✵ I. A Year Under the Lion's Gaze
The year after Narasimha Reddy's birth slipped by in a blur of dust, sun, and lullabies.
Rayalaseema did not change for him. The sun did not soften. The land did not suddenly become generous. British demands did not ease because a child was born in Uyyalawada.
Yet, in small, almost invisible ways, things did change around him.
❖
The chieftain's house grew a new rhythm.
Where once the day had been measured mainly by petitions, tax discussions, and the movements of Company messengers, now it was also measured by:
when the boy woke and demanded milk,
when he crawled toward forbidden corners,
when his unsteady feet thumped across the courtyard stones.
His mother knew the texture of his wail: the angry cry when he fell, the hungry cry that brooked no delay, and the soft, confused whimper he sometimes gave at night when dreams clung to him.
Most children cried at night from shadows and imagined monsters.
Narasimha did not.
He woke sometimes not in fear, but with his eyes wide open, staring at something invisible above his cradle. His breath was quiet but fast, like he had been running in a place with no ground.
Once, his mother found him awake just before dawn, tiny hands clutched in the cloth near his chest, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"Nanna?" she murmured, lifting him. "What are you looking at?"
He turned his head slowly toward her, blinked once, and then—just like that—relaxed, head falling against her shoulder as if whatever he'd been seeing had stepped back.
He did not have words to explain that he remembered standing by a sea of stars, or a feeling like many kind voices watching him.
He only knew that in his dreams, he was never truly alone.
❖ II. Aura Before Words
By the time he reached his first birthday, the villagers had already decided one thing:
"Dora's boy is… different."
Not in the way that frightened them. Not yet.
He did not cry excessively. He did not laugh excessively either. What he did—unnervingly often—was watch.
❖
One afternoon, the courtyard of the Uyyalawada house was full.
A family from a nearby hamlet had come seeking the chieftain's decision regarding a bitter quarrel—land between brothers, as it so often was. Voices rose, tempers flashed.
The boy's mother, busy with chores, set Narasimha on a folded cloth mat in the shade of a pillar, giving him a piece of soft cloth to chew on.
He gnawed at it for a while, uninterested in the grown-up noise.
Then something in the way one of the men's voices cracked—anger covering hurt—made his head lift.
His eyes locked onto that man.
The quarrel went on.
"…he thinks just because he is older, the land is his—""…I worked that field when he went to the city—"
The chieftain listened, asking careful questions. The grandmother muttered prayers under her breath. Flies buzzed.
The toddler sat very still.
He could not understand "inheritance," "ownership," or "legal share." But he understood tight voices and eyes that did not meet each other.
He stared at them, just stared, his small forehead faintly creased.
To one brother, his gaze felt oddly heavy, as if someone was quietly holding up a mirror.
When the chieftain finally spoke his judgement—splitting the disputed land not purely by custom, but by who truly depended on which piece—it was not perfect. No mortal judgement is.
And yet… something in the younger brother unclenched.
Later, as they left, the younger man glanced once at the boy sitting in the shade, still quietly watching.
A strange thought drifted through his mind:
If that child grows up, I would rather have him beside me than against me.
He could not have said why.
That was aura—soft, shapeless, but present. The first stirrings of what the gods had called instinctive charisma and early resonance.
The boy did not know this.He only knew that when men shouted, he felt like a thread being pulled through his chest.
✢ III. The Fever and the Flame
Children in that land did not grow without fevers.Heat, dust, mosquitoes, poor water, seasonal changes—all of it combined to test every small, fragile body.
When Narasimha was close to two years old, the fever came.
It started innocently, as they always do. He was a little warmer one evening, clung to his mother more, refused food. By night, his forehead had become a burning stone.
His mother pressed a damp cloth to his skin again and again, murmuring prayers through clenched teeth.
He tossed, whimpered once, then fell into that dangerous deep sleep that is too still for a child.
The midwife was called. Herbs were boiled. Oil was massaged into his limbs. His grandmother sat by his side, counting mala beads and whispering Narasimha's name under her breath like it was the only rope keeping her mind steady.
His father did not show panic. He only sat beside the cot, elbows on his knees, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles whitened.
"Children get fevers," people said. "It happens. He is strong."
But underneath, everyone remembered stories of fevers that carried children away quietly.
❖
Far above, in Vaikuntha, Lakshmi Devi's attention flickered.
"Keshava," she said, turning slightly toward Vishnu. "He burns."
Vishnu closed his eyes briefly, watching beyond distance."The fever strips away small residues," he murmured. "Karmas from older births, little knots… it is not unnatural."
Saraswati Devi added gently,"Fever in children sometimes clears the path for sharper minds later."
