Vijoy Menon
Part 1: Ashes That Speak
The smoke rose like a slow, coiled prayer — grey and indifferent, curling against the dimming sky. At Manikarnika Ghat, the fires had no time to rest. One pyre faded, another was lit. Wood cracked, bones whispered, and the Ganges swallowed the silence of the dead with the same patience it gave the living. The priests moved like phantoms in ochre robes, their hands blackened with ghee and soot. No one cried here. Grief had long since turned into muscle memory.
Devkant Mishra stood by the edge of the river, his white dhoti stiff with dried ash. A peacock feather tucked behind his ear trembled in the humid breeze. He was not chanting. His lips moved, yes, but not in mantra. He was counting. One… two… three… hours since the body had been placed on the logs. Four since the head priest had left in a hurry. And now, the river brought something back.
It floated in slowly, like an offering gone rogue — a bundle caught in the folds of the tide, nudged gently by water lilies and filth. Devkant’s eyes narrowed. Not another cow. Not another sack of temple waste. He took a few careful steps down the wet stone steps, feeling the slime underfoot. When he reached the water’s lip, the current hesitated. The bundle bumped against his shin.
It was a body.
Not fully burned. Not fully intact.
His breath caught. Not because of what it was — he had seen worse, handled worse. It was what it wore. Around the half-charred neck, above a collarbone barely untouched by fire, was a chain. Silver. Foreign. Dangling from it, a medallion engraved with Sanskrit words clumsy in their foreign curve.
He had seen that pendant three days ago.
The girl. The foreigner. She had been here, scribbling in her notebook while pretending to pray. She had watched the fires too long, asked too few questions. She had spoken to the priests in hesitant Hindi, taken pictures when she thought no one was watching.
Devkant stepped back, and the water greedily took the body again. He looked around. The ghat was thinning now, the evening crowd dispersing. Mourning relatives, sandalwood sellers, beggars nursing the end of their opium dreams — all drifting away like flies chased from flame.
He turned to the boy sitting cross-legged near the pillar. “Ramu. Get the inspector.”
The boy looked up, sleepy-eyed. “Now?”
“Yes. Tell her a foreigner’s ghost has returned.”
Inspector Aditi Rawal had grown tired of gods. They lined every wall, stared from every sticker on every auto, every glass case in every chai stall. Their names filled every sentence, even the threats. “By Mahadev, I’ll slit your throat.” “Maa Ganga will blind you if you lie.” She had joined the IPS to work in Mumbai. Varanasi was a mistake she hadn’t yet found the right transfer request to fix.
She reached Manikarnika in thirty-five minutes, too long for Devkant’s liking. But when she arrived — in plainclothes, hair pulled back, pistol hidden beneath her kurta — she did not waste time.
“Where is it?” she asked.
Devkant pointed to the river. The body was gone.
She blinked once, hard. “You’re wasting my—”
“I pulled it. Hid it.”
That earned him a longer look. “You touched it?”
“I’ve touched death longer than you’ve known how to spell your badge number.”
He led her past the pyres, behind the crumbling platform used to stack wood. Under a sheet of corrugated tin lay a shrouded bundle. She crouched and peeled it back.
The smell hit first. Then the mess. Blackened skin fused to cloth. The torso intact. Face unrecognizable. But the chain — still silver, still glinting under the blood.
Aditi covered her nose with her sleeve. “Do you know who she is?”
“She was here three days ago. Watching. Writing. Not a pilgrim.”
“She?”
He nodded. “British, maybe. Mid-thirties. Alone. I heard her asking about ‘the secret midnight cremations.’”
Aditi stood. “What do you know about them?”
“I know they happen. I know they’re not for the poor.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why tell me?”
Devkant looked out toward the Ganges. The sun had dipped fully now. Fires danced on the water, their reflections longer than their flames.
“Because I once believed in justice,” he said. “And because this girl wasn’t meant to return.”
By midnight, the body was in a government morgue, the kind where names went to die. Aditi filed the case as unidentified female, probable homicide, foreign national. Her superior officer advised her to write it off as a drowning — maybe a suicide. “They come here to find peace, madam. Sometimes they find it too fast.”
She ignored him.
At her desk, she laid out a printout of foreign visa holders checked into guesthouses around Manikarnika. Only one matched the rough description Devkant gave: Isabella Greene, UK passport, anthropology researcher. Check-in: six days ago. No check-out recorded.
She called the guesthouse at Assi Ghat. The manager, groggy and stammering, admitted she hadn’t returned since the third night. Left her bags. No one questioned it. “They go to Sarnath, sometimes disappear,” he said, unconcerned. “Spiritual quests, you know.”
Aditi stared at her monitor. A British researcher. Cremation ghats. Secret rituals. And now, a half-burned body smuggled out by the river.
She opened a drawer and pulled out her Glock. Something about this city was always burning — temples, bodies, time. And now, truth.
She would find out who tried to turn Isabella Greene into ash.
And why the fire was interrupted.
Part 2: The Drowned File
The morgue stank of antiseptic and inevitability. Fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead like flies too tired to flee. Isabella Greene’s body — if that was indeed her — lay zipped in an industrial black bag, tagged with a code that no one would read twice.
Aditi Rawal stood by the cold slab and stared at what remained. The medical examiner, Dr. Khurana, an aging man with hands like paper and eyes that had stopped blinking at horror decades ago, pulled down the zipper halfway.
“The fire didn’t finish the job,” he said, tapping the exposed chest. “Second-degree burns. Unusual pattern.”
Aditi squinted. “Unusual how?”
