✦ ⭑ I. The Report Reaches the Sea
Madras smelled of salt, sweat, and ink.
In the East India Company headquarters, far from the dust of Uyyalapalle, Captain Harwood stood in front of a table covered in papers.
The room held:
one portly Collector-General,
two senior officers from the Madras Army,
a Company legal advisor,
and a bored clerk pretending not to listen.
Harwood's left arm was in a sling.
The bandage under his coat still itched where the arrow had grazed him.
He finished his summary.
"…and without warning," he ended tightly, "we came under coordinated bow fire. My sepoys dropped in seconds. Not random rabble. This was disciplined, planned. The local zamindar, Uyyalawada Narasimha Reddy, was present, directing events. Afterwards, he permitted our wounded to be treated—but this only underlines his arrogance. He knows he can act without fear."
The Collector-General frowned, fingers drumming on the table.
"Hmm," he said. "You are certain the Reddy was involved himself?"
Harwood's jaw flexed.
"I saw him break ten men personally before we could even raise muskets," he said. "He spoke like he owns the district, the people, and the very soil. He openly declared that he no longer intends to tolerate our methods."
One of the senior officers, an older colonel with white whiskers, snorted.
"A seditious peacock," he said. "We've dealt with worse. A company of sepoys, some artillery, a few hangings—"
The legal advisor coughed delicately.
"If I may remind," he said, "this particular zamindar has… connections. Hyderabad. Mysore. Certain respected merchants in Madras. Even—" he flicked a glance toward a separate file "—some favourable comments in London trade circles. He is seen as a 'modernizing native ally.' Moving heavily against him could be… politically inconvenient."
Harwood stared.
"Inconvenient?" he repeated. "He attacked Company soldiers."
"On your own report," the Collector-General said, "the incident occurred during a local revenue dispute. Yes, troubling. Yes, potentially insubordinate. But we must consider… optics. If we make a great show of crushing a relatively prosperous, well-connected zamindar, we might encourage others to look at him not as a nuisance, but as a hero."
The colonel grumbled.
"So we do… nothing?" he said. "We let him grow bolder?"
"Not nothing," the Collector-General replied. "We observe. We… adjust. Increase certain pressures quietly. Remove some of his local allies. Perhaps open an inquiry into his accounts. But a full punitive expedition at this stage…"
He shook his head.
"We have other fires," he said. "There is trouble in the north. A French rumour on the western coast. The Board will not approve a large operation over one angry landlord."
Harwood's fingers dug into his sling.
"With respect, sir," he said through his teeth, "he is not 'one angry landlord.' He has men. He has organization. I have seen mobs. This was not that."
"Then file your report," the Collector-General said, returning to a more soothing tone. "We shall forward it to Calcutta for review. In the meantime, proceed with caution. If you can find ways to undercut his influence without open conflict, do so. But until the Board decides, no rash actions."
Harwood swallowed his frustration.
"Yes, sir," he said.
As he left, the clerk's pen scratched across paper:
"Uyyalawada Narasimha Reddy – noted for unusual defiance. Recommended: surveillance, discreet pressure, avoid turning into cause célèbre."
Madras had heard the roar.
But the sea city was far.
Paper travelled slower than arrows.
While the men in coats debated how to react, the man in Rayalaseema had already decided that he would.
❖ II. Tax as a Blade
Weeks bled into each other.
In village after village, tax demands rose.
Not everywhere at once.
The Company was clever.
They knew not to squeeze all throats the same day.
But:
in one taluk, grain was seized despite poor harvest;
in another, cattle taken in "partial payment";
in yet another, labour was demanded for road-building at insulting rates.
Old men muttered in tea shops.
Women whispered at wells.
Everywhere, one name began to be spoken in the same breath as "hope" and "danger":
"Simha Dora…"
In Uyyalawada, villagers began to arrive after dark.
They came in twos and threes.
No big delegations.
Just:
a farmer with hands cracked like parched fields,
a weaver whose loom sat silent,
a potter whose clay had been taken in "temple levies" by a British-friendly local priest.
They were ushered through side entrances, past courtyards, into a quieter hall.