Parvati's expression, however, was purely maternal."Still, let it not go too far, Naatha. He has yet to even learn his letters."
Maheshwara inclined his head."The fire must burn only what it should, no more."
They did not snap their fingers and make it vanish. They had already sworn this life would not be one of constant divine interference.
But—
Lakshmi's fingertips brushed the fabric of fate ever so slightly.Saraswati cooled the edges of his thoughts.Parvati's presence settled near him like a mother sitting beside a sick child's mat.
❖
On the cot, the boy jerked once, then his breathing eased a little.
He did not wake, but the tightness in his little muscles loosened. Beads of sweat formed on his brow.
The midwife let out a breath."The fever has turned," she said. "It will leave him now."
His mother's shoulders sagged as the strength left her—for the first time that night, in relief and exhaustion, she began to cry.
His father reached out and let his hand hover just above the boy's forehead, not quite touching, as if afraid to break some delicate balance.
"Stubborn fellow," he murmured. "Already picking fights with Yama at age two."
The grandmother sniffed, half laughing, half scolding heaven."Let him argue with the living first before he debates with gods."
Narasimha slept on.
Inside him, something subtle had indeed burned away.When he finally woke, eyes bleary but sharp, his gaze seemed clearer. As if he'd left more than sweat on that cot.
✹ IV. A File in Madras
While Narasimha survived his fever, life in the British administrative world moved according to its own cold rhythm.
In a stuffy room in Madras Presidency, a young clerk sat sorting reports.
His job was simple: read, summarize, file. Titles: "Revenue Increase Proposed in…" "Local Raja Objects to…" "Sepoy Indiscipline in…" "Missionary Concerns in…"
One file, thicker than usual, carried a heading:
Rayalaseema Sub-District – Behavioral Notes
He skimmed.
"Villages around Uyyalawada exhibit increased resistance to tax collection.""Local chieftain highly respected; subjects obey him more readily than Company officials.""Explanations offered by natives: 'Dora stands between us and their greed.'"
The clerk snorted at that, tapping his pen.
Further down, a small note, almost an afterthought:
"Chieftain's wife delivered a male child last year on the evening of a tax delegation's visit.Local rumor: 'Since the lion-cub was born, Dora speaks more boldly.'Might be useful to monitor the boy's influence as he grows, as natives are sentimental."
The clerk shook his head, amused.
"Superstition," he muttered in English, and wrote:
Filed. Local emotional attachment; no immediate threat. Monitor every 5–7 years.
But the line existed.A small, ink-made thread tying Narasimha's birth to a growing "anomaly" label in the British mind.
That thread would become thicker later.
For now, it was just another file in a wood-and-iron cabinet.
✪ V. Dreams of Elsewhere
At age two and three, children's minds are usually full of immediate things—food, toys, people they see every day.
Narasimha's mind held those things too. He wailed when another child tried to snatch his wooden lion, laughed when his father swung him in the air, sulked when his mother said "no more sweets."
But at night, something else seeped in.
❖
He dreamed often of light.
Not always in clear images. Sometimes as colors that did not exist in his waking world. Sometimes as feelings wrapped in shapes.
He dreamed of:
a great throne room where six presences sat in a circle, love and responsibility woven together,
a vast, endless library of not just books but floating scripts,
a golden ocean where waves were made of blessings,
a mountain where silence itself sat with a trident.
He could not see faces clearly.Only impressions—safety, warmth, steady watching.
Once, he dreamed of a battlefield far away from Rayalaseema, where men in armor and strange clothes clashed, and among them, a tall figure with white hair, a long bow, and eyes so resolute that even a child's dream-heart felt heavy.
He woke from that one with a strange respect and sorrow, though he didn't know why.
Another night, he dreamed of a man lying on a bed of arrows, sunlight turning each shaft into a spear of pain and light.
"Bhishma," a whisper brushed his dream this time, as if the very air named him.
He did not know the story fully yet in waking life. But when someone mentioned Bhishma's name months later while quoting the Mahabharata in the courtyard, he turned his head sharply, as if hearing an old acquaintance.
❖
Sometimes, the dreams were less clear—not people, but worlds.
He saw towers of glass and metal.Men flying with glowing weapons.Cities bathed in neon light.A shield with a strange star on it.Fire from the sky that did not look like any fire he had seen near his village.
He woke from these sweating, heart racing—not with fear, but with excitement he could not explain.
His mother, seeing him awake so intensely, would sometimes worry."Did you see a bad dream?" she would ask softly.
He would blink at her, search for words he did not have, then simply shake his head and say,"Light."
She would kiss his hair and murmur,"Then may that light stay with you, kanna."