“It looks… interrupted. Like someone doused the fire halfway. Maybe dragged her out before it could finish.”
“Why?”
Dr. Khurana shrugged. “You don’t stop a cremation at Manikarnika. It’s considered sacrilege. Unless you didn’t want the body to vanish.”
“Or unless she wasn’t dead yet.”
That earned her a sideways glance.
“She inhaled smoke,” he said, flipping through notes. “Traces in the lungs. She was alive when the flames started. Maybe unconscious, maybe drugged. But alive.”
Aditi’s pulse ticked upward. “Cause of death?”
“Hard to tell with this much damage. But there’s a fracture on the back of the skull. Pre-cremation. Likely blunt force trauma.”
“So someone hit her, tried to burn her, and dumped her.”
“Someone who didn’t want her to be found. Or didn’t know how sacred fires work.”
She stepped back and breathed through her mouth. The silver pendant still hung from the body’s neck, crusted with soot. She photographed it and pocketed the image for her file. As she turned to leave, Khurana spoke again.
“There’s something else,” he said. “It’s not official yet. But we found traces of ash and cow dung mixed into her throat.”
Aditi frowned. “She was forced to swallow ritual offerings?”
“I’ve seen it before. Symbolic suffocation. Tantric death rites. Very old. Very rare.”
“Very illegal.”
He gave her a look. “This is Benaras.”
Outside, the city moved on, oblivious. Rickshaw bells. Temple drums. The smell of fried kachoris clashed with sandalwood smoke. Aditi bought a cigarette from a tea stall near Dashashwamedh Ghat, ignoring the vendor’s surprise at her uniform. Women in khaki were still an anomaly here. Especially women who smoked.
She dialed the British Embassy. A junior officer answered, overly formal.
“Yes, Ms. Greene is a registered visitor. Anthropology PhD student from Cambridge. Fieldwork in Varanasi, funded by a grant.”
“Do you have any emergency contacts?”
“Just her advisor. Professor Marlowe. Would you like his email?”
“No,” Aditi said. “Tell him to expect a call. And start preparing the paperwork. She’s dead.”
A pause. Then stammering. She hung up before the apologies could start.
Her next stop was the guesthouse.
The Assi Ghat guesthouse was painted a cheerful blue now dulled by soot and monsoon mildew. The manager, a man named Pintu with gold teeth and perpetual sweat on his neck, met her at the gate with too much eagerness.
“Madamji, I told you all I know. She came, she stayed, she disappeared.”
“Open her room.”
He hesitated. “But police—”
“I am the police.”
He relented.
Room 203 was small, clean in the way only temporary spaces are. The bed was made, the fan lazily spun. Aditi scanned the space with practiced eyes. Nothing screamed foul play. No blood. No broken windows. But then she noticed the diary — brown leather, peeking from under a folded shawl.
She picked it up.
Inside were neatly written notes. Dates. Locations. Rituals observed. Interviews with priests. And scattered among them, questions that made her scalp prickle:
“Who are the black-robed priests after midnight?”
“Why are some cremations unrecorded?”
“What is the real purpose of the waterless burning?”
Toward the last pages, the handwriting grew jagged:
“They know I’m watching.”
“Saw a man carried in — not dead.”
“He screamed once. Then silence. They fed the fire.”
Aditi closed the diary slowly.
Back at the station, she created a private folder. Titled it: Isabella Greene / Case 149-B / Homicide – Ritual Suspicion.
She logged the photo of the pendant. The forensic report. The diary pages.
Then she pulled out the list of local cremation priests. She needed to talk to the ones who operated outside hours — the ones Devkant had hinted at. But she didn’t trust the records. So she called him.
“Inspector,” his voice rasped, already expecting her.
“I need names. The ones who burn bodies after midnight.”
“You’ll find none on paper.”
“Then give me whispers.”
Silence on the line. Then: “Come to Tulsi Kund. Ten o’clock. Alone.”
She almost said no.
Almost.
That night, Tulsi Kund was empty save for frogs and fog. A stagnant pond behind a crumbling temple, sacred to those who had no choice but to believe. Aditi arrived in plainclothes, pistol tucked into her waistband. Devkant sat beneath a neem tree, smoking beedi, a bundle wrapped in saffron cloth beside him.
He didn’t rise. “You came.”
“I don’t like riddles.”
“No riddle. Just danger. Same shape.”
He handed her the bundle. Inside was a set of priest’s robes. Charred at the hem. Blood-spotted. It smelled of burnt ghee and something older.
“They took her during a fake cremation,” he said. “No one questions night fires. But this one… this one was not ours.”
“You saw?”
“I heard. The chanting was wrong. Too quiet. No bell. No family. Only shadows.”
“Who led it?”
“A man called Tarkeshwar Baba. Not on temple records. But very real. He appears only during no-moon nights. And only for those who pay in gold.”
Aditi scribbled the name. “Where can I find him?”
Devkant’s voice dropped. “You don’t find Tarkeshwar. You wait. Or you get invited.”
“To what?”
“To the next fire.”
That night, Aditi sat at her desk past midnight, rereading Isabella’s last diary entry:
“If I disappear, it was not an accident. They light fires for the living. And the dead can’t scream loud enough.”
She looked out the window.
Across the river, another fire had been lit.
Part 3: The Gold Bell
The invitation came not as a letter, but a sound.
It was just past three in the morning when Aditi woke to the deep, resonant toll of a single bell. Not the sharp clang of temple worship. This one was rounder, older, deeper — like it had been struck underwater.
It echoed across the city, from the direction of the southern ghats.
She sat up in bed, still half-dreaming. The window was open. The air was thick with mist and the acrid hint of wood smoke.
