Scene shifts centuries later:
The year was 1996, and in a modest ancestral house built of aging brick and lime-washed walls in western India, the past was still spoken of as though it had occurred only yesterday. The evenings in that household followed a rhythm older than electricity and newer than memory—dinner before dusk, oil lamps lit in the small prayer alcove despite the presence of tube lights, and stories told not for entertainment alone but as inheritance. It was on one such evening, when monsoon clouds pressed low against the horizon and the scent of wet earth lingered in the courtyard, that an old man with a voice worn smooth by time began narrating the Mahabharata to a child who listened as though the story were a personal summons.
The old man, Aadhi's grandfather, sat cross-legged on a woven charpoy, his back straight despite the years etched into his skin, his silver hair tied loosely at the nape. His voice did not rush; it moved like a river that knew its path intimately. He did not dramatize unnecessarily, nor did he simplify the complexities of dharma and fate. He spoke of Kurukshetra not merely as a battlefield but as a moral fracture in the history of mankind. He described how kings fell, how vows hardened into weapons, how even righteousness carried blood upon its hands. And when he came to the final meeting between Gandhari and Krishna, his tone deepened, carrying within it a weight that made the air in the room feel dense.
The child sitting at his feet was eight years old, thin but alert, his large dark eyes reflecting the flickering lamp flame. His name was Aadhi Yogi, a name that had puzzled many relatives when he was born. It meant "the first ascetic" or "the primordial torchbearer," a name resonant with spiritual ambition rather than worldly practicality. Yet in that moment he was simply a boy in cotton shorts and a faded cricket T-shirt, his chin resting on his knees, absorbing each word as though committing it to memory not just of the mind but of the blood.
When his grandfather described how the Yadavas perished at Prabhasa, destroying themselves in drunken rage, the boy's brows furrowed. But when he spoke of how some survived—how Krishna had quietly sent certain members of the clan away before the massacre, how Vajra had been spared and established elsewhere—the child leaned forward, his curiosity sharpened into something almost urgent.
"Dadaji," he asked softly, interrupting for the first time that evening, "if the curse was meant to destroy them, how did anyone survive?"
The old man smiled faintly, the kind of smile that suggested both pride and sorrow. "A curse," he replied, "is rarely as simple as total destruction. Destiny fulfills itself precisely, but not always completely. Sometimes what survives carries the burden of what was lost."
The answer did not satisfy the boy entirely; it unsettled him instead. The idea that a lineage could be nearly extinguished yet continue in fragments lodged itself within his imagination. He pictured survivors fleeing burning shores, carrying memory like contraband through generations. He wondered whether they felt guilt for surviving or fear of something unfinished. The story did not close neatly in his mind; it opened.
Outside, rain began to fall steadily upon the tiled roof, creating a rhythm that seemed to echo the cadence of the old man's voice. The room glowed warmly under the lamplight, and for a brief moment the distance between 3000 BCE and 1996 felt impossibly thin.
---
Aadhi's childhood, however, was not marked by immediate tragedy or mystic revelation. It unfolded in ways familiar and unremarkable to any middle-class Indian family of the 1990s. His father worked as a civil engineer, often returning home with rolled blueprints under his arm and dust clinging to his shoes. His mother taught at a local school, her days divided between correcting notebooks and ensuring her son completed his homework. The household valued education, discipline, and quiet devotion. Morning prayers were recited not out of fanaticism but routine, and festivals were celebrated with moderation rather than extravagance.
Aadhi attended a nearby convent school where he excelled more in history and literature than in mathematics. He played cricket in the dusty lane with neighborhood children, scraped his knees climbing mango trees, and occasionally sulked when denied extra television time. To an outsider, there was nothing extraordinary about him except perhaps a certain intensity in his gaze when he listened to stories. He asked questions other children did not—about destiny, about whether history repeated itself, about why some families seemed to carry misfortune across generations.