There, Narasimha listened.
One man spoke, eyes down.
"Dora," he said, "if we pay what they demand, we do not eat. If we don't pay, they beat us. We… we heard what you did in Uyyalapalle. We heard you made them bleed. We… don't want blood. We want breathing room. Tell us what we can do."
Another, younger, more reckless, clenched his fists.
"Or let us fight," he said. "Give us weapons. We will show them we are not… animals."
Narasimha looked at them all.
He saw:
anger,
fear,
desperation,
and something else—readiness.
For years, his work had been like filling an unseen lake, drop by drop.
Now, he felt the water level at the brim.
One more drop, and it would overflow.
He rose.
"I will not promise miracles," he said quietly. "The British will not stop because we shout. But I will promise this: from tonight, you will not be alone when you say 'no.'"
He turned to Raghava, Sri, and Ayyappa.
"From tonight," he said, his voice losing all softness, "we begin Protocol Varaha."
They understood.
They had discussed it in theory, as a contingency.
They had hoped never to need it.
Now, its time had come.
✢ III. The Name of the Boar
In the inner council room, with only the most trusted present, Narasimha stood before a freshly chalked diagram on the floor.
Lines radiated out from a circle marked "U".
At the top, written in crisp letters:
Varāha
Ayyappa tilted his head.
"We are digging into the enemy's roots," he said. "So you pick the name of the boar who lifted the earth itself."
Narasimha nodded.
"Varaha is stubborn," he said. "He does not dance around the problem. He dives into the muck, digs under the demon, and throws it aside."
He pointed to three concentric circles around the centre.
"Protocol Varaha has three jaws," he said.
"Jaw One: Tiger Corps Sleeper Cells. Every trained group scattered in villages and caravans stops merely watching. They begin… to bite. Quietly. We target the tools of revenue, not the villagers caught in between."
"Jaw Two: Shadow Mandal Infiltration. Until now, our Rahasya Mandal has mostly gathered information. Now they move to shape it. Bribes, blackmail, persuasion—we start bending local functionaries away from Company demands."
"Jaw Three: External Weapons Flow. Our Madras contacts stop thinking purely of profit. From now on, every coastal shipment must consider how many muskets, powder, or blades we can fold into it discreetly."
Sri folded her arms.
"And when the Board in Calcutta finally finishes their chai and decides you're a threat?" she asked. "What then?"
"Then," Narasimha said, "they will find the tree they thought they could chop is rooted deeper than they imagined."
He stepped onto the central circle.
His voice dropped.
"From this night," he said, "we are done with being reactive. We become the problem in their plans. If they tax here, the road behind them breaks. If they seize cattle there, their own horses go missing. If they beat a man in public, someone writes his story on a wall far away."
He looked at each in turn.
"There will be risk," he said. "Arrests. Beatings. Some will die. I won't lie. But if we let them continue like this, more will die slowly, in silence."
Venkanna spoke quietly.
"You have prepared them," he said. "Now you must also prepare yourself. Varaha lifts the earth, yes—but he also takes the weight of its mud on his own back."
Narasimha smiled wryly.
"Haven't you noticed, Guru?" he said. "I have been rolling in mud for a while now."
❖ IV. Tigers Wake
Across Rayalaseema and beyond, the Tiger Corps sleeper cells were already in place.
Now, Protocol Varaha whispered to them:
"Wake. But do not roar.We are not yet at battlefield. We are at foundation."
1. The Broken Bridge
On a moonless night, near a small river where a British revenue convoy regularly crossed, four "labourers" worked.
To any watching eye, they were simply:
repairing a rickety wooden bridge,
muttering about loose planks,
sweating under lantern light.
In reality, they were Tiger Corps.
Under Ayyappa's instructions, they:
cut certain nails half-way,
replaced solid beams with cunningly hollowed ones,
ensured it would hold for now,
but fail under a particular weight at a particular point.
Two weeks later, Harwood's colleagues would attempt to move an extra wagon of seized grain across that bridge.
In the middle, with a crunch and a splash, the structure would give way, sending wagon, grain, and two precious new cannons into the water.