Then came the second chime.
She checked the time. Exactly 108 seconds apart. No temple rang like that. Not at this hour. Not with such precision.
She knew what this was.
An invitation.
Varanasi at 3:12 a.m. was neither dead nor alive — it simply existed, suspended like a prayer that refused to end. Shadows clung to walls like wet cloth. The alleys narrowed as she walked, and the Ganges grew louder with every step.
She wore plain cotton, carried no badge. Just her weapon, her phone, and Isabella’s leather notebook tucked under her arm.
As she neared Harishchandra Ghat, the smoke thickened. But there were no mourners. No chanting. Just figures in black, moving like smoke themselves, faces hidden beneath hoods soaked in oil and ash.
She kept to the shadows, following the sound.
It led her to a forgotten strip of stone steps behind the main ghat — a hidden sub-ghat known only to those who dealt in silence. There was no name. Just a carved symbol on the wall: a burning lotus inside a circle of flame.
There, beneath a canopy of neem and smoke, the ritual had already begun.
The fire was smaller than a public pyre, but brighter. The wood was scented — agar, sandal, and something darker, almost metallic. Incense curled like fingers around the participants, and at the center, seated like a judge before a verdict, was a man wrapped in crimson robes, his face bare.
Tarkeshwar Baba.
No one spoke his name aloud. But she knew from the instant her eyes met his that he was the one. He radiated the kind of calm only power could afford — not loud, but absolute.
In front of him was a body. Covered in white cloth. Still. Unburned.
Aditi stepped closer, careful not to draw attention. But Tarkeshwar’s eyes flicked toward her like a knife.
“You have come early, Devi,” he said, smiling.
Her breath froze. “You were expecting me?”
He didn’t answer. Just nodded at one of the priests. The cloth on the body was pulled away.
A living man lay beneath it. Drugged. Eyes fluttering.
She reached for her pistol.
The flame surged.
“Careful,” Tarkeshwar said, voice still gentle. “This fire is older than your laws.”
“What is this?” she hissed. “You burn them alive?”
“We release them.”
“They’re not dead.”
“Not yet. But soon. And better under flame than under chains.”
She moved closer, gun raised. The priests parted, uncertain. Tarkeshwar never flinched.
“Who was Isabella Greene to you?” she asked.
He tilted his head. “A seeker. A listener. Too curious. And very brave.”
“You killed her.”
“I helped her cross over.”
“She wanted truth, not death.”
He smiled. “Same thing.”
She aimed at his chest. “I’m arresting you.”
“No, Inspector Rawal,” he said calmly. “You are watching the world rearrange itself.”
Suddenly, someone grabbed her from behind. Rope wrapped around her throat. She fought, elbowed back, struck a face. Another hand reached for her pistol. She let go of it and kicked the man down the steps. A priest screamed. The fire flared — and in the chaos, Tarkeshwar was gone.
The man on the slab stirred.
She stumbled to him, cut his bindings, dragged him from the flames.
He whispered a name: “Ramesh…”
Then passed out.
By dawn, the sub-ghat was empty. The ashes smoldered. Her pistol lay by the water, untouched. The fire had taken nothing this time.
She called for backup.
The rescued man — later identified as Ramesh Soni, a local guide — had been reported missing by his family three days ago. Drugged, bruised, but alive.
In his pocket, they found a torn piece of paper: a sketched map, with three dots marked along the river and the symbol of the burning lotus.
One of the dots matched the location of Isabella’s body.
At the station, Aditi slammed the map down on the table. Devkant sat across from her, silent, sipping bitter tea.
“You were right,” she said. “He exists.”
“I told you.”
“He’s performing ritual murders. In public. And people just… watch.”
“They don’t see murder. They see moksha.”
She tapped the map. “What are the other two sites?”
Devkant squinted. “One is near Panchganga Ghat. The other… I don’t know.”
“I need to find him.”
“You won’t. Unless he wants you to.”
She exhaled, frustrated. “Why kill Isabella?”
Devkant didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Because she recorded something. And some truths burn deeper than fire.”
That night, Aditi opened Isabella’s notebook again.
There, tucked in the back pocket, was a microSD card.
She inserted it into her laptop.
A video flickered to life.
The frame showed fire. Chants. A hooded figure dragging a man to the pyre. Another figure — Tarkeshwar — sprinkling ash over the man’s face.
The man screamed.
Then silence.
Then the screen went black.
She stared for a long time.
Not at the screen.
But at the reflection of her own face in it.
Because in the silence, she heard it again —
The bell.
Once.
Then twice.
The fire was not done.
Part 4: Where Ashes Hide Names
The footage haunted her like an unfinished prayer.
Aditi watched the video again at dawn, replaying each flicker, each chant, each muffled scream. She adjusted the brightness, zoomed in on faces, tried enhancing the audio. It was shaky and dim, but the fear — the rawness of it — bled through pixels. It was a recording not of death, but of ritual. And that made it worse.
She saved it to three separate drives.
Then she went to the river.
Manikarnika looked different in daylight. The fire was still there, of course — it always was — but the crowd gave it rhythm. Relatives haggled for sandalwood. Pujaris barked about ritual purity. Goats wandered through the haze, unfazed by flame or grief.
But today, Aditi wasn’t looking at the fire.
She was looking at the ash.
There were mountains of it. Black and grey, swept to corners, packed into clay pots, smeared on foreheads. And some of it, she suspected, had secrets buried deep — teeth that hadn’t burned, bones that hadn’t turned, names that no one would remember.
She found Ramu, the boy who ran messages at the ghat.
