The invitation arrived on thick, embossed stationery. The India Today Symposium: "Faith in the Age of Science." Swami Suryananda was to be a keynote speaker alongside a Nobel laureate physicist and a renowned sociologist. He showed the letter to Rajendra in the back of the Contessa, his hand trembling slightly.
"I cannot do this. They will dissect me. The scientist will ask for data. The sociologist will ask about social coercion. I am a... a performer with a few lucky guesses."
"Your guesses," Rajendra said, his eyes on the traffic, "are about to become even luckier. And you're not a performer anymore. You're a phenomenon. You'll speak of intuition as a faculty beyond measurement. You'll speak of the goddess as the pattern behind the chaos. Be vague, be profound, and quote the Upanishads. They'll eat it up."
He handed Suryananda a new slip of paper. This one contained coordinates, a date, and a geological description.
Location: National Highway 22 (Hindustan-Tibet Road), near Jhakri, Himachal Pradesh.
Date: Approximately July 18, 1990.
Event: The mountain's sigh. A great slide of rock and mud will fall upon the road, blocking the serpent's path for many weeks. It will begin after seven days of heavy rain. The earth is tired of holding.
Suryananda read it, the color draining from his face. "A landslide. You want me to predict a landslide now? Storms are one thing, but the earth?"
"The principle is the same. You had a vision. Kali, the destructive aspect of the Mother, is restless. She stamps her foot. The mountain trembles. You feel the grinding in your own bones. You are a vessel for the planet's pain." Rajendra's tone was clinical, a director blocking a scene. "Deliver this at the symposium. Not as a dire warning, but as a sorrowful observation. A testament to nature's power."
"And the purpose?" Suryananda dared to ask.
"The purpose," Rajendra said, a faint, hard smile touching his lips, "is to clear a lane."
The symposium was a televised event. Suryananda, in saffron robes, looked ethereal under the studio lights. He spoke beautifully about the "inner eye," the jnana chakshu. He deftly parried the physicist's polite skepticism by agreeing that science maps the visible world, while faith navigates the invisible currents that shape it. He was poised, humble, and mesmerizing.
Then, in his closing remarks, his voice grew heavy. "I speak not to prove anything, but to share a burden. In meditation, I sometimes feel not the future, but the... strain of the present. The tension in the living rock." He paused, letting the silence swell. "I feel such a tension now. On the old road to the roof of the world, near Jhakri. The mountain has been weeping with rain. Soon, very soon, it will sigh. And its sigh will be a river of stone. I pray the road is empty when it falls."
The moderator blinked. The sociologist leaned forward, fascinated. The physicist looked politely baffled. The audience was riveted. It wasn't a prediction; it was a poetic lament. It made the headlines more effectively than a shrieked warning ever could.
SWAMI'S MOUNTAIN MYSTERY: PROPHECY OR POETRY? the papers read.
In the hills of Himachal, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) engineers scoffed. They monitored the slopes. There had been rain, but it was monsoon season—there was always rain. Yet, a faint, superstitious unease trickled down the chain of command. A few extra inspections were ordered.
Rajendra was already in motion. Through a Singapore shell company, he initiated contact with a small, nearly bankrupt Himachal-based transport and logistics firm, Himadri Movers. Its owner, a weary man named Thakur whose family had controlled local trucking for decades, was desperate. The main highway was his lifeline, but competition and politics were choking him.
Rajendra's offer was simple: Himadri Movers would be purchased for a generous price. Thakur would stay on as a well-paid manager. The company would pivot from long-haul trucking to "specialized regional logistics and disaster support."
The key was a piece of land Thakur owned—a three-acre plot just off NH-22, near Jhakri, currently used as a truck parking and repair yard. It was considered worthless by developers; the terrain was harsh, access was poor. But it was adjacent to the highway. And it had a hidden advantage: an old, overgrown mule track leading up and around the steep ridge, a forgotten path used by shepherds decades ago.
Rajendra's engineers, posing as Himadri employees, began discreetly surveying the land and the old track. The plan was not to build a depot. The plan was to be pre-positioned.
The rains came. For seven days, as per the System's historical data packet, a concentrated cloudburst pummeled the Jhakri ridge. The BRO issued landslide advisories. Traffic was restricted.
