The temple was the forge of sandalwood and sweat, an intoxicating combination, which clung to Mannn's skin like a second pulse. He stood on the puja edges in the crowd's fervency, which pressed against him-hundreds of voices chanting in low hum, rattling his bones. Oil lamps flickered but cast shadows as if dancing ghosts across the riverside. The fingers, trembling, found the locket strung around the neck, silver warmed up from him—etched with a prayer his mother used to whisper when he was small. Keep me whole, she'd said, her voice soft as the jasmine now wilting in garlands around the altar. All he had left from her was this locket, and it was mostly the sanity he kept from disassembling.
And Mannn knew he didn't belong there—it came as a stinging slap, familiar and sharp. He wasn't devoted; not like the women in bright saris, whose bangles spoke in clanging decibels while they offered marigolds, nor like the men with tilaks on their foreheads, eyes closed in reverent submission. He was here because of the dreams—her face, amber eyes, voice calling through a fog from which he could not escape. Each night, he woke gasping, the locket so tightly clutched it left red marks on his palm. Am I going insane? That question ate at him like disquiet, following him like a shadow. He had once said to his mother, his voice thin with worry, Don't let the world break you, Mannn. Hold on to what's real. But what was real when a voice from nowhere felt more alive than he did?
The air thickened like a heavy incense, and there it brought the damp breath of the river into the room. The chants got louder and beginning to urgent with Mannn's chest tightening as if the night were squeezing him within it. He gripped harder the locket so that its edges dug into his skin, grounding him. But then he heard it.
"Find me."
Her voice was a spark—soft, yet electric—cutting through puja's roar. It was her. The woman from his dreams. Her tone of longing interspersed with command as if she had whispered it against his ear. His breath hitched as his pulse drummed in the throat. He scanned the crowd, desperate, but only strangers skated his view: a child tugging at her mother's sari, an old man lighting a lamp, and faces blurred by heat and smoke. No one looked back. No one saw the way his world cracked open.
"Find me," she said again, and it was now inside him, with all the pull of lust, like prayer, like drowning. Eyes flashed to the river. A reflection shimmered in the water's glass surface, her hand reaching out as if to pull him through the water. "Find me," she urged; all he could hear, all he could feel. His mother's voice flashed in his mind- Hold on to what's real, but this felt more real than anything, realer than the locket, than his own craggy breath.
He didn't think. He threw himself into the river.
The cold struck like a fist, robbing him of his breath and dragging him down. The current was a living thing, twisting around him and pulling him deeper under. Her face remained there like a shimmer just beneath the surface with her eyes locked over his. He reached out for her, clawing through the dark water with his fingers, but she slipped away, a ghost in the current. His lungs screamed; his vision was blurring, but still; he pushed on, his chasing light. The locket floated against the throat, heavy as guilt. But was it madness? This chasing a dream to his death?
Hands grabbed him, yanked him up. He broke the surface, gasping, choking on water and air. The crowd had followed; now their shouts were a jumbling mix of fear and anger. A priest knelt beside him, muttering blessings as some rough cloth was thrown over his shoulders. Mannn's fingers searched for the locket. Yes, he could feel it there still, still his. Shivering, he clutched it in his palm while his mind screamed: Am I losing it? Is she real?
"You are lucky," the priest said gruffly. "The river doesn't return what it takes away."
Mannn did not reply. Eyes sought the water surface, yet her face had vanished. The crowd drifted, leaving him alone on the bank, drenched and trembling. He ought to go home and dry out, pretend as if this were all a fever dream. But the echoes of her voice still resided in him as bright sparks in his veins, and his legs wouldn't move.
He walked around temple grounds again this evening, slowly fading into the auspicious circle of puja, with the air getting cooler and sandalwood mingling with the musk of the river. His clothes clung to him like wet tissue, heart drumming like a wild thing inside. He got heavier as if the locket weighed him down further with his mother's warning, love, and fear for him. It was only when he actually stood under the banyan tree that he realised its sprawling roots were like veins in the earth. In the shadow of this tree was an almost half-hidden shrine.
Something small, ancient cracked and moss-covered stone, all untouched by the puja's offerings: These were the thoughts in Mannnn's head as he caught in his throat the sight of the carving M.N. His initials carved deep as if they had always been there eternally. Dropping to his knees, he traced the letters with trembling fingers. Before him were the letters real, tangible, but the stone was much older—older than his life, older than his mother's. He was grappling for sanity; surely it was just coincidence? A trick? Or was it proof he was evading, into utter madness?
He had opened the locket and stared at his mother's miniature portrait. Her eyes-so much like his-seemed to watch him now, heavy with secrets. "Find me," the voice whispered again, like a soft breeze, from the shrine, from the river, from inside him. The ache in Mannn's chest was twisting inwards, fear and longing entwined. He was not merely a man anymore, just a son holding on to the memory of his mother. He was caught in something bigger, something divine, and he was damned terrified of it, as much as it beckoned him.
He stayed on until dawn, locket in hand, chilled by the coolness of the stone shrine against his fingers. The puja embers had died, but the fire kindled within him burned on, stark, urgent, and vigorous. Did it matter whether it was the goddess he sought for, a ghost, or his own reeling mind? But he would find her. He would find her-everything else be damned.