“Where does the ash go?” she asked.
He scratched his head. “Some into the Ganga, some into pots. The rest—”
“Where?”
He hesitated. “There’s a man. He collects what’s left. Sells it to the ashrams. They mix it with herbs. Call it shuddhi bhasma.”
She stared. “Holy ash?”
He nodded. “It sells well.”
“And where does he stay?”
“Behind the burning platform. In the red shack. You’ll smell it.”
She found it.
The shack was more of a tin box with a curtain, but the smell announced it from several feet away — a strange combination of incense, decay, and iron. Inside, a man squatted on a wooden stool, grinding ash with a mortar, his fingernails grey to the cuticle.
He looked up, startled. “No visitors allowed.”
Aditi showed her badge.
He relaxed only slightly. “Police don’t usually care about ash.”
“I do.”
She stepped inside, careful not to touch anything.
He gestured to a shelf. “Pick your poison. Yogi’s Blend, Monk’s Peace, Shiva’s Dust—”
“Do you sift it?”
“What?”
“The ash. Do you check what’s in it before you sell it?”
He frowned. “Sometimes bones. Once a gold ring. Mostly it’s clean.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out a clear plastic bag — from the morgue, from Isabella’s remains.
He flinched. “I don’t want trouble.”
“What can you tell me about this ash?”
He sniffed it, then dipped a finger in. Rubbed it between thumb and forefinger like a connoisseur.
“Too fine for a public cremation. No wood grain. Smells of ghee and clove. Special mix. Not from this ghat.”
“Then where?”
He thought. “There’s a place… not official. Beyond Panchganga. Old palace ruins. They say yogis go there to die in peace. But I’ve never gone.”
“Who uses it?”
“Tantrics, mostly. For rituals. Death that doesn’t leave names.”
Aditi zipped the bag shut.
She knew where she was going next.
The ruins of Raj Mahal, once a nobleman’s summer palace, now sat in a half-collapsed heap of mossy arches and bramble. Locals avoided it. Too many snakes. Too much silence. Too much death.
But Aditi went in with a torch and a steady hand.
Inside, she found nothing at first — just fallen stone, the musty smell of bats, the sound of her own footsteps. Then, behind a wall thick with banyan roots, she found a hollow.
And in that hollow, a fire pit.
Long cold. But blackened.
Char marks on the stone. Symbols etched in blood now faded to rust. And near the edge, she spotted something that did not belong:
A tiny bone fragment.
Still red at the core.
She bagged it.
Back at the lab, Dr. Khurana confirmed it: “Human. Adult female. Possibly Caucasian.”
“Isabella?”
“Could be. But this is just one shard. You’ll need DNA to be sure.”
She nodded. “Can you extract it?”
He smiled grimly. “I’ve extracted more from less.”
By the time she returned to the station, the pressure had begun.
Her senior officer stood waiting at her desk.
“Madam Rawal,” he said flatly. “The British Embassy called. Loudly.”
She braced.
“They want answers. And they’re not happy you went digging into Greene’s personal effects without diplomatic clearance.”
“She was murdered.”
“They want proof, not theories.”
She tossed the microSD card onto the table.
“Here’s your proof.”
He watched a few seconds. Then looked away.
“Jesus Christ.”
“No,” Aditi said quietly. “Tarkeshwar Baba.”
That night, someone left a package at her door.
Wrapped in saffron cloth.
Inside: a bell — small, gold-plated, ancient.
No note. No message.
Just the faint smell of burning clove.
She placed it on her table and stared at it for a long time.
Then she rang it.
Once.
The sound was clean, cold, and final.
It did not echo.
It waited.
Part 5: The Temple Without Gods
It wasn’t marked on any map.
No road signs, no locals pointing the way. Just an old path past Panchganga Ghat — cracked stone steps vanishing into thorn and fog, leading to a shrine no one claimed.
Devkant called it The Temple Without Gods.
“It’s where they meet when the moon dies,” he had whispered, a tremor in his voice. “No idols. No bells. Only silence. They burn things there the scriptures never speak of.”
So Aditi went.
Alone.
Dawn was still hours away. The city lay hushed behind her, the river humming like an old song just out of tune. Her boots sank into damp earth as she climbed the narrow trail. Bats scattered above her. The trees grew gnarled, low. The air smelled of old stone and deeper rot.
Then she saw it.
A clearing.
At its heart stood a crumbling stone mandir, swallowed by moss and age. Its dome cracked open like a skull. No flags fluttered. No vermilion smeared the door. Only blackened ash trailed down its steps — fresh, as if scattered by a hurried hand.
She drew her pistol.
Then stepped inside.
It was colder than it should’ve been.
The inside of the temple was bare. No idol. No offerings. Just a raised platform in the center, surrounded by low stone walls. On them — symbols, painted in dark red. Circles. Eyes. Flames devouring flesh.
Aditi scanned the corners. Saw nothing living.
But in the center, on the altar, something waited.
A journal.
Bound in cracked brown leather. Foreign. She opened it.
The handwriting was unmistakable.
Isabella Greene.
“Day 1: Interviewed cremation priests at Manikarnika. They’re suspicious. Avoid questions about post-midnight rites.”
“Day 3: Witnessed a secret fire from afar. No family. Only men in black robes. Same chants as the Mahamrityunjaya mantra — but reversed.”
“Day 5: A man followed me back to the guesthouse. He left a gold bell outside my door. Not a threat. An invitation.”
“Day 6: I’ve decided to go.”
The final entry:
“Tonight, they light a fire that eats silence. If I don’t return, tell them: Tarkeshwar is real. And the gods have turned their backs.”
