The ashram outside Nashik was no longer modest.
What had begun as a few simple structures was now a sprawling, serene complex of whitewashed buildings with terracotta-tiled roofs, funded by a "generous, anonymous industrialist." A meditation hall large enough for two hundred sat at its center, and the air hummed not just with chanting, but with the quiet murmur of tape recorders and the click of press cameras. Swami Suryananda—or Swamiji, as the newspapers now called him—held two public discourses a day. They were always full.
Rajendra visited not as the patron, but as a seeker among many, dressed in simple white kurta-pajama. He sat at the back of the hall, watching. Suryananda had transformed. The nervous sweat was gone, replaced by a calibrated stillness. His voice, once a booming instrument for small crowds, was now a low, resonant river that pulled the entire hall into its current. He spoke of Kali not as a destroyer, but as the necessary fire that burns away illusion. He spoke of Durga as the inner strength to face modern life. It was a clever synthesis—ancient fury repackaged for contemporary anxiety.
After the discourse, Rajendra was led through a private gate to a small, austere office behind the main hall. The moment the door closed, Suryananda's shoulders slumped slightly. The divine channel became a man who needed a glass of water.
"It is… exhausting," Suryananda admitted, sinking into a chair. "They look at me as if I hold the sun in my palms. They bring me sick children, ask for stock market tips, beg me to find their lost husbands."
"And you tell them you see only what the Mother shows you," Rajendra said, not unkindly. "Which is the truth. You're doing well. The storm was just the opening act. Now we build the institution."
He laid out the next phase. MANO's Pune pressure cooker factory was facing a subtle, persistent problem: worker morale. It wasn't unions or wages—Shanti had those locked down with ruthless efficiency. It was a sense of meaninglessness, the soul-grinding monotony of the assembly line. Absenteeism was creeping up. Small, careless errors were increasing.
"You will design a Shakti Puja," Rajendra instructed. "A ritual to honor the divine energy within the machine and the worker. Not a superstitious blessing to prevent accidents, but a ceremony of focus, alignment, and collective purpose."
Suryananda looked skeptical. "Bless… machines?"
"Not the machines. The intention around them. You're not a mechanic; you're a psychologist in robes. You will give them a story. A narrative that their work—shaping metal that will feed families—is a form of sacred service, a yagna of industry."
Rajendra provided the specifics: a short, powerful ceremony at the start of each shift. The lighting of a lamp symbolizing clarity. A collective chant for steady hands and focused minds. A moment of silence to dedicate the day's work. Suryananda, with his deep knowledge of ritual syntax, fleshed it out into something that felt both ancient and modern.
The following week, Swami Suryananda, the Storm Prophet, visited the MANO factory in Pune. Shanti stood at Rajendra's side on the manager's balcony, arms crossed, her expression a masterpiece of dubious toleration.
"This is a waste of productive minutes," she muttered as the workers gathered on the factory floor, looking curious and uncertain.
"Watch," Rajendra said.
Suryananda did not preach. He spoke for five minutes. His voice, amplified just enough, washed over the cavernous space. He spoke of the tapasya (austerity) of precision, the dharma (duty) of creating something useful, the goddess Durga's many arms as a metaphor for the coordinated effort of the assembly line. He didn't promise riches or safety. He offered dignity.
Then he began the simple ritual. The workers, many crossing themselves or touching lockets out of habit, followed along. The collective chant, a simple "Om Aim Hreem Kleem Chamundaye Viche," echoed off the steel rafters. For a few minutes, the clatter and hiss of the factory were replaced by a unified human sound.
When the lamp was lit and a minute of silence observed, the workers returned to their stations. The change was not dramatic, but palpable. The air felt sharper, less heavy. The first shift after the puja saw a fifteen percent drop in recorded errors.
Shanti watched the efficiency reports come in over the next few days. She said nothing to Rajendra, but her resistance softened from concrete to clay. It worked. Irritatingly, mystically, it worked.
The internal use of Suryananda's talents went deeper, into shadows the factory lights never touched.