No one would see the four "labourers" in a nearby thicket, nodding once and slipping away.
2. The Vanishing Lists
In a district office, a young clerk named Venkataiah bent over a ledger.
His superior, a paunchy Indian revenue official eager to please the Company, had compiled:
a neat list of "defaulters,"
recommended seizures,
names marked for exemplary punishment.
Venkataiah had been recruited into the Shadow Mandal two years ago.
Tonight, he moved as usual, respectful and punctual.
But when he took the ledger to be dried near the lamp, his hand slipped.
Ink spilled.
Pages smeared.
The official shrieked.
"Idiot! That list—"
"I am sorry, Ayya!" Venkataiah said, bowing so low his forehead nearly hit the floor. "I will salvage what I can!"
He did.
Very carefully.
Names of genuine defaulters with land and hoarded grain?
He rewrote them clearly.
Names of widows, landless labourers, and villages on the edge?
Those… blurred beyond recognition.
Later that year, Madras would receive confused reports about "unexpected shortfalls" in that district's collections.
On paper, it would look like incompetence.
In reality, it was intent.
3. The Toll of Fear
In a roadside tavern frequented by sepoys, a Tiger Corps man named Balraj laughed with the others.
He drank watered toddy, listened, and let the others boast.
Then, in a carefully casual tone, he said,
"Did you hear about the unit that went to Uyyalapalle? I heard some zamindar broke ten of them alone, and then ghosts with bows rained death from nowhere."
The others scoffed.
"Rumours," one muttered.
But their eyes flickered.
Balraj shrugged.
"Maybe," he said. "But my cousin in that area says: the zamindar has friends in many hills. They say… next time a revenue patrol marches without thinking, the ground itself might open."
He chuckled.
"You know how villagers talk."
But later, when those same sepoys were ordered to accompany harsh collections, more than one shifted uneasily, remembering tales of unseen arrows.
Fear, properly placed, was a weapon too.
✢ V. The Mandal Moves
The Shadow Mandal, until now mostly eyes and ears, grew fangs of a different kind.
Narasimha did not want them to become cutthroats.
He wanted them to:
bend flows,
redirect pressures,
undermine brittle men from within.
They began with soft turns.
A local moneylender who collaborated enthusiastically with Company officials found that:
his distant cousin's gambling debts were known,
receipts he had "misplaced" years ago resurfaced,
compromising letters appeared mysteriously on his doorstep.
One night, a hooded stranger sat in his courtyard.
"Anna," the stranger said softly, "you have two futures:
One, you continue to squeeze your own people for the Company, and next year someone 'finds' those letters on a collector's desk.
Two, you begin to be generous in small ways. Delay a few demands. Forgive a bit of interest. Look the other way when certain grain wagons go past at night.
Then those letters… turn to ash."
The moneylender gulped.
"No killing?" he asked.
"No killing," the stranger replied. "We are not ghosts. We are… accountants of dharma. Balance the book, and we do not sharpen the quill."
Elsewhere, a small-time British interpreter who had grown uneasy at recent brutalities received a gentle approach.
He had once helped a Trinetra agent find work for a relative.
Now, that favour was repaid.
"Next time the captain wants to know which villages can be squeezed more," the agent told him, "you misread the map. Suggest others. Ones with better reserves. Ones whose leaders are not yet ready to stand. We will… compensate those villages quietly. But you will have saved some from lashes."
In this way:
whispers,
bribes,
gentle threats,
guilty consciences—
all became tools.
No one wrote "Shadow Mandal" in official records.
But in back rooms, in hushed tones, some local officials began to say:
"Be careful. The lion's eyes are everywhere. If you push too hard, your own secrets may visit you."
❖ VI. Weapons from the Waves
While shadows moved inland, the sea joined the plan.
In Madras and smaller ports along the Coromandel coast, the Samudra Vyapara Sangha shifted gears.
What had been purely a profit engine became, under Protocol Varaha, a supply line.
At a crowded wharf in Madras, crates marked "Farm Tools" were unloaded from a French trader's ship.
