Raman had dimmed the lights in the shop. Only the small oil lamp his father had once given him still burned on the counter. Its flame swayed gently, throwing soft, amber ripples across the glass jars and spice tins. The air smelled of mustard oil and ash, with traces of cumin, cardamom, and the faint sweetness of dried jasmine.
He had placed a small bowl of rice on a copper plate, with a few flowers he’d found on the street that morning. Not because they were special — they weren’t — but because they reminded him of the ones his mother used to gather for prayers.
He lit some extra candles and burned some of his herbs.
He didn’t know exactly why he was doing it.
Maybe a need to hold on to something that was still his. It just made him feel better.
He closed his eyes. In the silence, he could hear the soft ticking of the clock, the rustling of trees outside, a motorbike fading into the night. And somewhere between those sounds — something else.
Not voices, not really, but the faint sense of remembered words echoing through time. His father’s voice: “Pride is empty without honesty.” His grandfather’s laugh: deep, steady, the kind that filled a room and stayed even after he was gone.
Raman spoke softly to them — not quite praying, more like whispering to the air.
He didn’t ask for luck, or forgiveness, or revenge.
He asked for understanding. For direction. He had lied so much, for so long, that he barely recognized his own voice anymore. He had lost himself in his own world of lies.
Now he only wanted to hear a voice that didn’t judge him. A voice that remembered how hard it could be — to care and still do wrong. When he opened his eyes again, the flame quivered — just once — as though the room had sighed. He didn’t feel the fear anymore. Only calm. Exhaustion. And something that felt like presence — not of gods, but of memory itself.
The voices of his ancestors weren’t ghosts. They were the quieter parts of himself, old layers of soul and blood, reminding him who he once was, and what was still inside him, somewhere.
Raman sat a while longer beside the lamp. The oil was running low. The shadows on the wall flickered and swayed like dancers moving to a rhythm only they could hear. He felt lighter, as if the whisper of his ancestors had loosened a knot inside him.
But beneath the calm, something stirred — a light hope, a a need to go further, to find more of himself.
He reached for his laptop again. The glow of the screen washed over the spices and the fading light. He began to search for the old stories of his forefathers, searching through old pages and forums — and spent his evening reading about the old forgotten gods of India. Not the ones everyone knew, not Vishnu or Shiva or the bright figures of temples — but the mostly forgotten ones. The ones who belonged to old towns and vanished kingdoms.
The ones who have ancient ways.