A day of dull lessons and chalk dust was suddenly illumined by an innocent quip that would live in Ishaan’s memory for years. The moment came during a chemistry lab session, when he reached for an oddly shaped glassware item—a distillation flask, curved and elegant, with a handle-like projection. Myra, ever attuned to symbolism and irreverent wit, chuckled and said, “Is that Baba’s kamandalu?”
Ishaan froze, then smiled slowly. There was something in the way she said it—not mocking, not reverent, just playful and laced with strange familiarity. Her words lingered, reverberating far deeper than the tiled walls of the lab. The kamandalu—a yogi’s water pot—symbolized detachment and wisdom, a curious metaphor to come from the lips of a girl whose presence stirred in him everything but detachment.
Myra moved on with her task, unaware perhaps of the impression she had just left. But Ishaan, who lived life more inwardly than out, would carry that moment like a monk carries his kamandalu—not for the water it held, but for what it symbolized.
A week later, as if that quiet impression had lingered and grown roots, Ishaan found himself beneath the old peepal tree with Gagan. A gentle breeze stirred the dust around their feet. Gagan chuckled to himself, the memory still vivid.
“I still remember how Myra ran after you last week,” he said, grinning. “Screaming, ‘Baba Ishaan, give me your Kamandalu!’—just because you were holding that weird glass flask of yours.”
Ishaan smirked, eyes half-closed in amusement. “She thought I looked like a wandering monk with that in my hand.”
“Well, you kind of did,” Gagan teased. “But seriously… is there a reason sages always carry that pot? I mean, beyond the old-school thermos theory?”
Ishaan’s expression shifted from playful to thoughtful. “There is, Gagan. The Kamandalu is not just a water pot—it’s a symbol, a powerful one.”
Gagan tilted his head, intrigued.
“It represents the energy stored in the base chakras, especially the Muladhara,” Ishaan explained. “A sage who’s mastered his energies doesn’t waste them through scattered actions or emotions. Instead, he gathers them, conserves them—like water collected drop by drop into that pot.”
“So it’s like carrying their spiritual fuel?” Gagan asked.
“In a way, yes,” Ishaan nodded. “That’s why you’ll often see them sprinkle water from the Kamandalu when blessing or cursing someone. But the real act isn’t in the water—it’s symbolic of channeling a focused stream of their conserved energy through the senses, directed by intention. A fragment of power released with precision.”
Explaining it to Gagan reminded him of those lighter days with Myra—when even mockery felt like warmth, and words carried the comfort of being understood. But that lightness—the playful ease Ishaan felt in Myra’s company, where even mockery felt like warmth—never lasted too long in the shared atmosphere of adolescence, where friendships swayed like reed in uncertain wind. Tensions soon crept in like shadows under the door, subtle at first, then more pronounced.
Anjali, who had once smiled freely in the tuition circle they all shared, began withdrawing into silence. One day, her frustration erupted. “Why does Myra treat me like I’m invisible? Just because she’s from the city doesn’t mean she’s superior. We all travel distances—I come from even farther. Yet she behaves like she owns the place.”
Her words, whispered to Ishaan outside the tuition center as the sun dipped into orange and birds called each other home, left him troubled. He knew Myra wasn’t heartless, but neither was Anjali lying. There was indeed a certain aloofness Myra wore like perfume—present even when not overbearing.
Ishaan tried to console Anjali with neutrality. “Maybe it’s unintentional. Maybe she’s shy with girls.”
Anjali stared at him with the bitterness of someone not truly consoled. “Or maybe you’re just defending her because you—”
She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to. The sentence hung suspended like a spider’s silk—fragile, glistening, potentially dangerous.
In the days that followed, Myra seemed distant. Her eyes, usually pools of glimmering mischief, now looked elsewhere when Ishaan tried to catch her gaze. Perhaps she’d heard of Anjali’s outburst. Perhaps she had noticed his silence when he should’ve stood by her.
She didn’t say a word, but her silence spoke entire chapters.
Then came another quiz competition—this time partnered with an intelligent guy, Vinod—an inter-school event that turned the tide of Ishaan’s standing among his peers. He answered with precision, poise, and surprising humor. He wasn’t just the studious, quiet boy anymore; he was someone. A presence.
