20: The Stillness Before the Storm: Part 2

15 August 2000

The coffee had been served - strong, dark, and piping hot - but the Hemas barely touched it.

The living room was divided like a chessboard.

Hema sat upright in the center of the sofa, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. Across from him, Bharath stood, back straight, as if awaiting judgment. Sree sat beside Hema, calm but unreadable, watching everyone. Devi lingered at the edge of the room, eyes flicking between her brother and the girls.

Kim and Anya sat nearest to the hallway, alert but still. Celina stood by the bookshelf, arms folded, an unreadable expression masking the roiling nerves beneath. Priya remained standing, hands loosely clasped in front of her - calm, poised, quietly protective.

“So let me understand,” Hema said at last, voice low but heavy. “You left Chennai to train. To prove you could become something on your own. You chose Calcutta, joined this club, moved into this flat that belongs to her mother. And somewhere along the way ... this became acceptable to you?”

He gestured broadly - not just at the room, but at the girls, at the life.

Bharath didn’t flinch. “It’s not about acceptability. It’s about the truth. This is the life I’m building. With them.”

“With four women?” Hema scoffed.

“Not because I planned it,” Bharath said. “Because I didn’t run from it.”

Hema turned to the girls. “And you’re all in agreement? What are you to him - friends? Lovers? Staff? Disciples?”

Kim’s jaw clenched, but she held her tone steady. “We’re partners. Each in our own way.”

Celina leaned forward. “We support him. He supports us. That’s all you need to understand.”

“I need to understand everything,” Hema said. “Because from where I sit, this looks like madness. I see no parents, no guardians, no boundaries. I see a young man and young women throwing away their futures in the middle of some ... bohemian fantasy.”

“You see what you want to see,” Anya said quietly. “But you haven’t asked who we are. Or how this came to be.”

Hema’s eyes narrowed. “Then tell me.”

There was a pause.

“It started on my first day in Calcutta,” Bharath said, his voice steady but low. “I was lost, disoriented on a walk I went on after lunch. It was the evening. I’d just stepped into the older part of the city when I saw three men harassing an elderly sadhu near an alley.”

Sree leaned forward slightly. Hema’s arms remained crossed, but his brow furrowed.

“They had taken something from him - a pouch of herbs. Medicines, he said. I don’t know what came over me, but I intervened. Told them to back off. Somehow, they did.”

“You confronted them?” Hema asked sharply.

“I didn’t think, Appa,” Bharath said. “I just ... acted. And when it was over, the sadhu thanked me. He introduced himself as Guruji. Said I’d passed a test.”

He paused. “He looked at me like he knew me. Called me ‘chosen.’ And then ... he pressed his palm to my forehead. Gave me a small pouch of herbs. Said it would help me sleep. That I would start to see the truth in dreams.”

“You took herbs from a stranger?” Hema’s voice rose, but not with full anger - more confusion, disbelief.

“I didn’t ingest anything. Just kept it near me. And I slept.”

There was a stillness. Then Bharath continued.

“That night ... the dreams began.”

Kim took over gently. “Not normal dreams. Structured ones. Symbols. Energy. Sacred shapes - yantras.”

Anya added, “And three women. Not us, not yet. Just ... presences. Goddess-like. Each different. Each radiant.”

Sree’s voice was soft. “And you knew them?”

“I didn’t,” Bharath said. “Not then. But they knew me.”

“We’ve all seen them,” Kim said. “Even before we met Bharath. In dreams. In flashes. They showed us a path. Not through commands - but presence. Through connection. We didn’t know what they were before we met Bharath. We thought they were just passing dreams, but they were our destiny.”

Hema shook his head. “This is mythology. Fantasy.”

“It’s resonance,” Kim said. “You believe in energy, don’t you, sir? In pujas, in mantras, in yantras? This is the same. It just found him.”

Sree turned toward Bharath, a strange emotion on her face. “And you believe this?”

“I don’t just believe it,” Bharath said. “I live it. Every day. The way my body has changed. The clarity of mind. The strength I feel in training. The way these three - “ he gestured to Anya, Kim, and Celina “ - arrived not by chance, but in sequence. As if summoned by something deeper.”

“Each of them saw him in their dreams before they met him,” Priya said calmly. “Each of them was drawn here without explanation. And when they arrived, the energy in this house changed.”

Hema stood again. “And you expect us to accept this? That your relationship with three women is ordained by some street sadhu with herbs?”

“We don’t expect anything,” Anya said. “We’re not asking for blessings. Or approval. We’re asking for understanding. And time.”

Celina finally spoke, voice quiet but unwavering. “We’re not here to confuse or scandalize you. But we can’t lie about what brought us together. We found him because something called us. And together ... we’ve become something none of us expected.”

