From the next morning onward, Amay obeyed without deviation.
At 4:00 a.m., he rose.
At 4:15, he bathed in water cold enough to discipline breath.
By 4:45, he was inside the teaching centre — sweeping its earthen floor, dusting the tall wooden pillars, arranging the books with quiet precision, lighting the oil lamps before the first pale line of dawn touched the horizon.
He performed these tasks daily.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
The rhythm did not change.
The sky remained impossibly blue. The air remained temperate. The waterfall’s murmur did not grow louder or softer.
Time moved — but gently, as if reluctant to disturb anything.
Amay’s hands grew accustomed to work.
His body adapted.
His mind, however, did not settle.
Each night he waited.
Not for instruction.
For dreams.
He began measuring his days by how soon darkness would fall. The only place Anvi felt reachable was in sleep. He would lie on his woven mat and surrender eagerly, hoping the dream would return — her face close to his, her voice soft, her breath warm against him.
Gradually, everything else faded.
The mountain.
The cave.
The rules.
All that remained vivid was her smile, her hesitation, the memory of her blushing that first time she had seen him shirtless by accident — closing her eyes and speaking nonsense just to shield herself from embarrassment.
He clung to those fragments as if they were oxygen.
One afternoon, something inside him fractured.
He walked straight toward Guru, who was seated beneath a neem tree reviewing a manuscript.
“How long?” Amay asked.
Guru did not look up.
“Clean the cow shed,” he said calmly.
Amay paused only a second before nodding.
He went.
The smell was sharp. The work messy. He cleared dung, scrubbed the stone floor, washed his hands in the stream until the scent faded.
He returned.
“How long?” he asked again.
“Cut the ripe mustard,” Guru replied, still without irritation. “Collect the seeds carefully.”
Amay obeyed.
He worked until his palms stung and the sun dipped lower in the sky. He gathered the seeds in a woven basket and brought them back.
“How long?” he asked again, voice tighter now.
Days folded into repetition.
Every time he approached with the same question, Guru assigned another task.
Fetch water.
Repair a fence.
Carry firewood.
Grind grain.
Organize manuscripts.
No answer.
Only labor.
Impatience began to erode the calm he had built.
He was not here to become a caretaker of fields.
He was here for Anvi.
For understanding.
For whatever lay beyond longing.
One evening, just as Amay approached with the question forming again on his lips, Guru spoke first.
“How was the painting near the bed?”
Amay blinked.
“What painting?”
Guru looked at him steadily.
“The one above your sleeping bed.”
Amay frowned. “There is no painting.”
Guru said nothing more.
The next day, Amay returned, jaw set, ready to ask the same question.
Before he could speak, Guru asked, “What object rests beside the dining table?”
Amay stared at him.
“There is no dining table,” he replied.
Guru closed the manuscript gently.
The wind shifted softly through the mustard fields.
For the first time since stepping into this world, uncertainty crept into Amay’s certainty — not about Anvi, not about his reason, but about something far simpler.
He had remembered every detail of her face.
Every fragment of memory.
Guru’s gaze did not accuse.
It revealed.
“How long,” Guru said quietly, “will you keep dreaming in absence while living in presence?”
The question settled deeper than any instruction.
And for the first time, Amay did not have an immediate answer.
“I don’t understand,” Amay said quietly.
The frustration in his voice had softened into confusion.
Guru regarded him for a long moment before speaking.
“Your subconscious mind, my friend, is powerful enough to grant you your wishes,” he said. “But your impatience is interfering with it.”
“How?” Amay asked.
“You dream every night,” Guru continued. “Yet when you wake, what do you remember?”
Amay did not need to think.
“Her.”
“Only her,” Guru corrected gently. “Her face. Her voice. Her touch. You collect only what your longing demands.”
The words struck cleanly.
Guru leaned forward slightly.
“Your mind shows you more. Every dream contains surroundings, objects, sounds, fragments, symbols. But you ignore them. Your brain is impatient. It filters everything except the one image you crave.”
Amay swallowed.
“You must train yourself to remember everything,” Guru said. “Not just her. The color of the walls. The texture of the sheets. The window. The air. The objects near the bed. The silence between words. Even the intangible feeling in the room.”
Amay felt the pieces rearranging inside him.
“Why?” he asked softly.
“Because your dream is not merely memory,” Guru replied. “It is a message.”
The wind passed gently between them.
“If you focus only on her, you reduce the dream to desire. If you observe the entire dream, you begin to understand what it is teaching you.”
Amay lowered his gaze.
“You are trying to possess the outcome,” Guru continued. “Instead, learn to observe the process.”
Silence lingered before Guru added,
“The calm you seek will come when you realize: this is your dream. It will not end unless you allow it to. But first, you must conquer it.”
“Conquer?” Amay repeated.
“Yes. Not by control. By awareness.”
Guru’s voice deepened slightly.
“Do not chase your wife inside the dream. Notice the surroundings. Notice what changes. Notice what remains constant. Notice what your mind constructs and what it avoids.”
Amay’s thoughts raced.
All this time, he had awakened clinging to her image, desperate not to lose the feeling. He had never asked what the room looked like. What season it was. Whether there was a window open. Whether something else stood near them.
He had reduced an entire world to one face.
Guru studied him.
“You want to win over impatience?” he said quietly. “Then widen your attention.”
Amay nodded slowly.
A question surfaced in him, hesitant but unavoidable.
“How do you know about my dreams?”
Guru’s expression did not change.
“As I told you,” he replied calmly, “your mind is the key to your answers.”
He tapped lightly on the notebook Amay carried.
“You think your journey is about distance — mountains, caves, worlds. It is not. It is about mastery of the space within.”
