Location: Old Community Hall, Outer KolkataDate: September 24, 2029Time: 7:03 AM
The building was no longer silent.
Laughter returned — brief and broken, but real.The sound of metal being hammered.Boiling water. Barking dogs.
And footsteps.
So many new footsteps.
Nineteen people now lived within the cracked walls.Some came wounded. Others came afraid.All of them stayed because of him.
Because when Yash Roy stood at the entrance, ash still clinging to his arms, monsters never came near.
The shelter had no name.
People called it "Sector 9 Hall" or "that place with the ash-boy."
Yash hated both.
This wasn't just a building.It was the last spark of something sacred.
He looked around.
The boy who once tried to end his life now watched life begin again.
Khushi sat beside him, drawing again.
A circle.Eight flames.A hand reaching upward.
She didn't say what it meant.
But Yash understood.
"How many people here were ready to die?"Yash asked the others.
Almost every hand rose.
"And how many stayed because someone else here gave them a reason?"
Every hand rose again.
He stood in the center of the cracked floor.
"We are not warriors," he said."Not yet. Maybe never."
"We are survivors.And we are not alone anymore."
He took a stick of charcoal and drew on the floor:
A circle.
Inside it: Eight dots.Each one a stage of life.
Birth. Childhood. Youth. Passion. Work. Doubt. Old age. Death.
"There were once eight ashramas in ancient life," he said."Stages of a soul's journey. From birth to letting go."
"This place… we don't follow that path."
"We're broken. Out of order. Between stages."
"So we make a new path. A shelter for every stage. A home for the lost."
He stepped back.
"This is not a temple. This is not a fort."
"This is Ashtashram."
Eight stages.One roof.
A place to begin again.
Silence.Then one of the kids — the one who hadn't spoken in days — whispered:
"Ash-ta-shram…"
And just like that, it had a name.
No banner.No gods descending.Just a word carried by the people who needed it.
Later that night, Khushi redrew the circle on the wall.
She added a ninth flame.Just a tiny spark above them all.
When Yash asked what it was, she smiled for the first time in days.
"Hope."