The death is liable over every face. The one who is born needs to meet his end with a liberty to be a **Rudbeckia**. But when a soul gives up on the end while holding such a strength that could drive armies to its end, it is called failure; it means the person has poured agony as passion and love as iron linoleum. He will meet a destiny destined to be called the burden.
The jet engine sounded like a message that he was still alive, the oxygen of the AC air cold and hardened to 24 degrees. Arush turned pages, pointing at every paragraph with his fingertip as he scanned the information. His mind screamed about the old debt of his loss—the moment the Author held his head while So Jung pierced his chest. He gripped the page hard as he threw it down. Tears could run when poison hits, but when a vessel is struck by destiny, it does not let him die; it makes him survive the pain and the agony, which can only turn into nectar when it is turned into words that never wanted to be heard. Arush bent, taking the file in his hand and turning the page, his face motionless and numb as if he had seen his own death. He read in a whisper:
> *"Bengal… Ranai Desai Chowl is an old Marathi sector… Nm/k readings have not been tracked… abandoned… locals have reported activities... with a history of taking men for war... kidnapped."*
Arush's eyes blinked for a second as he closed the file. A question rose while reading every paragraph: what was the difference between them? What were they meant for in this world? Was the agony never seen? Why? To perish among the untold faces that never meet the title. He whispered, "Is this place that important to get me there… damn me... get to hell, Arush," as he put his hand on his face and pulled it down.
An air hostess came, her heels tapping over the floor: *tap-tap*. A face came from the heaven of Apsaras while holding a menu, smiling toward the glowing, burning sun. She approached and asked, "Sir, can I know… do you need something?" as she smiled at him, her hair falling across her face as she moved it, still smiling.
Arush looked up, his eyes turning crimson as they locked onto the young lady. "Who are you?" A voice that distinguished the living from the dead resonated from his throat. This was meant not to harm the living, but the one who has turned death into living needs to be sent to the place where they deserve. The girl took a step back, whispering, "I am Raji." A golden badge was pinned to her black and white clothes: **Raji Kumar Persai.**
"Get me water," Arush commanded. His voice stood like a swan in a pond—not to stay still, but to defend a soul that never wanted to be loved. As she turned, a sharp pain ran through her chest. A blade pierced her human skin, cracking the bone open from behind. She couldn't scream; only a hiccup could be heard: *"hah... ahhhh."*
Arush's flames burned with a whisper, as if meant to break the mirage which was turned to break him. A cradle for death or for the sun to hold him in was not enough. "You can't trick me."
Raji's skin began to crack, turning into cold ashes. As her beauty met the ground, her soul lost what was never meant for her: the physical world she had to leave to knock at the doors of hell and heaven. Arush's energy blade disappeared as the presence of the living and the dead collided once more. The color of the plane bled away, like a vacuum sucking the color out of it, making it colorless and turning it black and white. It left Arush in a red draped shirt with the Makar logo glowing like a halo. He entered the negative world; the physical was not only a phantom but a bridge between death and the living.
A rhythmic humming began—the voice of a child—accompanied by the dripping of blood:
*Tip… Tip.*
The air shifted, thick with the smell of lavender, first rain, and wet soil. From behind, applause echoed over the colorless world. A figure emerged wearing a golden crown. Every step it took was enough to kill a person's heartbeat, but the darkness rose from the light and time was standing against the first ray of the sun; both were not only warriors but a bridge between heaven and hell, truth and falsehood.
"You're fine to play and sweet to mould…" a man's voice whispered. The eyes were black pits with white centers; the smile was a devil's. The skin was swollen and stripped in layers, covered in blood while he held the spear of words that could pierce any land, turning it into a vulnerable grave to rob. He looked at Arush. "I am **Avkasham**," he whispered as a command to him.
Arush tightened his knuckles, his voice making the very mountains tremble. "What do you want from me… Bastard?"
Avkasham looked at him like a devil looks at a shaman. He opened his bloody palms as fire rose from burning ash. A paper formed—grey and viscous—with a few words written in Sanskrit. "This will be the other mark… Meet me there. Come with your eyes open." He placed the paper on the table and vanished into a blow of air. In bold white letters, the paper read: **"Ranai Desai Chowl: Manabai Wagh."**
### **The Echoes of the 18th Century**
The colors returned to the world as Arush read the history of the location.