Aditi’s hands trembled as she closed the journal.
Then came a sound.
A low, rhythmic breath.
From behind the altar.
She stepped around slowly, pistol raised.
And there, curled in the shadows, was a boy.
Maybe twelve. Starving-thin. Eyes rimmed in soot. He flinched at her presence, but didn’t run.
She lowered the gun. “Who are you?”
He didn’t speak. Just pointed to his throat.
Mute.
She knelt beside him. “How long have you been here?”
He held up four fingers.
“Four days?”
He nodded.
She noticed something on his wrist — a crude tattoo of the burning lotus.
He had been marked.
Initiated.
Left behind.
She pointed to the journal. “Do you know her?”
He nodded.
Then mimed fire, hands spreading, mouth open in a scream.
She understood.
He had watched her burn.
Back at the station, the boy was placed in protective custody. She filed the journal, logged the location, and marked the temple for surveillance.
Her boss was livid. “You can’t keep chasing ghosts, Rawal!”
But she wasn’t listening anymore.
She had Isabella’s journal. Ramesh Soni’s testimony. The bone fragment. The video.
And now, a living witness.
It was enough for a case.
But not enough for justice.
That night, she returned to the river.
Devkant was waiting by the ghat, sitting beneath a flickering streetlamp. He didn’t look up as she approached.
“They know you’ve seen too much,” he said.
“I’m counting on it.”
He smiled, faintly. “Then you’re ready.”
“For what?”
“For the fire to find you.”
She said nothing. Just stared at the Ganges, where another pyre was being lit.
The flame danced.
Somewhere in the darkness, a bell rang.
Not temple bronze.
But gold.
Part 6: The Bell and the Knife
The gold bell wasn’t just a symbol. It was a summon.
Aditi knew that now. Knew it in her bones, in the ache behind her eyes, in the weight of silence that followed its sound. It had rung again last night. Once. Then twice. Then silence so deep it felt like the city had been pressed flat under it.
And this time, someone left her a knife.
It was waiting on her doorstep at sunrise, wrapped in saffron cloth. The blade curved like a crescent moon. No handle. Just metal wrapped in red thread. On its hilt: the same burning lotus symbol.
This wasn’t intimidation anymore.
It was initiation.
She took the blade straight to Devkant.
He examined it under his reading lamp, the kind of old desk light with a green shade and too much history. His fingers were steady, reverent.
“Ritual blade,” he said. “Used in sacrifice. Not animal. Human.”
Aditi felt her pulse tighten. “Is it… meant for me?”
He looked up. “It’s a choice. They’re watching. Testing you.”
“For what?”
“For understanding. For surrender.”
She scoffed. “I don’t want to understand them. I want to stop them.”
“Then you’ll have to walk their path. Just long enough to see where it ends.”
She stood. “No more riddles, Devkant. I need names. Places. A lead.”
He hesitated. Then nodded.
“There’s one place left. A house on the edge of town. They call it Shunyagarh.”
“Empty Fort?”
He smiled grimly. “Nothing is empty in Benaras. Especially not a place the dead visit.”
The house sat behind a rusted gate, off a dirt road near the cremation wood market. From the outside, it looked abandoned — shutters nailed shut, paint peeling like old skin. But there were footprints in the dust. And the air smelled faintly of burnt camphor and blood.
Aditi approached cautiously. No backup. No radio.
Just the knife.
The front door creaked open before she touched it.
Inside, the air shifted.
And someone whispered, “Welcome, Devi.”
The room was candlelit, the walls painted with scenes of death — not mythological, but recent. Murders rendered like devotional art. A man with his throat slit, surrounded by chanting figures. A woman — Isabella — tied to a pyre, mouth open in silent scream. Another painting of the boy she rescued, with his tongue painted red.
And in the center of the room sat Tarkeshwar Baba.
Alive. Waiting.
He looked up from a bowl of dark liquid and smiled.
“You’ve come far.”
Aditi kept her gun in hand. “I’m here for answers.”
“You already have them.”
“You murdered a foreign national. Performed ritual executions. Burned people alive.”
He nodded. “And yet… no one comes for me but you.”
“That changes now.”
“No,” he said gently. “It begins now.”
He rose slowly. “You’ve seen our temple. Heard our bells. Rescued one. Buried another. And still, you return.”
“Because you’re not god.”
“I’m not pretending to be.”
“Then what are you?”
He stepped closer, eyes glowing in the candlelight. “I am fire.”
He lunged.
She fired.
The shot hit the wall. He moved like smoke. She turned, ducked, struck — the knife drawn. He laughed, spun, swept her feet out from under her. Her gun clattered to the floor.
They struggled in the candlelight — knife flashing, robes whipping like wind.
She sliced his arm.
He punched her jaw.
Then a voice rang out.
Devkant.
He stood in the doorway, a torch in one hand, and a vial in the other.
“Tarkeshwar!” he shouted. “You were fire once. Now burn.”
He hurled the vial.
The liquid splashed — ghee and alcohol.
The torch followed.
In an instant, flames swallowed the curtain. Screams filled the air.
Tarkeshwar howled — not in pain, but in ecstasy.
“Agni dev accepts me!”
Aditi grabbed her gun and pulled Devkant out.
They ran as the house caught.
Wood cracked.
Paint peeled.
And somewhere inside, the bell tolled one final time.
Outside, the sky began to rain.
Ash and cinders.
The house lit the night like a dying star.
Aditi collapsed against the wall, bleeding at the lip.
“Is he dead?” she gasped.
Devkant didn’t answer.
He stared into the flames.