MAKA had a problem in Goa. A local shipping agent, a man named Costa, who handled the transfer of certain "cultural artifacts" from Soviet freighters to coastal barges, had gotten greedy. Worse, he'd gotten talkative after too many feni drinks, bragging about his "Russian friends" to the wrong people. He needed to be… corrected. But violence was messy and drew the wrong kind of attention.
Costa was brought to a safe house—a damp, closed-up spice warehouse near the old port. He was tied to a chair, terrified but defiant. Kapoor and Lars stood in the shadows, silent.
Rajendra arrived with Suryananda. The Swami was dressed not in ochre, but in a simple, dark dhoti, his face grim.
"Please," Costa begged, "I'll give back the money! I was drunk, I didn't mean—"
Rajendra held up a hand. He turned to Suryananda and nodded.
Suryananda approached Costa. He didn't shout. He began to speak in a low, hypnotic monotone, circling the chair. He spoke not of the KGB or of Rajendra's reach, but of cosmic justice. He quoted the Garuda Purana on the punishments for thieves and betrayers. He described, in vivid, scriptural detail, the torments of the Kumbhipaka hell, where those who break trust are boiled in oil.
But he twisted it. "Your soul is not there yet," Suryananda whispered, his face close to Costa's. "But I can see it straining. A black cord, sticky with your lies, is pulling it down. I can see the faces of those you have endangered. Their fear is a weight on your neck. Can you not feel it?"
Costa, a Catholic Goan with a deep, subliminal layer of Hindu folk belief, was utterly unprepared for this kind of interrogation. It bypassed his logic, his bravado. It spoke directly to the primal fear of damnation. Suryananda's words, backed by his immense and growing public credibility as a seer, became reality. Costa began to shake.
"Every time you think of speaking," Suryananda pressed, his eyes holding Costa's, "the cord will tighten. You will feel a chill. That is Maa Kali's breath on your soul. Silence will loosen it. Loyalty will cut it."
It was a psychological implant, delivered with the authority of a priest. After twenty minutes, Costa was a broken man, sobbing, promising eternal silence, offering to work for free. The threat of violence had become academic. He had been convinced he was damned.
As they left the warehouse, Kapoor glanced at Suryananda with a new, wary respect. "That was… efficient."
"It's cleaner," Rajendra said simply. He looked at Suryananda, who was wiping his brow, his face pale. The man had just discovered he could terrify people more profoundly with a parable than with a gun. "Remember this lesson. Faith and fear are two sides of the same coin. You mint the coin."
Back in Mumbai, Shanti confronted Rajendra in his office. The latest production reports were on his desk, showing the sustained drop in errors since the Shakti Puja.
"I don't like it," she said, her voice firm. "It feels manipulative. We're exploiting their faith."
"We're giving them a framework for pride in their work," Rajendra countered. "Is that worse than letting them feel like cogs? You manage their hands and their hours. He manages their spirit. It's a division of labor."
"And what about his other… duties?" Shanti's eyes were sharp. "The Goa situation. Ganesh mentioned a 'resolution.' It didn't involve our usual methods."
Rajendra met her gaze. "Some problems are not nails. You don't always need a hammer. Sometimes you need a scalpel. Suryananda is a scalpel."
"He's a man pretending to be a holy man, working for a man pretending to be just a businessman," she shot back, the frustration finally breaking through. "Where does the pretense end, Rajendra? When do we become the fiction we're selling?"
The question hung in the air. He had no clean answer.
"The factory output is up," he said finally, a weak deflection.
"I know," she sighed, the fight leaving her. She looked out the window at the bustling mill yard. "That's what frightens me. It works. So we'll keep doing it. But I'm keeping a separate ledger. One for the money, and one for… this." She gestured vaguely, encompassing the pujas, the prophecies, the whispered damnations in dark warehouses.
She left him with the silent accusation hanging in the room. Rajendra walked to the window. Below, the looms thundered, weaving cloth that was real, tangible. In Nashik, a manufactured sage was weaving belief. In the mountains, he was preparing to weave a landslide into a road.
He looked at his hands. One held the rough cotton of a sample from the loom. The other, unseen, felt the cool, silent potential of the nano-ring. He was building an empire of things you could touch, and an empire of things you could only feel. The line between them was blurring, and he was no longer sure which side he was on—or if the distinction even mattered anymore.