I won’t sugarcoat it.
If you had met me a few years ago, you’d have crossed the street. Maybe tightened your grip on your wallet. Maybe whispered a prayer.
I wasn’t a killer, not in the physical sense, but I had killed things that mattered: trust, kindness, hope.
That’s a kind of murder too.
It began with Raghav.
He was the kind of man you couldn’t hate, no matter how much you wanted to. Always smiling, always helping, always quoting something annoyingly spiritual.
We grew up in the same slum near Kolkata’s Howrah Bridge. He took the hard road, the honest one. I took the short one, the crooked one.
We’d meet sometimes, on street corners or tea stalls. He’d talk about his work with kids at the temple school, I’d tell him about my “import-export” business. He knew what that meant.
One evening, while I was nursing a cut on my hand from a brawl, he handed me a book wrapped in a brown paper bag.
“Read this,” he said. “Might clean the dust off your soul.”
I laughed. “You think I can read ancient mumbo-jumbo?”
“It’s the Rig Veda, brother. Not a fairy tale. You won’t understand every word, but maybe it’ll understand you.”
That line stuck.
I opened it out of boredom. The power had gone out, and my phone battery was dead. The first verse glowed under candlelight:
“Agni, I invoke thee, the priest, god of sacrifice…”
The Sanskrit rolled oddly on my tongue. The words felt ancient, pulsing with something older than time.
I read on. Hymns to fire, water, dawn, life, death. At first, it was gibberish. Then something strange began to happen.
The verses didn’t sound like prayers, they sounded like truths.
About struggle. About the chaos within man. About sacrifice and rebirth.
By the third night, I wasn’t sleeping much. By the seventh, I wasn’t drinking. By the tenth, I caught myself thinking, really thinking, about who I’d become.
I laughed bitterly at my reflection in the cracked mirror. “What am I doing? Praying to gods who wouldn’t want me?”
I didn’t realize I was crying until a tear hit the page.
That night, the dream began.
It was vivid, too vivid. The smell of smoke. The hum of air alive with power. When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in my dingy flat. I was standing in a golden field stretching beyond sight.
A river glowed like liquid sunlight. The air shimmered with hymns. And there, across the horizon, stood beings of light and fire.
“Mortal,” said a voice like thunder wrapped in silk, “you have read the sacred song. You have touched the flame. You are summoned.”
I blinked. “Summoned? I’m just a crook. Must be a mix-up.”
Laughter rippled through the heavens.
“Every sinner has a spark. We simply fan it.”
At first, it was paradise.
The gods lived not in temples but in grand landscapes that pulsed like living art. Their laughter shook mountains. Their thoughts became wind.
They said I was to learn. To “purify the vessel.”
But me? Old habits die hard.
I started small, hiding divine scrolls, turning the milk of the sacred cows sour, switching the labels on celestial ambrosia jars. One time I even convinced a young god that mortals had invented “Instagram of the Immortals.” He spent half a day posing with lightning bolts.
The other gods tolerated it at first. Some even laughed. But soon the laughter turned to silence.
Then, the chief among them, Indra himself, summoned me.
“You think this is your playground, mortal? You mock the sacred realm.”
I shrugged. “You brought me here, boss. Didn’t say there were rules.”
His eyes flashed. “Then you shall see truth. The four faces of existence. Learn, or be cast out.”
The sky darkened. The world twisted.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in heaven.
I was standing in a dusty alley.
The first thing I saw was an old man, frail, trembling, his back bent like a question mark. He struggled to lift a pot of water, hands shaking.
Something inside me twitched. I’d seen old men like him before, on the streets, ignored. But here, his suffering was magnified, endless. His every breath was effort. His eyes met mine.
“You mock eternity, child,” he wheezed. “But can you carry even one day of time’s weight?”
Before I could speak, the world shifted.
I was beside a sick man, covered in sores, lying alone under a tree. His moans filled the air. No one came to help.
“Pain,” he whispered, “is the teacher of empathy.”
The smell, the helplessness, it hit me harder than any prison beating.
Then the scene changed again.