On the morning of July 18th, a low, deep rumble echoed through the valley, felt more than heard. A massive section of the unstable shale and scree slope, saturated beyond capacity, let go. Thousands of tons of rock and mud sluiced down onto NH-22, burying a two-hundred-meter stretch under a debris field ten meters deep. The highway, a critical artery, was severed. News helicopters showed the apocalyptic scene. The estimated clearance time was six to eight weeks.
The headlines exploded.
MOUNTAIN FALLS AS SAGE FORETOLD!
SWAMI SURYANANDA'S LANDSLIDE PREDICTION COMES TRUE!
SCIENCE STUMPED, FAITH VINDICATED?
Suryananda was inundated. He retreated to his ashram, claiming a need for silent meditation to "process the Mother's fierce lessons." His stature transformed from notable to legendary. He was now the Oracle of India.
Meanwhile, at the disaster site, chaos turned to orderly crisis management. The BRO mobilized bulldozers and jawans to clear the road. The state government declared an emergency.
And Himadri Movers, with its new, deep-pocketed Singaporean backing, swung into "humanitarian action." From the previously worthless three-acre plot, now officially a "Disaster Relief Coordination Base," they offered their services. They had earth-moving equipment (quietly purchased and moved in the week before the slide). They had temporary shelters. Most importantly, they had local knowledge.
Thakur, bewildered by the speed and resources suddenly at his command, became a local hero. His men, using that forgotten mule track—now hastily cleared and widened just enough for Jeeps and small trucks—began ferrying supplies to villages cut off by the main landslide. They brought in food, medicine, and BRO engineers.
But on the return trips, those Jeeps didn't always come back empty. Under tarps of "relief supplies" and "engineering tools," other items began to move: crates of Scottish whisky, cartons of foreign cigarettes, bundles of uncut Hong Kong silk—high-value, low-weight luxuries for the elite enclaves of Shimla and Manali. MAKA's first trickle through the northern passes.
The landslide had not just blocked a road; it had created a monopoly on lateral movement in that valley. All official traffic was stuck. All attention was on the main blockage. And the only flexible, functioning route around it was controlled by a company owned by Rajendra Shakuniya.
In Shanghai, the report landed on General Guo Feng's desk, translated by his daughter. It was a clipping from the China Daily's international digest, a reprint of a Reuters article: Indian Mystic Accurately Predicts Major Landslide, Baffles Experts.
The General read it slowly, his stone-face expression unchanging. He grunted, tapping the clipping. "This swami. He is connected to your husband's business."
Huilan, standing at attention, nodded. "He is considered a spiritual advisor to the MANO group. He performs ceremonies for their workers."
"Spiritual advisor," the General repeated, the words tasting foreign. "Or intelligence asset. Accurate predictions of natural disasters… that is a weapon. It moves crowds. It shapes perception." He looked up at his daughter, his pale eyes sharp. "Your husband collects unusual tools. First, he is a merchant who moves Soviet factories. Now, he keeps a prophet. Is he building a business, or is he building a mythology?"
Huilan had no answer that would satisfy him. "He is pragmatic, Father. He uses what works."
"The most dangerous men are the pragmatic ones who understand the uses of magic," the General said, pushing the clipping aside. "Watch this husband of yours, Huilan. A man who controls a prophet does not think in quarterly profits. He thinks in… epochs."
The message, forwarded through Huilan's terse channels, reached Rajendra in Mumbai: Your spiritual advisor has attracted high-level notice. Ensure his predictions remain beneficial to stability.
Rajendra read it and smiled. The General saw the tool, not the hand that held it. Good. Let him be intrigued. Let him be slightly unnerved. The mystical credibility was now another layer of his armor, another intangible asset on the ledger.
He looked at the geological survey maps of the cleared mule track, now codenamed LANE SIX. It was rudimentary, but it was his. A tiny, hidden capillary in the body of the Himalayas, opened by a "sigh of the mountain" and a prophet's whisper.
He had turned a landslide into a lane. And in doing so, he had turned a sage into a strategic asset recognized by a Chinese general. The returns on this investment were exceeding all projections.