His father would laugh gently at such inquiries, ruffling his hair and dismissing them as the philosophical wanderings of an imaginative child. "Focus on your exams first," he would say. "Leave destiny for later."
Yet there were moments—brief, unguarded moments—when his father's expression shifted subtly, especially when the Mahabharata was discussed. On those occasions, he would exchange a look with the grandfather, a look too fleeting for a child to decode but too deliberate to be accidental.
Life moved forward in small, predictable increments. School terms ended and began anew. Summers were spent visiting relatives. Birthdays were celebrated modestly with homemade sweets. Aadhi grew taller, leaner, more observant. The story of the Yadavas faded into the background of daily routine, though it never fully disappeared; it lingered like a melody half-remembered.
---
The turning point arrived on an evening that was meant to be celebratory.
It was his father's fortieth birthday.
There had been no grand party planned—just a simple dinner at home and a small cake ordered from the local bakery. Forty, his father had joked, was not old but significant enough to merit reflection. He had returned early from work that day, carrying a box of sweets and a rare lightness in his demeanor. Even the grandfather appeared more cheerful than usual, offering blessings that sounded almost ceremonial in their gravity.
After dinner, as the rain threatened once again to fall, his father received a phone call regarding an urgent site inspection. A retaining wall at one of his projects had reportedly developed cracks after heavy showers, and he insisted on driving out to examine it personally. "It won't take long," he assured his wife. "I'll be back before midnight."
Aadhi remembered standing at the doorway, watching his father adjust his glasses and step into the car. The headlights cut through the damp evening air as the vehicle reversed onto the narrow road. There was nothing ominous in the moment—no thunderclap, no premonition, no cinematic forewarning.
The accident occurred less than thirty kilometers away.
A truck driver, exhausted from continuous travel, failed to notice the stalled vehicle ahead and swerved abruptly, colliding with his father's car at an unforgiving angle. The impact was immediate and devastating. By the time emergency services arrived, survival was no longer a possibility. It was said to be instantaneous—a word meant to comfort but incapable of reducing the enormity of absence.
The news reached the house just after midnight.
Aadhi woke to muffled voices and the sharp, unfamiliar sound of his mother's cry—a sound that did not resemble anything he had heard before. It was not merely sorrow; it was rupture. The grandfather, usually composed, seemed suddenly aged beyond recognition, his hands trembling as he held the phone.
Forty years.
Exactly forty.
The detail would etch itself into Aadhi's memory with unnatural clarity. His father had turned forty that very evening.
In the days that followed, rituals replaced routine. Relatives filled the house, offering condolences that blurred together into indistinct murmurs. Photographs were garlanded. Incense burned continuously. The absence of his father manifested in small, cruel ways—the empty chair at the dining table, the untouched pair of shoes near the door, the unfinished blueprint still resting upon his desk.
Aadhi did not cry openly at first. Instead, he felt a strange numbness settle within him, as though the world had tilted slightly and refused to correct itself. He replayed the evening repeatedly in his mind, searching for signs he might have missed. The conversation about forty being significant. The urgency of the phone call. The grandfather's unusually solemn blessing.
It was only later, when he overheard a whispered exchange between his grandfather and an elderly relative, that something shifted irrevocably within him.
"Forty," the relative murmured. "Just like…"
"Do not say it aloud," the grandfather interrupted sharply.
But the word fourty had already formed in Aadhi's consciousness.
This number unsettled him, though he did not yet fully understand it. He knew only this: his father had died on his fortieth birthday, abruptly, without warning, as though something unseen had drawn a line across his life and refused to let him step beyond it.
That night, unable to sleep, Aadhi walked quietly to the prayer alcove where the oil lamp flickered weakly. He stared at the image of Lord Krishna upon the wall with a question forming silently within him.
Suddenly he thought of his grandfather's stories. If some Yadavas had survived the curse, how? And could survival mean more than mere continuation?
The rain began again outside, steady and relentless, as though the sky itself was unwilling to forget.