Inside, under iron plough-heads and shovel blades, lay:
disassembled musket parts,
extra flints,
rolls of treated cord for fuses.
A British customs man approached, wiping his forehead.
"What's this?" he asked.
The Sangha agent smiled.
"Tools, sir," he said. "For inland estates. You may open one or two crates if you like. The rest, if delayed, will make some zamindar very unhappy at harvest time."
The customs man selected a crate.
By careful pre-arrangement, that crate contained nothing but tools.
He poked, prodded, shrugged.
"Fine," he said. "Pass. We are overrun as it is."
Behind him, another man watched.
Edwin Fairfax, now back in Madras, caught the subtle exchange.
Later, over tea in a quieter corner, he spoke to the Sangha agent.
"You are playing a dangerous game," he said. "If they catch you smuggling arms—"
The agent's eyes met his.
"So are you, sir," he said softly. "Still working for them, yet sending certain reports slower, routing certain warnings to… helpful desks. We all pick how we tilt the board."
Edwin sighed.
"How many weapons can you move this way?" he asked.
"Enough," the agent replied. "We do not plan to match their cannons yet. Just… ensure that when a village must stand, it does not do so with bare hands."
From coastal storehouses, the concealed arms moved inland:
some by cart with false bottoms,
some hidden in grain sacks,
some carried piece by piece by "pilgrims."
When assembled in hidden hill chambers, the small arsenal looked modest.
But to men who had previously fought with spears and old matchlocks, it was a quiet revolution.
✢ VII. Unrest in the Files
Back in Madras headquarters, the clerk's stacks began to tell a pattern no one at first wanted to see.
Reports came in:
"Minor sabotage at small river crossing. No casualties, but convoy delayed, two guns lost in water. Possibly bad construction."
"District X: unexplained difficulty in tax collection—ledgers damaged, records lost. Investigation pending."
"Sepoy morale affected by rumours of 'ghost archers' and 'revenant zamindars'. Recommend more stern discipline."
"Unusual rise in small-scale banditry near certain estates, though no direct attacks on Company officers reported."
Each report, alone, was not alarming.
Annoying, yes.
But the Empire was large.
There were always hiccups.
Harwood, however, saw something else.
"These are not random," he told a fellow officer quietly over brandy. "These—delays, accidents, errors—they centre around one region. And they began in earnest after Uyyalapalle."
The other man shrugged.
"You give these natives too much credit," he said. "A few superstitions and you imagine conspiracies."
Harwood stared into his glass.
He remembered Narasimha's eyes.
No.
This was no superstition.
This was a hand pressing subtly on the lungs of revenue.
He filed a request for more authority to "deal firmly with seditious behaviour."
For now, it went into a stack labelled "Pending".
Empires, like ships, took time to turn.
In that time, sparks had space to spread.
❖ VIII. The Lion in Shadow
In Uyyalawada, by contrast, work accelerated.
By day, Narasimha was still:
the attentive chieftain,
listening to disputes,
planning irrigation,
fussed over by elders about marriage dates and rituals.
By night, he was something else.
He met in secret with:
Tiger Corps captains,
Shadow Mandal leaders,
Sangha coordinators.
Maps now showed not just British posts, but:
weak bridges,
corrupt officials,
sympathetic ones,
villages on the edge.
One night, Raghava spread a cloth with pebbles arranged on it.
"These," he said, pointing to black stones, "are villages where tax demands are now unbearable. These white ones are places where we have Varaha assets. These red ones are where Company pressure is moderate, but could be shifted."
Sri leaned over his shoulder.
"It's like playing with coals," she said. "Move the heat here, reduce it there, never let the fire burn in one place long enough to turn into a bonfire for them to show off."
Narasimha nodded.
"Exactly," he said. "We keep the people angry enough to resist, but not so crushed that they despair. We keep the British frustrated enough to make mistakes, but not so enraged that they commit immediate mass slaughter. Balance."
Ayyappa grunted.
"And what about you?" he asked. "Where do you stand in this dance?"
Narasimha looked at the map.
"At the centre," he said. "Where all insults meet. Where all hope hangs. Very inconvenient."
Sri smirked.
