truth was ashes in his mouth. He had not lost a body; he had lost a universe. Shree was the embodiment of the love, culture, and dharma he sought to protect. Her violent erasure at the hands of petty, hateful men felt like a grotesque replay of Nalanda's destruction—meaningless, brutal, and absolute.
In the abyss of his grief, a monstrous alchemy occurred. His profound devotion curdled into absolute rage. His understanding of Krishna's teaching fractured. He clung to the vision of God as Kala, the Destroyer, and willfully forgot the God as the compassionate guide.
The lesson of the Gita warped in his mind. It was no longer about performing one's duty with detachment for the sake of cosmic order. It became a personal mandate for vengeance. He was no longer Alok, the devotee. He began to believe, in his shattered state, that he was the instrument. He was Arjuna, but without Krishna's counsel in his ear—only the memory of his command to fight.
"I am not killing men," he would whisper to the darkness, his voice hollow yet burning with conviction. "I am Time. I am the instrument of a divine reckoning. If they can erase a Shree, if they can burn a Nalanda, then I will erase them. This is my dharma now."
The Descent: The Unwanted War
His transformation was not into a common criminal. It was a tragic ascension into a self-appointed, damned divinity. He used his charisma and intellect not to build, but to rally. His speeches, once laced with philosophical nuance, now burned with a purifying fury that resonated with a generation that felt similarly wronged and unheard.
The state branded him a terrorist. His enemies called him a monster. But in his own mind, he was the only sane man in an insane world, the only one willing to enact the terrible, necessary dharma of destruction. He was avenging not just Shree, but every forgotten scholar of Nalanda, every lost scroll of wisdom, every historical wound inflicted on his culture. He was fighting a war against cultural entropy itself, and he would burn the world to save it.
The Legacy: The Tragic Devotee
Alok's story is the ultimate tragedy of a beautiful mind corrupted by an unbearable love. He is not a villain in a classic sense. He is a devotee who, in the deepest night of his soul, mistook the shadow of God for God himself. He embraced Krishna's destructive aspect but lost hold of his compassionate core.
He is a haunting reminder that the line between righteous fury and blind rage, between dharma and adharma, is terrifyingly thin. It is a line walked not in the abstract, but in the human heart, a heart that can be broken.
And in the end, he was still that boy from Bihar. Even as he plotted destruction, a part of him was forever sitting under that banyan tree, his grandmother's voice in his ear, his heart aching with a love for a God so vast and terrifying he felt compelled to become him. He became death, the destroyer of worlds, because he could not bear a world that would destroy his.