✦ VI. The Well That Did Not Take Him
When Narasimha was nearly three, he almost died once—not by plague, not by fever, not by a sword or bullet.
By a well.
It was an ordinary afternoon. The sun was far too bright. The courtyard stones radiated heat.
His mother, exhausted from the day's chores and a restless night, dozed for a few moments in the shade. The grandmother, thinking the boy was playing near her, argued with a relative about some long-running family matter.
And he, like all three-year-olds with functioning legs and curiosity, wandered.
The stone-lined village well was not far beyond the side wall. Its circular mouth had a low parapet—not high enough to keep a determined toddler away.
He toddled toward it, chasing the shadow of a dragonfly that darted just out of reach.
He reached the well, placed both hands on the stone edge, and—fascinated by the coolness—pulled himself up to look inside.
The world tilted.
His small toes, slick with sweat and dust, slipped on the stone.
For one terrifying instant, his body pitched forward.
His center of gravity crossed the edge.
By all normal measures, he should have toppled in.
❖
Above, in a realm where cause and effect are threads to be gently worked with, Parvati Devi stiffened.
"Naatha," she said sharply. "He is about to fall."
Maheshwara glanced once and saw—not just a boy, but the line of futures that sprouted from this incident like branches.
In many, he fell.In some, he was pulled out in time.In a few, he did not live.
Parvati's voice held no divinity then, only a mother's urgency."Not like this. Not at three. Let him face arrows and wars later if he must—but not a well at this age."
Shiva's expression softened.He moved nothing dramatic.No earthquakes, no miracles that would be sung about.
He altered one thing.
❖
A gust of wind, sudden and sharp, rushed across the yard.
A loose cloth that had been drying nearby flew from its place and wrapped around the boy's waist like a hand.
It did not hold him fully, but it tugged—just enough.
His body, which had been tilting forward, jerked sideways.
Instead of plunging straight in, he struck the side of the parapet and tumbled onto the ground, scraping his elbow but staying very much alive.
He screamed.
His mother woke with a jolt and saw him on the ground near the well. In a single breath, fear, guilt, and relief collided in her chest. She rushed, scooping him up, checking limbs, kissing his hair almost frantically.
"Idiot child!" she scolded, voice shaking. "Are we not troubled enough, that you go looking for Yama yourself?"
His grandmother rushed over too, both scolding and thanking gods at once.
They looked at the well with new dread, and after that day, a proper, higher parapet was built around it.
Narasimha, for his part, cried for a bit, clung to his mother, then—like all children—was distracted by food and comforting words.
But somewhere deep inside, on a level he could not name, he had felt something in that moment.
As if the world itself had reached out and nudged him back.
✧ VII. The Small Leader
By three, Narasimha had begun to speak in full sentences, much to his mother's satisfaction and occasional exasperation.
He was not the kind of child who constantly chattered. He chose his words like he chose his gaze—carefully, rarely, but with surprising weight.
Other children in the village naturally clustered around the chieftain's house—partly because it was bigger, partly because someone was always cooking something there, and partly because children sense where power lives, even if no one explains it to them.
They began playing together in the courtyard—games of stones, chasing, mock fights with sticks.
Without anyone telling them to, the other children started looking at Narasimha when decisions had to be made.
"Shall we play here or near the tree?""Shall we let Raju play? He always cheats.""Let's go to the tank!""No, your mother will beat you!"
Their arguments would swirl, small and loud.
Narasimha would watch, his little lion clutched in one fist.
Then he would say one sentence.
"We play here," or "We won't go far," or "Raju can play, but if he cheats, he goes home."
And somehow, that would settle it.
Not because he shouted the loudest. He didn't. Not because he was always right; he wasn't.
But something in the steadiness of how he said it made the others fall in line.
His mother watched from the doorway once, basket of lentils in her hands, as five children older than him quietly obeyed his decision like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Look at that," she murmured. "He scolds them like an old man."
Her mother-in-law chuckled."What else will a future Dora do? First he will practice on children, later on grown people."
The words were light, but inside, a faint thread of worry tugged at both women. They knew too well what it meant to lead in times like these.
❖
One day, when a slightly older boy pushed another child too hard and made him fall, Narasimha walked up, stared at the offender, and said simply:
"Say sorry."
The older boy flared up."Who are you to tell me?"
Narasimha did not repeat himself. He just kept looking.
The older boy squirmed under that silent gaze longer than he cared to admit, then muttered a reluctant:
"Sorry."
The boy who had fallen stopped crying.
Something in that incident, tiny as it was, made its way back into adult conversation.
"Dora's boy settled the children's fight," someone mentioned under the banyan tree. "Just like his father with grown men."