"You chose it," she said.
"I know," he replied. "That's why I'm angry. I should have chosen something simple. Like becoming a village schoolteacher. Or coconut seller."
"Coconut sellers still pay tax," Raghava pointed out.
"There is no escape," Narasimha sighed.
Then his eyes hardened.
"So," he said, "we make sure our suffering means something."
✢ IX. Sparks Seen from Heaven
In Vaikuntha, the world looked different.
Not as maps and ledgers, but as currents of light and shadow.
From that height, one could see:
threads of fear tightening around some villages,
threads of courage brightening in others,
new lines of resistance weaving between them.
Lakshmi watched as small golden sparks flickered in the night-scape over South India.
"Look," she said. "Before, when the British squeezed, I saw only dark patches where hope sunk. Now… when they squeeze, I see sparks. Little flares of 'no'."
Parvati smiled.
"Tigers waking," she said.
Saraswati's fingers traced the paths of the Shadow Mandal.
"This," she murmured, "is narrative war. They are not only breaking bridges and hiding grain. They are rewriting the story villagers tell themselves: from 'we are helpless' to 'we have claws if we stand together.'"
Maheshwara's eyes gleamed.
"And all this," he said, "before the true battles have even begun. Good. Let the people learn to move in the dark now. They will need that skill when Marvel's bigger storms arrive."
Vishnu's smile was half-proud, half-sad.
"He is rushing toward his fate," he said softly. "Every choice he makes now plants seeds far into the MCU era. Some will grow into shields. Some… into swords others may misuse. But for this moment, his aim is true."
Brahma's stylus scratched.
Varaha Protocol activated. Distributed resistance operations at sub-threshold level. British aware of 'unrest' but fail to attribute it centrally. Network resilience increasing. Moral calculus: risks rising, but so is collective dignity.
❖ X. A Quiet Flame
One night, after sending off yet another group of Tiger Corps men to "escort" a suspiciously well-armed grain convoy, Narasimha sat alone in the temple courtyard.
The night breeze was cool.
The stone under him still held the day's warmth.
He leaned back against a pillar, exhaustion wrapped around him like a second cloth.
From inside the sanctum, a priest's evening mantras drifted.
He closed his eyes.
"I started this life wanting to be useful," he muttered. "Now look at me. I have become the full-time trouble department for half of the South."
A presence joined him.
Venkanna, of course.
The old Guru settled beside him without a word for a while.
After some time, he spoke.
"You carry too much in your head," he said. "The map… has moved inside you. Dangerous place for too many arrows."
Narasimha exhaled.
"If I don't hold it," he said, "who will?"
Venkanna was silent.
Then he said,
"You remember Varaha's story?"
"Yes."
"He dove into the cosmic oceans," Venkanna said, "to rescue the earth. He found it stuck to the demon's tusk. He did not pull from above. He went under, lifted, and carried. The mud and weight he took on himself. But when he set Bhudevi down, mountains grew where his footprints had pressed."
He looked at Narasimha.
"You are now under the demon," he said. "Lifting from below. The weight feels like it will break your back. But one day, a boy will stand on some hill your choices created and think, 'We have always been like this.' He will not know your name. That is… the point."
Narasimha chuckled weakly.
"You're very bad at comfort, Guru," he said. "But… thank you."
He opened his eyes.
Through the temple doorway, he could see the deity lit by oil lamps.
For a moment, the murti's eyes seemed almost alive.
He bowed his head slightly.
"All right," he murmured, to gods and to himself. "We started the sparks. We'll see if they can light a fire without burning the whole house."
He rose.
Work awaited.
Letters to send.
Bridges to break.
Hearts to hold steady.
And somewhere, in a far coastal office, men in coats still argued over what to do about a zamindar who had the audacity to say:
"Who are you to tax my breath?"
The night deepened.
In fields, hills, ports, and courts, small actions—almost invisible on their own—connected.
Sparks in the night.
Too few to be called a blaze.
Not yet.
But enough,
when seen from above,
to outline the shape of a coming storm.
✦ End of Chapter 31 – "The Sparks in the Night" ✦