A dead body lay on a pyre. The flames danced, consuming flesh and memory. I saw faces around me, crying, laughing, indifferent. The body didn’t care. It was just gone.
My throat went dry. “Enough,” I muttered. “I get it. We die. Everyone dies.”
But the gods weren’t done.
The fourth sight appeared, a wandering ascetic. Thin, calm, eyes bright as stars. He looked at me and smiled.
“To be reborn, you must first die, not in body, but in self.”
The world folded again like paper burning from the edges.
When I awoke, I was kneeling on the golden field again. Indra stood before me, silent.
I tried to speak, but words failed.
“You have seen truth,” he said. “Now you must live it.”
“I don’t belong here,” I whispered.
“Then perhaps you belong somewhere better.”
A blinding light swallowed me.
I woke up in my bed.
The Rig Veda lay open beside me. The candle had burned down to a stub. Outside, dawn filtered through the broken blinds.
For a moment, I wondered if it was all a hallucination. A trip. A fever dream. But then I noticed something, my palms were covered in a faint golden dust. And the air smelled faintly of smoke and sandalwood.
I stood, dizzy, and laughed quietly. “A hero, huh? In another world.”
Maybe I was.
Later that day, I went to the bazaar to clear my head. The world seemed sharper, brighter. Every face looked like a story I hadn’t bothered to read before.
And then I saw Raghav.
He was buying vegetables, smiling at the shopkeeper, the same way he always did. When he spotted me, his expression changed. He looked into my eyes, and something flickered there, understanding.
“You saw them, didn’t you?” he asked softly.
I froze. “What?”
“The Four Sights.”
I didn’t ask how he knew. He just… did. Maybe he’d been there once, too. Maybe the Rig Veda had chosen him first.
He handed me a guava. “Eat. It’s sweet this season.”
I took a bite. The taste was real, grounding.
“So what now?” I asked. “Do I start preaching on street corners?”
He laughed. “No. Just start living right. Sometimes the smallest goodness is the biggest heroism.”
I looked around, the vendors, the stray dogs, the kids playing with bottle caps. Everything felt new, alive.
“Funny,” I said, “I thought heroes wore armor and fought monsters.”
“You’re not wrong,” Raghav said. “But some monsters live inside.”
We walked together, silent for a while. Then I noticed something strange, there was a faint shimmer behind his back. Like golden wings made of light, fading in and out.
I blinked, and they were gone.
That night, I returned home and opened the Rig Veda again. This time, the verses seemed to breathe.
“May we hear with our ears what is good. May we see with our eyes what is good. May we, O gods, enjoy with steady limbs, a life that is blessed.”
I didn’t know if I’d truly traveled to another world, or if the gods had visited my mind. But it didn’t matter. The lesson was the same.
Life wasn’t about escaping to heaven. It was about earning it, moment by moment.
Weeks passed. I found small ways to make amends, returning stolen money, helping old neighbors, even volunteering at Raghav’s temple school.
But one evening, as I was locking up the classroom, a familiar voice spoke behind me.
“The gods are watching, hero.”
I turned. It was the wandering ascetic, from my dream. Real, standing in flesh.
I froze. “You’re… here?”
He smiled faintly. “They send me to remind you. Redemption is not a destination. It is a road you walk every day.”
Before I could reply, he turned the corner, and vanished.
Only a peacock feather fluttered where he’d stood.
I picked it up. Its colors shimmered like all the worlds at once.
Sometimes, when I lie awake, I wonder if the gods still watch. Maybe they laugh at my clumsy attempts at goodness. Maybe they nod in approval.
I’m no saint. I still get angry. Still make mistakes. But something inside me changed forever.
And whenever I see someone suffering, an old man, a sick child, a funeral passing, or a monk walking barefoot, I remember the Four Sights.
And I remember that even a criminal can be chosen… not to conquer another world, but to save this one, one quiet act at a time.
Raghav says the gods pick their heroes carefully.
Maybe he’s right.
Or maybe they just pick whoever’s finally ready to listen.
Either way—
I was chosen to be a hero in another world.
And that world…
was mine all along.
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