The old elder, stroking his beard, said quietly,"Leadership is not taught to some. It leaks out of them."
✦ VIII. Whispers in the Temple and the Banyan Shade
The temple priest, who had already once observed the boy's stare at the Narasimha idol, kept half an eye on him whenever the family came.
One evening, as the chieftain's household lit lamps and the village gathered for a small festival, the priest watched Narasimha wander in the courtyard.
The boy stopped near the stone lion carved at the temple steps.
He looked at it for a while, then reached out one hand and placed it on the lion's paw.
For a fleeting moment, the priest had the strangest impression that the stone exhaled.
Later, when the lamps had been extinguished and most people had gone home, the priest sat near the old banyan tree with the village elder.
"That boy," he said quietly, "does things without knowing what he does."
The elder nodded."I have seen it. Men calm down when he sits near them. Children fight less when he is there. Animals behave as if someone respectable has entered the room."
The priest frowned in thought."It is not just good fortune. There is something… ancient, but not fully awakened. Like a conch that has not yet been blown, but already changes the air around it."
"Is that good or bad, Swami?" the elder asked.
"That," the priest replied slowly, "depends on the storms to come."
✵ IX. The Gods Take a Breath
Back in Vaikuntha, the Golden Court was not always assembled in full. Duties tugged the six in different directions.
But sometimes, in the quiet between cosmic decisions, thoughts drifted down to a child in Rayalaseema.
Lakshmi Devi smiled faintly as she watched him herd children away from the well.
"Keshava," she said, amused, "he already watches others near that well like a little guardian."
Vishnu's eyes glinted with quiet pride."He remembers without remembering. The body forgets; the soul does not."
Saraswati noted how he listened sharply when older men gossiped about history, epics, heroes.
"He clings to tales of those who stood between the weak and the strong," she observed. "His admiration chooses its ground carefully."
Parvati watched him run, fall, rise, pick fights, apologize, navigate childhood without divine voice whispering in his ear.
"Good," she said softly. "Let him bleed from scraped knees before he bleeds from blades. These small pains will teach him the value of standing again."
Maheshwara closed his eyes briefly, sensing the subtle strengthening of the boon embedded in the boy's soul.
"The threads are weaving true so far," he murmured. "When the time comes to awaken his greater gifts, he will not be an empty clay pot. He will be a vessel that already knows the taste of this world."
Brahma looked down the long road ahead—British expansion, revolts, wars, otherworldly intrusions, the eventual rise of heroes in strange costumes in another century.
"A long journey awaits him," he said. "But for now… let him be a child of dust, stone, and simple joys. He has earned at least that."
✦ X. The Third Year Ends
On his third birthday, the house did not hold a grand royal ceremony. There were no foreign dignitaries, no grand declarations.
There was:
fresh rangoli in the courtyard,
new oil in the lamps,
extra ghee in the sweets,
a small puja in the temple where his name was spoken before the lion-faced deity with particular reverence.
The priest placed a small smear of kumkum on the boy's forehead, just below the hairline."Grow in dharma, Narasimha," he blessed. "Stand where others fall."
His father, watching, placed a steady hand on his son's shoulder.
"I do not know," the chieftain thought silently, looking at the idol of Narasimha Swami and then at his child, "whether I can protect you from the storms that are coming. But if you must face them… may you be stronger than I am."
Narasimha did not understand the weight of that thought.
He only felt the warmth of his father's hand, the flicker of lamps, the way the stone lion behind the idol seemed almost alive in the corner of his perception.
He turned his head and looked straight at the idol's eyes.
For one heartbeat, everything stilled.
The priest's chant faltered for just a fraction of a second.
The boy's gaze was not defiant nor fearful.
It was… familiar.
Then he blinked, the moment passed, and he tugged his mother's hand, asking for more laddu in the only way three-year-olds effectively negotiate—by looking up with wide eyes at the sweet in her palm.
The adults laughed. The tension eased.
But the priest, that night, added one extra line to his private prayers.
"Swami," he murmured to Narasimha, "if this child is truly under your lion's shadow, then watch him closely. This land has been quiet for too long. Its silence has teeth."
High above, the six who had once nearly crushed a soul with their expectations watched quietly as the same soul, softened and remade, learned to walk among thorns without yet realizing how sharp they were.
The lion within him slept.
But its breathing was steady now.
When next the world came knocking with cruelty in open view, when Narasimha's small heart saw injustice not just in tone but in blood—
that breathing would quicken.
For now, at three years old, he was still allowed to be only:
A child with ancient eyes.
And the land, the gods, the hidden watchers, and even distant empires—
were all, in their own ways,
waiting.