“No,” he said softly. “He’s never dead. Not in Benaras.”
A long pause.
Then:
“But you’ve scarred him. That may be enough.”
That night, Aditi sat alone in her quarters.
Knife in one hand.
Bell in the other.
And on the floor before her — Isabella’s journal, the boy’s sketch, Ramesh Soni’s signed statement, the charred map, and one remaining question:
If Tarkeshwar was only the priest… who was the god?
Part 7: The Ash Cartel
They called it “divine economy.”
But in truth, it was a business soaked in blood and dust.
The following morning, Aditi Rawal sat across from a man named Ravindra Tiwari, a ghat contractor with smooth hands and a silk kurta too clean for the work he claimed to do. He owned the cremation wood yard near the southern ghats. On paper, he managed firewood supply for Varanasi’s public cremations. Off paper — he was suspected of something far darker.
“What is this about, Madam?” he said, sipping chai. “We pay our taxes. We serve the sacred.”
“You serve the sacred,” she repeated. “How noble. And yet half your night shipments don’t appear in the logs.”
He smiled without his eyes. “We serve privately too. VIP families. Special rites. Discretion is essential in grief.”
“And how many of your ‘VIPs’ are unclaimed bodies?”
He stiffened slightly. “You’re insinuating something.”
“I’m reporting something. Your name came up in three different testimonies. Including one from a boy with his tongue cut out.”
Tiwari’s face hardened.
Aditi leaned in. “We have photos. Fire patterns. Ghat markers. Symbolic ash mixtures. All matching your supply zones.”
“I sell wood, Inspector. What people burn — or whom — is not my concern.”
“But you sell ash too, don’t you?”
Now he paused.
“You think I’m the end of the chain,” he said finally. “But I’m just the courier. The real buyers don’t chant. They don’t pray. They write cheques. And they sit in air-conditioned rooms while people like you and me chase ghosts.”
“Who?”
He looked at her, then glanced around the station. Leaned forward.
“You want names?” he whispered. “You’ll need to go higher than the ghats.”
By evening, she had a file.
She called it The Ash Cartel.
At its center: an organized network of private cremations, unregistered burials, forged death certificates, and the export of ritual ash to foreign clients — marketed as moksha powder, tantric ash, holy dust. Used in Western esoteric rituals, black-market spiritual tourism, and unlicensed Ayurvedic treatments.
All linked by one thread: anonymity.
They burned those who wouldn’t be missed.
Unclaimed corpses. Runaways. Migrants. Street children.
And Isabella Greene — when she got too close.
At night, she returned to Manikarnika.
Devkant met her by the riverbank, where the ashes from a dozen fires swirled in the low tide.
“The city is watching,” he said.
“Let it.”
“I mean the living parts of it. The ones that wear suits, not robes.”
She held out the file.
“They’ve commodified the dead. They’re laundering blood in the name of salvation.”
“And yet they’ll say you’re the blasphemer.”
She looked toward the horizon, where the pyres danced like flames on water.
“I want them,” she said. “Every last one.”
The next day, a fire was set.
Not on the ghat.
In a record room in the municipal office.
Files. Names. Death ledgers. Burned.
Arson, they called it.
Coincidence, some whispered.
But Aditi knew it was retaliation.
They were cleaning the trail.
Someone was watching her — not in robes, but in a tailored Nehru jacket.
Then the message came.
A small, sealed envelope slid under her office door.
Inside:
A photo of her father, taken that morning. Drinking tea by the window of their ancestral home in Lucknow.
And beneath it, a note:
“Truth has its price. Are you willing to pay it?”
That night, she didn’t sleep.
She stared at the bell on her desk, the one they gave her as an invitation. It felt different now — not sacred, not symbolic.
It felt like a threat.
Devkant arrived in silence.
She didn’t look up.
“They know about my father.”
He sat beside her.
“They know everything. That’s how this city works. It remembers what even you forget.”
She turned to him. “Do you think Tarkeshwar’s dead?”
“No.”
“Do you think he works for them?”
Devkant shook his head. “He works for something older. But they’ve learned how to use him.”
She opened the file again. “I need someone inside. Someone who’s been part of the trade.”
He hesitated.
“There’s one man,” he said. “Ex-priest. Used to work the midnight shifts at the old Gadhkal Ghat. Went rogue after a girl died in his care.”
“Name?”
Devkant’s voice dropped.
“Omkar Nath.”
Two days later, Aditi found Omkar Nath in a hospice by the edge of the Assi River. Blind in one eye. Hands trembling. But his memory — sharp as flint.
She asked him about the fires.
He told her stories no scripture had room for.
How Tarkeshwar had started as a healer — using rituals to ease pain, to guide the dying with dignity. But the rich turned him. Offered money. Protection. Power. They asked him to silence witnesses, to burn evidence, to make death disappear into ritual.
“How many did he burn?” she asked.
Omkar stared at the river.
“Too many. But not all dead when the fire touched them.”
Her voice cracked. “And Isabella?”
“She was never meant for the fire. She was meant to vanish.”
Aditi left with a name.
A bank account.
And a temple trust linked to a minister in Delhi.
The rot went deep.
But now she had her match.
The city had taught her how to light a fire.
Now it was time to burn down the right altar.
Part 8: The Minister of Smoke
The minister’s name was Sanjeev Bansal.
Cabinet rank. Publicly devout. Widely photographed bathing in the Ganges during every Kumbh Mela, flanked by saffron-clad priests and camera crews. He ran a trust called Agni Mukti Foundation, which claimed to “sponsor dignified last rites for the poor.”
