The sun rose slowly over the sleeping city.
Golden light crept through the reinforced glass, washing the marble floors in warmth that felt almost unreal after a night of hunger, madness, and prayer. Shadows retreated. The darkness that had ruled the room all night loosened its grip but it did not leave.
Manu finally spoke.
"She," he said quietly, his voice rough but unwavering, "is the creator of my body… and your body too."
He looked at me not with anger, not with fear, but with an unbearable calm.
"You cannot create bodies," he continued. "So stop trying to become something."
The words landed gently and shattered everything.
Then his voice broke.
For the first time, he did not speak like a monk or a prisoner. He spoke like a man remembering his own wounds.
"I was weak," he said. "Average. Invisible. I had suicidal thoughts because I felt irrelevant. Like my existence didn't matter to anyone not even to the world."
His hands trembled as the memories surfaced.
"Then… I found some Guruji's videos."
[Author's Note - Guruji refers to teacher.]
His breath hitched.
"I heard these words ~ Let go of your worries. Let go of your troubles. None of it was yours to begin with."
Tears slipped down his face, unchecked.
"When you were born," he said softly, "what was yours?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing."
"And when you die," he whispered, "what will be yours?"
Again - nothing.
"That is when chanting became necessary," Manu said, his voice deepening with conviction. "So I don't forget the source that created me. The very existence itself."
He looked at the idol, then back at me.
"She is present in all beings," he said. "In me. In you. In everyone."
"I did what my mind and surroundings told me to do," he went on. "Just like everyone else. Thoughts arise. Circumstances shape us. But then we start claiming those thoughts as 'me' and 'mine'."
His eyes met mine, sharp and sorrowful.
"That is ego."
"This world teaches us to collect and identity, success, pain, pride. But none of it belongs to us in the end. Taking thoughts to ourselves, believing I am this, I am that - this is the illusion."
His voice steadied.
"Chanting breaks that illusion."
The sunlight now fully illuminated his face, gaunt, tear-streaked, but terrifyingly clear.
"I don't want you," he said, without cruelty. "Not because you lack beauty. Not because you lack wealth."
He paused.
"But tell me will beauty satisfy forever? Will money fill the emptiness when the body weakens?"
He shook his head slowly.
"No."
"Only the creator can fulfill us," Manu said. "And one day, we must return these bodies to the creator."
His voice softened into surrender.
"That is why I chant. That is why I refuse everything else."
Silence followed - heavy, sacred, irreversible.
The sun stood fully risen.
And in its light, there was no room left for illusion.