Devi stared at her brother. “Anna ... this Guruji. You never saw him again?”

Bharath shook his head. “No. I don’t even know how to find that alley again. I’ve tried retracing my steps, but nothing looks the same. It’s like ... it never existed. Or only did for that moment.”

Sree’s fingers twisted lightly in the folds of her shawl. “And the pouch? The herbs?”

“I still have it,” Bharath said. “Or what’s left of it. Just kept it beside my bed that night, like he said. The dreams started immediately. They haven’t stopped since.”

“And the women?” Hema asked slowly, eyes flicking between the girls. “You say you dreamt of them?”

Bharath’s voice dropped lower. “Yes. I dreamt of them.”

He paused, choosing his words carefully.

“The first came wrapped in red. Not just a woman - a presence. She moved like a secret remembered in a temple. There was fire in her step, poetry in her eyes. She said she had known me before. Not in this age ... but in others.”

Anya looked down, the barest flush at her cheek.

“She spoke in riddles. Of gold and bruises, of verses whispered under lamps. Her touch was ... not physical, but it left a mark. As if something long-forgotten in me stirred awake.”

He exhaled slowly. “Before I could understand her, the second appeared.”

Sree listened, still and absorbed. Even Hema, arms folded, said nothing.

“She wore white. Or maybe light itself. A scholar’s simplicity, but there was wisdom in her every motion. She spoke of measuring breath. Of recording the things others wouldn’t even see. She said her task was to make sense of the unspeakable. That if the world judged me, she would erase the scrolls rather than betray me.”

Kim’s fingers curled into her lap.

“And the third,” Bharath said. His throat worked once. “She came in moonlight. Stern. Proud. Storm in her eyes. She said she would wound me before she healed me. That her lessons would be sharp, but honest. That beneath her defiance, she would still be drawn to the truth of what connected us.”

Celina didn’t move. But her shoulders had eased - just a little.

“They didn’t give names. Just presence. Just prophecy. They stood with me in a vast circle of stone and light, a temple carved from nothing I’ve seen in waking life. A yantra ... glowing. Breathing.”

“And you think this temple is real?” Hema asked, voice low.

“It’s not a temple,” Bharath said. “It’s ... somewhere in the metaphysical. I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve only been there in my dreams - and only twice. But when I’m there, it feels as real as this apartment does now. The yantra ... the energy ... it’s alive.”

Sree leaned forward slightly. “And the girls ... they’ve seen the same place?”

“No,” Bharath said, shaking his head. “They can’t go there. The yantra - whatever it is - seems bound to me. But they’ve been with me in the spiritual plane, in other dreams. Different spaces. Places where we can meet, connect ... understand.”

He turned to his mother.

“But the connection only awakened after I met them in the real world. I recognized something, but it wasn’t instant clarity. It needed that spark.”

His eyes found Anya.

“Anya was the first,” he said. “I saw her in a music video the next evening after I came back from practice with the injured ankle. And then again in a sports magazine ad. And something just ... shifted.”

Anya and Priya both tried not to laugh - Anya failing more obviously.

“Right,” Anya said under her breath, nudging Priya, “the state of that magazine.”

Priya grinned. “Folded open to the same page for days.”

Bharath cleared his throat, choosing not to respond. “Soon after that, the dreams changed. We began pulling each other into them. And when we met for the first time ... it was like meeting someone I already loved in another life.”

Anya didn’t speak, but her gaze softened, full of something unmistakable.

“You pull each other into dreams?!” Devi exclaimed.

“Kim’s was the same,” Bharath continued. “She was assigned to me as a psychologist. We didn’t know each other before that. But the moment I saw her, I knew. I couldn’t even form words properly.”

“He called himself a stomach,” Kim deadpanned.

All the girls burst into laughter. His parents and Devi looked at him like he’d gone mad.

“No, he actually said I’m a stomach, like it was some kind of medical emergency,” Kim added, shaking her head.

The laughter lingered a moment longer - defiant, human, unfiltered - despite the gravity that still hung in the air.

Sree blinked at them, caught between disbelief and amusement. Hema remained impassive, but the crease between his brows had softened slightly. Devi smirked, though her face still showed the effort of trying to make sense of it all.

“Celina’s story...” Bharath said then, his voice dropping lower, “is more complicated.”

The laughter died instantly.

“She was the one who found me through her dream. She pulled me into hers. She was ... in danger.”

He glanced at Celina.

She met his gaze, jaw set, then gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.

“We all saved her,” Bharath continued. “Three days ago.”

Sree sat up straighter, alarm blooming behind her eyes. “What do you mean, saved?”