But Aditi had traced over a dozen payments from the foundation directly to the ghat contractors, ash distributors, and temple accounts — including those tied to Tarkeshwar Baba.
It wasn’t charity.
It was a laundering operation.
A circle of death dressed in religion.
She took the file to her superior.
He skimmed it, then shut the folder like it was radioactive.
“You’re naming a union minister, Rawal.”
“I’m naming a criminal.”
“He has immunity. You’ll need ironclad proof.”
“I have records, witness statements, financial links—”
He raised a hand. “Proof that holds in court. Not just in fire and folklore.”
Aditi swallowed her frustration.
“We go through the CBI.”
He sighed. “You won’t survive that kind of war.”
She stood. “Then I burn with it.”
She contacted her journalist friend, Pranay Deshmukh — known for exposing two major land scams and barely escaping with his press card intact.
He met her at a tea stall near Nagwa Ghat, wearing dark glasses and smelling like sleep.
“You’re chasing ghosts now?” he asked, flipping through the files. “Ghats, tantric priests, death cults…”
“This ghost has a minister’s signature.”
He looked up sharply.
Then whistled.
“Okay. Say I run this. Who protects me when the threats start coming?”
“I will.”
He laughed.
“Serious answer?”
She smiled grimly.
“I’ve got one priest, one mute child, and the ashes of a foreign researcher. It’s not much. But it’s real. And it’s yours.”
Two days later, Pranay’s piece went live.
Headline:
“The Ash Empire: How Death Was Monetized by India’s Holy Men and Ministers”
It didn’t name Bansal directly — not yet — but the dots were clear.
The photos were worse.
Ritual fires at midnight. The symbol of the burning lotus. And a still from Isabella’s video: the silhouette of a man standing over a writhing body, framed in flame.
It exploded online.
But so did the backlash.
Accusations of “anti-Hindu propaganda.” Protests outside news offices. A legal notice. Then another. Then a sedition charge.
And that night, Pranay’s flat was raided.
He escaped through the rear fire exit.
Aditi sheltered him in her spare room.
The game had changed.
The fire had turned political.
The next blow came quietly.
The mute boy — her only living witness — disappeared from protective custody.
No one saw him go.
No one reported who visited him.
Just an empty bed, a broken window, and a streak of ash on the wall.
She broke down the officer in charge.
He stammered. “A man came in saffron. Said he was from the ashram. Had papers. I thought—”
She punched the locker beside his head.
Then left.
That night, the gold bell rang again.
Once.
But this time, she didn’t hear it from her quarters.
She heard it inside her own mind.
In a dream, perhaps.
Or a warning.
She woke covered in sweat, her fingers curled like they had been holding something heavy.
But there was nothing there.
Just silence.
And the faint smell of burnt clove again.
She went to Devkant before dawn.
Found him standing ankle-deep in the river, his eyes on the horizon.
“They took the boy,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’ve lost everything.”
“No,” he said. “You’ve arrived.”
She laughed bitterly. “At what? A dead end?”
“At the mouth of the fire.”
He turned to her.
“You know the truth now. Not just their names. But what they believe.”
“They believe in blood.”
“No,” he said. “They believe in silence.”
She met his eyes.
“I want to burn them down.”
He handed her a package.
Inside: Tarkeshwar’s journal.
Recovered from the rubble of the house they burned.
She opened the brittle pages.
One line stood out:
“Even gods must kneel before fire. That is the only truth.”
She made the call to the CBI the next morning.
Official. Recorded. Risky.
She uploaded all files — anonymously.
And then left the city.
Not running.
Hunting.
The final piece was still missing.
But she knew where to look.
Tarkeshwar wasn’t finished.
And neither was the fire.
Part 9: The House of the Unclaimed
They called it Nirdaay Bhavan.
Officially: a shelter for the unclaimed. An old colonial building at the edge of the Cantonment, repurposed to house those who had no names left — the dying, the mad, the disappeared.
But unofficially, it was where the city forgot people.
Aditi hadn’t known it existed until she found a single reference in Tarkeshwar’s journal:
“Those without names pass through Nirdaay. The flame takes them from there.”
She arrived at twilight, the sky bleeding red over rooftops. The building looked half-dead — its whitewashed walls blistered with time, the windows cracked like old bones. A caretaker sat on a broken bench out front, humming to himself and peeling betel nuts.
“I’m looking for someone,” Aditi said.
He didn’t stop peeling. “You and everyone else, madam.”
“His tongue was cut. Young boy. Brought here two nights ago.”
The caretaker blinked, slow and deliberate. “No children here.”
“I’m police.”
“Then you know better. No one asks about who comes here. It’s policy.”
“Whose?”
He looked at her then, really looked. “You don’t want to know.”
She pulled out a photo of the boy. “Try again.”
He stared at it for a long time.
Then pointed.
Inside, the halls smelled of bleach and wet cloth. The lights flickered. Shadows moved strangely — not because they were haunted, but because no one cared enough to fix them.
He led her down two corridors, past rows of rusted beds and whispering mouths.
“This one was brought by a priest,” he said. “No ID. No voice. Strange eyes. They took him to the back wing.”
“Who did?”
“The men in white coats.”
She felt her stomach tighten.
The so-called doctors of the unclaimed.
Not healers.
Cleaners.
She found the boy in Room 46.
Lying on a cot.
Eyes open. Breathing. But barely.
They had sedated him.
His wrists were bandaged.
His feet, shackled.
A number was written on his forehead in permanent marker.
No name. No file. No reason.
Just a number.
Aditi crouched beside him, heart cracking like thin ice.
