The Sanskrit syllables died on Vikram's tongue.
He knelt before the altar he had worshipped at for ten years, but the familiar words felt like stones in his mouth. The bronze murti gazed back with eternal composure while incense smoke curled upward, carrying prayers that felt like they were falling into an empty void.
His hands trembled as he reached for the photograph beside the deity—the smiling face of his guru, garlanded with fresh jasmine. The same face that had been frozen in cruel laughter on his phone screen three days ago.
Scene: Three days ago.
The bank queue had been moving slowly that Tuesday afternoon. Vikram stood behind a woman arguing with her toddler, surrounded by the usual chaos of fluorescent lights and impatient sighs. He'd been scrolling mindlessly through social media when the video appeared in his feed.
His guru's voice, unmistakable even through the tinny phone speaker: "These people are so desperate for meaning, they'll believe anything. I tell them some ancient Sanskrit nonsense, add a few tears, talk about surrender—and they eat it up. The fat donations don't hurt either."
Laughter in the background. Someone asking, "But don't you feel bad fooling them?"
"Feel bad? They're choosing to be fooled. I'm just giving them what they want to buy."
The woman in front of him had finally reached the counter. The queue moved forward. Vikram's feet followed automatically while his universe cracked open.
The man he had revered for a decade—whose every word he had treasured like scripture, whose photograph sat on his home altar—was calling him gullible. Worse. Deliberately gullible.
The bank's air conditioning hummed. Someone's phone rang. The mundane world continued while everything Vikram had built his life on crumbled into ash.
Now, kneeling before that same photograph, he couldn't continue his morning prayers. He had walked away from a promising career in design eight years ago to live simply under his guru's guidance, believing spiritual life alone could answer the restlessness that had haunted him since youth. He wasn't
born into faith—he had chased it, with the desperation of someone trying to escape a hollow world.
"Ancient Sanskrit nonsense." The word of his guru echo in his ear.
"Were you listening?" Vikram found himself asking, staring at the murti. "All these years, were you listening, or was I just... talking to myself?"
The bronze face offered no answers.
His voice cracked as the words tumbled out: "I defended him. When others questioned his teachings, I called them cynics. When that journalist wrote that exposé two years ago, I said she was jealous of his success. I was so sure, so absolutely sure he was genuine."
He pressed his palms against his eyes, trying to stop the burning. "How could I have been so wrong? If I was wrong about him—if I gave up everything for a lie—what else am I wrong about?"
The questions that had been circling in his mind for three sleepless nights came pouring out: "These prayers I'm saying to you—are they just words? These rituals I've performed for ten years—are they just theater? Have I wasted the best years of my life following someone who was laughing at me?"
The last question hung in the air like smoke.
Vikram slumped forward, his forehead touching the cool marble floor. The scent of sandalwood and jasmine—once so comforting—now felt suffocating. The physical position of surrender felt mockingly familiar. How many times had he prostrated like this, feeling so connected to the divine? Now it felt like bowing to his own delusion.
"My senses told me he was holy," he whispered to the floor. "My mind believed his words. My heart felt devoted. But they were all wrong. Everything I trusted betrayed me."
He sat back on his heels, wiping his eyes. The altar looked the same—the brass lamps flickering, the marigold garlands wilting slightly, the small stack of scriptures bound in faded cloth. But something fundamental had shifted. It was like looking at a painting and suddenly seeing only the brushstrokes, the illusion of depth revealed as mere technique.
Standing slowly, his knees stiff from kneeling, Vikram felt something he hadn't expected: a strange kind of aliveness. Yes, there was pain—the dull ache of betrayal, the sharp sting of feeling foolish. But underneath it was something else.
A hunger.
If his guru could deceive him so completely, what else was he accepting without question? The scriptures the guru had taught from—were they reliable? The traditions passed down through generations—were they truth or just accumulated assumptions? The very concept of surrender he had embraced—was its wisdom or just another way to avoid thinking for himself?
He pulled out his phone, hesitating. Then he opened his notes app and began typing—not the polished questions of a philosopher, but the raw, desperate queries of someone whose world had crumbled:
If everything I've believed is built on trust in the wrong person, what can I actually trust?
I've been so wrong about something so important—how do I know I'm not wrong about everything?
There are so many teachers, so many books, so many people claiming to know the truth. How do I know who to believe anymore?
Is there ANY way to know what's actually real, or am I just supposed to keep guessing and hoping?
He stared at the questions, his thumb hovering over the delete button. Part of him wanted to erase them, to return to the comfortable certainty of unquestioned faith. But he couldn't. The crack in his foundation had become a chasm, and there was no going back.
"If you're real," he said aloud to the murti, his voice steadier now, "if any of this is real, then surely it can survive my questions. If my seeking is genuine, won't truth reveal itself somehow?"
The murti maintained its eternal silence, but for the first time in three days, Vikram felt something other than despair. He noticed something peculiar—the more honestly, he questioned, the more alive he felt. The pain of uncertainty was still there, but it was different now. Not the dull ache of lost faith, but the sharp clarity of genuine seeking.
That evening, writing in his journal by the window as the sun set, he made a crucial distinction: "Perhaps true faith isn't blind acceptance, but the courage to question until you find unshakeable truth. Maybe this doubt isn't a curse, but a gift forcing me to dig deeper."
He began to see his crisis differently. Each question wasn't a threat to truth, but a tool to uncover it. If his seeking was genuine, wouldn't truth reveal itself through proper understanding rather than blind trust?
This realization marked a turning point. His questioning wasn't leading him away from truth—it was the beginning of a more authentic journey toward it. He needed to understand not just what to believe, but how to know anything at all.
The path ahead was uncertain, but for the first time since that moment in the bank queue, he felt he was moving in the right direction. The shattering of his faith had been devastating, but from its ruins, something more solid was beginning to emerge.
Something that could not be shaken by any guru's laughter.
Something that belonged to him alone.