अत्र १८ व्यां शताब्द्यां रणै-देसाई-चौल स्थाने तादृशाः मन्दशब्दाः गुञ्न्ति स्म ये जीवतां जनान् प्रेतवत् कुर्वन्ति स्म । वीथयः नारीणां रक्तेन केशैश्च निर्मिताः भित्तयः इव दृश्यन्ते स्म । चर्मपादुकासु तानि रक्तानि संसक्तानि, यथा ताः पादुकाः एव जीवनस्य स्वामिन्यः स्युः; पादत्राणस्य चर्म लवणरसेन सह दग्धमिव दुर्गन्धं विमुञ्चति स्म । मार्गेषु त्वचः खण्डाः गलन्ति स्म, रक्ते विलीनाः । कृष्ण-धूम्रवर्णाः मांसांशाः वायुना सह एवं उत्पतन्ति स्म यथा जीवने कश्चन भीषणः सङ्ग्रामः नरसंहारश्च प्रचलति ।
तस्य युगस्य आज्ञाघोषः सदा स्मरिष्यते: "वयं केवलं पुरुषाणां ग्रहणाय आगताः । नारीणां बालकानां च प्रयोजनं नास्ति । नग्नान् जनान् त्वग्रहितान् कुरुत ।" तस्मिन् एव क्षणे कश्चन धूम्रवर्तिं पिबति स्म, यस्याः धूमः उद्याने तोपयन्त्रस्य धूमः इव उत्तिष्ठति स्म ।
At Ranai Desai Chowl in the 18th century, voices whispered with echoes that turned the living into the dead. The alleys were turned into walls driven by the blood and hair of women. It stuck to boots as if the blood were the owner of their lives, while the leather smelted with salt. Pieces of skin dripped onto the roads, smelted in blood—brown and black as flesh flew like a war within life and a massacre of carnage. The screams of command from that era will always be remembered, echoing: *"We are here to take men. Don't need women and children. Strip the naked from their skin."* As a cigar was smoked, the smoke rose like a cannon in a garden.
A Mansard was nothing but rotting meat laying on the streets. That night, children's skins were stripped; yelling women were pinned down. Their hair was stripped from their scalps, taking the blood into a river of corpses. Soldiers crushed camphor on grinding stones. Men were pulled out blindfolded, unable to hear the screams, or were possessed by something dark. Their hands were tied to serve the empire that ruled their lives.
Arush looked at the brackets of the old architecture, holding his hand on his head as his eyes glowed crimson, looking over the people of death. The society was filled with the spirits of widows standing in front of their homes looking at Arush. As a few cried, others looked at him—at the rays that did not glow, but burned with rage. Arush moved around the dry skeletons of leaves, looking at doors that had turned black due to the black flames raised from the camphor as he heard the phantom screams of the past.
The sun was setting. Arush looked at his watch: 5:00 PM. Inhaling deeply, he kicked the gate, breaking it down. The air changed its face, turning upside down. The land looked red, as if a layer of salt had been poured over it. The smell of roses mixed with burning curry leaves stank in his nose—sharp, like the sting of a scorpion. Arush could hear the screams a thousand times over and whispered, "This doesn't affect me," looking around himself at the ground covered with fallen cow dung turned into dust, while lifeless skeletons of dogs lay on the ground, smelling of decay.
An obstinate state entered Arush's mind, stuck in the darkness of a British plutocracy. He whispered, "**Mackhaw**… had many brothers in sin." He looked at the yellow-painted walls, darkened with the prints of hands crawling upside down toward the ceiling, as the blood was smelted in the air, binding like a vine of sweetness with cold rose milk.
*"Hedonism is a buckskin made by people to make believers into a living perspective…"*
He moved through the houses. The cracking doors and giggling shackles held the dignity of those long dead. The roads told stories buried in books, screaming to be brought to the surface. Tulsi pots held nothing but mud as limestone turned to black. The sky was setting the sun, but what about the sun who stood on the land of the Chowl, between a hell that was never written in human history but forgotten in the environmental theory of nature?
As the final light of the sunset hit the area, Arush's eyes glowed crimson red. He finished the last bite of a sandwich, clapped his hands together, and rubbed them. "There I come for the meetup—bastard," he whispered.
He stood before the **Manabai Wada**. The streets were void of life, whispers echoing like drums. Arush opened his palms and made a 'C' sign. The air turned, smelling of Havana tobacco, as a skeleton within the mist began turning, layering itself with flesh and armor. Hugun kneeled in front of him, turning his head to look from the Master of God toward Avkasham.
Inside, on the wooden burned horse, Avkasham looked at Arush, smiling as he watched Mehung holding a *thala* lit up by a *diya*. Arush looked at him and whispered to Hugun, "Stay beside me." As Arush was taking a step inside the Wada, the air twisted; a sudden pressure came over his shoulders as both entered the Wada. Hugun's eyes flooded with death as Arush was bent from his back. A voice came:
"The game begins for the bedtime story."
It was Avkasham, standing at his back.
-ARUSH SALUNKE