The mustard fields shimmered softly in the distance.
“Learn to observe your dreams,” Guru concluded. “And you will begin to observe reality.”
For the first time since arriving in this world, Amay felt something shift — not in the landscape, not in time, but within the quiet architecture of his own awareness.
That night, when he lay down on the woven mat, he did not wait merely to see her.
He waited to see everything.
That night, the dream returned.
As always, it was their first Karwa Chauth after marriage — the evening suspended in gold and crimson.
She entered slowly.
Draped in a deep red saree.
Hair gathered into a soft bun.
Fresh jasmine woven through it.
Even in dreams, Anvi possessed the same quiet power — the kind that made his heartbeat lose rhythm. She seemed almost untouchable, like something sacred rather than human.
For a moment, Amay forgot everything.
Then Guru’s voice echoed within him:
Notice everything.
He inhaled slowly.
The courtyard lamps flickered.
The brass thali gleamed beside her.
The curtains near the balcony moved — gently.
Everything appeared exactly as it had that night.
Or so he thought.
After the ritual, after she saw the moon through the sieve and then him, after he helped her break her fast, they sat down for dinner.
Amay picked up a piece of puri.
He tore it.
He dipped it toward the curry bowl.
And stopped.
His breath stilled.
This was not right.
The dish before him was Malai Kofta.
But that night — he remembered clearly — Anvi had stood near the kitchen doorway asking, “Malai kofta or paneer?”
He had smiled and told Kashi Maa to make paneer because it was Anvi’s favorite.
He remembered the conversation vividly.
Yet here, in this dream, the curry was different.
His chest tightened.
This is not memory.
He looked at Anvi.
“Did Kashi Maa make paneer?” he asked carefully.
Anvi smiled lightly, almost amused.
“No,” she said. “It was raining heavily. Paneer couldn’t come, so I made malai kofta.”
Raining.
The word struck him.
It had not rained that evening.
In fact, it had been one of those rare, almost miraculous nights in Bangalore when the sky remained clear. He remembered teasing her about it — “Even the clouds are fasting for you today.”
But now she spoke as if rain had poured.
Amay’s heartbeat quickened.
He looked around.
The curtains were not just moving.
They were fluttering more strongly than before.
There was a faint dampness in the air.
A distant sound.
Not thunder.
But something close.
His certainty began to crumble.
All this time, he believed he had been revisiting the past — replaying a perfect memory.
But this was not a recording.
It was changing.
It was adapting.
It was responding.
The realization unsettled him.
If this was not the exact past, then what was it?
A reconstruction?
A possibility?
A creation?
Anvi continued eating calmly, unaware of the storm forming inside him.
Amay set the puri down.
For the first time inside the dream, he did not feel like a visitor.
He felt like a witness.
And somewhere, deep beneath the confusion, a quieter awareness began to emerge:
If the rain could be inserted…
If the dish could be altered…
Then perhaps the dream was not showing him what was.
Perhaps it was showing him what his mind was building.
The question was no longer How is this possible?
The question had shifted to:
Who is constructing this?
And for the first time, instead of chasing her face, Amay began observing the architecture of the dream itself.
He woke at 4 a.m.
For a few seconds, he lay still — breath shallow, mind alert — as if afraid the dream might still be watching him.
Then routine took over.
He folded his blanket with mechanical precision.
Wiped the thin layer of dust from the wooden trunk.
Aligned his books — spine to spine, edges exact.
He did not question Guru.
One deviation could be coincidence.
He would wait.
The next night, the dream returned.
Different memory.
Different fracture.
It was the day Natasha had been staying with them.
Anvi had been distant that morning — quiet in a way that wasn’t anger but something heavier. She had told him not to stay back.
“I’m not feeling well. You go to office.”
He had offered to stay.
She had said no.
Bluntly.
He remembered leaving with Natasha, sitting in the driver’s seat, adjusting the mirror — hoping irrationally that Anvi would come running out, changing her mind.
She hadn’t.
That was reality.
But in the dream—
He sat in the car again.
Natasha beside him.
The gate behind them half open.
He adjusted the rear-view mirror.
And his breath stopped.
Anvi was standing there.
Clear. Visible.
Not running.
Not hesitant.
Calm.
“I’ll also come,” she said.
Her voice wasn’t upset. It was composed. Controlled.
She walked toward the car and looked at Natasha.
“Can you step out from the front seat?”
The air inside the car shifted.
Amay felt something colder than fear.
He studied her carefully.
Guru’s words echoed again.
Notice everything.
Her face — same.
Her eyes — same depth.
But the suit.
This was not what she had worn that morning.
That day, she had worn a pale blue cotton suit, slightly crumpled at the sleeve.
This Anvi wore a deeper shade — almost emerald — with delicate silver embroidery along the neckline. It suited her. It made her look softer. More certain.
More… intentional.
And she was beautiful.
Painfully beautiful.
But wrong.
The mirror trembled slightly.
Or maybe his hand did.
He turned slowly to look at the real Natasha in the passenger seat.
Natasha’s expression was unreadable.
Then he looked back at the mirror.
Anvi was still there.
Waiting.
Watching him.
Not asking again.
Just waiting for him to decide.
A realization crawled up his spine:
The dream was no longer replaying events.
It was correcting them.
Rewriting emotional outcomes.
The first dream altered the food.
This one altered the choice.
In reality, Anvi had chosen distance.
In the dream, she chose presence.
In reality, she had worn something ordinary.
In the dream, she wore something unforgettable.
This wasn’t random distortion.
This was desire.
The mountain was bending time.
The dream was bending memory.
And somewhere between those two distortions, Amay felt something terrifying:
What if the version changing…
was not the dream?
What if it was him?
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