After their school bagged the second position, and as applause faded, a curious thing happened. A girl—not Myra, not Anjali—stepped forward, handed him a rose folded into a note, and said aloud for all to hear, “Would you accept me as your dharma sister?”
The crowd hushed. Someone giggled. Ishaan’s ears burned. His real cousin sister, Ranjana, who stood not far behind him, stiffened. She stepped forward, not unkindly, and said with gentle firmness, “Raksha Bandhan is sacred. Don’t turn it into theatre.”
The girl, embarrassed, retreated into anonymity. Ishaan smiled at Ranjana in silent thanks. He owed her more than this moment. It was she who had, with some difficulty and many requests, managed his school transfer months ago. From a chaotic institution in the city where he was lost in the crowd, to this quieter, more nurturing environment. It was here that he met Myra. It was here that his life had subtly pivoted.
Later that evening, when the moon rose pale behind the neem tree near his study window, Ishaan reflected on how much had shifted. He had grown. He had begun to matter—to others, but more importantly, to himself. And yet, all of this gain came laced with the ache of Myra’s unspoken discontent.
He longed to explain, to tell her that neutrality wasn’t betrayal, that fairness wasn’t coldness. But in the realm of unsaid things, silence reigns supreme.
In the classroom, the air had changed. A few classmates, sensing the triangle of tension, began to make sport of it. Whispered comments. Glances exchanged. Myra didn’t respond, nor did Ishaan, but the undercurrents grew stronger.
His intelligent quiz partner, Vinod—a clever tease—soon turned his charm toward Myra. Nothing crude; just lingering touches on her notebook, excessive praise for her handwriting, and jokes that always placed her at the center. Myra bore it with a mix of patience and discomfort, but her eyes, whenever Ishaan was around, seemed to ask: Will you not say something?
But Ishaan, ever the monk in the marketplace, remained composed. He had trained himself to observe without reacting, to internalize the churn and let it transmute.
Some started calling him a “dead lover”—a phrase both mocking and mystic. He didn’t mind. He preferred the still waters that ran deep to waves that crashed for show.
And yet, he noticed everything. The way Myra’s voice dipped when she was sad. The way she twirled her pen when thinking hard. The way her eyes followed him, even when turned away. He was still very much in the story, even if playing the part of the silent witness.
He knew their differences like he knew constellations in the night sky. She, short and swift like a sparrow; he, tall and steady like an old pine. Her voice sang like river currents; his came out like the hush between waves. She belonged to a family that navigated metro traffic and mall escalators. He had grown up beneath mango trees and between rice paddies. Their worlds had touched, yes, but could they ever blend?
Still, the pull remained. He began to believe it was not the kind that demanded union, but the kind that catalyzed growth. Like a moon that does not touch the sea but moves its tides regardless.
One day, as they packed away their practical files, Myra said softly, “You’ve changed.”
He met her gaze evenly. “Or maybe I’ve just arrived into myself.”
She looked at him with something between longing and regret. “You used to listen with your eyes. Now you listen like a saint.”
“I still hear you,” he said. “Only deeper.”
She didn’t reply. But she smiled. A smile that said: I believe you. But I don’t know what to do with it.
The months wore on. Exam fever replaced youthful drama. Anjali found new friends. Myra began taking more leaves. Ishaan, though still attentive, became more inward, more reflective. Their lives, like rivers once parallel, began curving in different directions.
Yet, he always remembered the kamandalu moment.
He never used that instrument again in the lab without thinking of her. Of the laughter, the intimacy, the lightness. That fleeting second of shared myth and meaning. And he realized that maybe love was never meant to last in the form that first births it.
Maybe it was meant to become something else—something subtler. Like a mantra whispered once but echoing for lifetimes.
And so Ishaan, now on the cusp of adulthood, carried Myra not in his arms, but in the hollows of his soul. Like a true ascetic—not one who renounces love, but one who transmutes it.
She who once teased him with a reference to sages and water pots had unknowingly given him both his metaphor and his mission.
She who became his Guru.
Demystifying Kundalini 