“Hey,” she whispered. “I’m here.”
He blinked.
She held his hand. “I’m going to get you out. I promise.”
Then the lights went out.
She turned fast — gun raised.
Footsteps echoed.
One, two, three— then silence.
She edged toward the hallway.
And saw him.
Tarkeshwar Baba.
Standing beneath a dying bulb. Robes darker now. Beard singed. Eyes burning.
“You walk too far into the flame, Devi,” he said.
“You kidnapped a child.”
“I released him from noise.”
“You tried to kill him.”
“No. I tried to teach him silence.”
Aditi stepped forward. “This ends now.”
“No,” he said softly. “This ends in the Ghat.”
He turned.
And ran.
She chased him through the corridors — past abandoned wards, past flickering tube lights, through peeling doors.
The building felt endless.
But then, ahead — a steel exit door.
He slammed it open and disappeared into the night.
She followed, boots slapping wet stone.
Outside, the alley was empty.
No footprints.
Only ash.
Drifting down from the sky.
Like snow.
She returned for the boy.
He was gone.
The bed was empty.
A trail of powder — ghee mixed with camphor — led toward the rear stairwell.
She followed it to the roof.
And found a burning bowl.
Inside it, a piece of cloth.
Part of the boy’s shirt.
She extinguished it with her hands.
Fingers blistering.
Somewhere below, the bell tolled once.
Not from the temple.
From her mind.
Again.
And again.
She called Devkant.
“They’ve taken him again.”
Silence on the line.
Then:
“Then you know where they’ll go.”
The final Ghat.
Adi Shmashan.
The oldest cremation ground in Benaras.
Older than the city itself, some said.
Closed to the public. Too cursed. Too dangerous.
It was where those who died nameless were burned without rites, without chants, without memory.
And it was where Tarkeshwar was going to complete his final ritual.
With the boy as offering.
And himself as witness.
Aditi didn’t wait.
She grabbed her badge, her gun, and the gold bell.
It was time to answer it.
On her terms.
With fire.
Part 10: The Last Fire
No one spoke of Adi Shmashan.
Even in Benaras — where every street bore stories, and every flame a name — this ghat was left alone. The old cremation ground sat beyond the last bend of the river, cloaked in silence and wind, where no priest dared chant and no pilgrim dared step.
Aditi arrived before dawn. Alone.
The city behind her was beginning to stir — temple bells ringing, boats launching from misty docks — but here, nothing moved. Even the river seemed to hush, as though afraid to touch the stone.
The entrance was sealed with a rusted iron gate, vines crawling across it like veins. She didn’t hesitate. She climbed.
On the other side, the world changed.
The air was thick with ash and memory.
She found the boy first.
Tied to a post.
Mouth sealed with cloth. Eyes wide. Heart still beating.
She ran to him.
Cut him loose.
He collapsed into her arms, sobbing soundlessly.
Then came the voice.
“You are too late, Devi.”
She turned.
And there he was.
Tarkeshwar Baba.
His robes torn, skin blistered, but eyes alight with something that refused to die.
He stood beside a pyre already laid — wood stacked, ghee poured, chants half-muttered. But no fire yet.
Not yet.
“This is the end,” he said. “And the beginning.”
“You’re done,” she said. “The CBI is coming. The press has the files. The boy lives.”
He laughed.
“Do you think this was ever about one boy? One death? No, Devi. This is about the shape of silence.”
He raised a matchstick.
She raised her gun.
“No more fires,” she said.
He lit the match.
She fired.
The shot struck his shoulder.
He fell back, the flame dying between his fingers.
She ran to him, gun still aimed.
“You burned them. Women. Children. You turned death into currency.”
“I turned it into freedom,” he hissed. “You think the law buries them with peace? No. I gave them names in flame. I gave them transcendence.”
“You gave them murder.”
He laughed, coughing blood.
“And now… I join them.”
With one last heave, he threw himself toward the pyre.
Aditi leapt, grabbed him mid-fall.
They tumbled onto the wet stone.
He tried to strike the match again.
This time, she crushed it under her boot.
“Not today,” she said.
By the time the CBI team arrived, the boy was safe, the site was sealed, and Tarkeshwar was unconscious — cuffed, bleeding, and breathing.
They found bones.
Dozens of them.
Buried beneath layers of ash.
Burned without record. Without song. Without goodbye.
A mass grave in the most sacred city on Earth.
Three days later, the headlines changed.
“Ritual Murder Cult Busted in Varanasi: Cabinet Minister Resigns Amid Investigation”
“British Researcher Isabella Greene Given State Funeral in Delhi”
“Ash Cartel Tied to Foreign Export Scams”
The truth was out.
But Benaras, of course, went on.
The Ganga still flowed.
The fires still burned.
Aditi stood at Manikarnika, watching a new pyre rise.
Devkant joined her, silent.
“They’ll forget,” she said.
He nodded. “Eventually.”
“But the city will remember.”
He looked at her. “So will you.”
She opened her palm.
The gold bell lay there.
Unrung.
Unburied.
“I don’t know why they chose me,” she whispered.
“Because you listened.”
“To what?”
“To the scream beneath the chant. The silence behind the smoke.”
She nodded.
Then, slowly, she turned — and dropped the bell into the Ganga.
It vanished without a sound.
That night, in her quarters, she opened Isabella’s final journal page.
Written in charcoal:
“There is no god in the fire. Only us.”
And below it, in smaller letters:
“Tell them I was here.”
Aditi closed the journal.
Lit a single lamp.
And sat beside it, eyes open.
Because sometimes, to remember the forgotten, all you had to do was not look away.
END
