The return from the west : A humanist tale

chapter one

“What do they see that I don’t?”

She was working on her thesis when the message came through. It was from Dr Ravi. “Mira, Guruji left for his onward journey to MAA.” She read the message once. Then again. And again. It didn’t land. It hovered. Just above understanding.

Dr Ravi, her brother in the path. Same guru. Same day, month, and year of birth. Same hour, even. A fact Guruji once called us a divine comedy. Two shishya born on the same day, month, year and time sharing the same guru.

The first time she met Dr Ravi, it was like they'd always known each other. He’s a doctor. She’s a nurse. He’s married to someone who threatens to throw out his spiritual books if he doesn’t keep them tidy. So is she.

When Guruji did their birth charts, he laughed. “You are both water,” he said. “But Ravi is liquid. She is solid.”

She still isn’t sure what that means, but the bond between them was sealed. She called him and listened on the phone as Dr Ravi told her what happened the night before. His voice was steady. Hers wasn’t.

After the call, she sat. Still. Silent. And the word keep on flying in her head “Guruji is gone” And then the delayed grief came. The kind that arrives like a tide, not a wave. Soft at first, then rising and rising.

Her husband, Sammy, walked in. He saw her tears before she found the words. She looked at him, and said softly, “Guruji has passed away.” The next few moments passed in a blur. The grief was still there, heavy, aching but now her mind began to clear. There was no time to collapse into sadness.

She needed to go. She needed to be there. To see him one last time and to be with the other the shishyas who walked the same path, asked the same questions, carried the same reverence.

She looked at Sammy. “I have to go,” she said quietly. He nodded.

“I know. But… I won’t be able to come with you this time.” She expected that. Work. Commitments. Life.

“It’s okay,” she said, managing a small, tired smile. “I can go alone.” And that’s when it hit her this would be her first trip to India alone : to Kerala. That small pocket of sacred chaos tucked along the southern coast, green, humid, and restless. A state that somehow managed to hold contradictions in balance.

A socialist land in the middle of a democratic republic. Temples standing beside trade unions. Communist flags fluttering near church spires and mosques. Fishermen quoting Marx in the morning and offering flowers to Kali in the evening.

She had read about it, of course, but reading was one thing. Being there, walking through its rhythm, its pulse that would be something else entirely. Kerala wasn’t just another destination. It was a living paradox one that spoke her language: pragmatic, spiritual, and quietly defiant. All other concerns comfort, fear, logistics, didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was getting there.

She had to make the trip, had to see him one last time. Not for closure or to say goodbye. Just to be there. To sit quietly in the same space with others and to let him know “ I came.”

In Tantra, there’s no such thing as closure or final goodbyes as she’s being told. The connection between guru and sishya doesn’t end. While the body was still there. While the form still held something familiar. She managed to get her visa approved and booked a flight to Kerala without much trouble.

She also secured a room at the same small hotel right across Guruji’s house. It would be her second time staying there familiar enough to give her a sense of direction, even if everything else felt uncertain.

She landed at Kochi Airport around 10 p.m. Tired, but alert. Outside the arrival hall, she booked a taxi. The driver didn’t seem too sure of the way. He got lost a few times, taking wrong turns along narrow roads. She didn’t complain. Just sat quietly in the back, eyes on the dark roads lit only by the occasional streetlamp.

By the time they reached the hotel, it was almost 1 a.m. She checked in, left her luggage in the room, and walked straight across the street to Guruji’s house. It was quiet. Too quiet. All the lights were off. The gate was closed. There was no sound, no movement not even the soft hum of conversation or the faint chanting she had imagined in her mind. No signs of people gathering. She stood there for a while, confused.

In Singapore, death is more public. Funerals take place in the open, usually at the void deck. There’s always noise a mix of wailing, talking, praying, the clatter of chairs, the arrival of guests. Here, it was the opposite. She thought about knocking, but something held her back.

Maybe it wasn’t the right time. Maybe everyone was already asleep. Or maybe grief looked different here. So she turned around and walked back to the hotel. She would try again in the morning or contact the others to tell them she is in Kerala and asked for the funeral arrangements.

Back at the hotel, she took a shower and changed into fresh clothes. Just as she sat on the edge of the bed, a message came through. It was from Sriram, one of the brothers on the same path, the message reads “Guruji’s body will be arriving in the morning”

She stared at the message for a while. So he wasn’t home yet. That explained the darkness. The silence. It wasn’t time. She put the phone down. Laid back on the bed. Tried to rest. She wasn’t sure if sleep would come. Probably not. Her body was tired but the mind was restless.

A memory resurfaced.

It wasn’t a meeting beneath banyan trees or in some Himalayan cave. It was a chatroom. A forgotten Yahoo group meant for spiritual seekers though most came there just to argue. The group was called Shakti Sadhana. How she ended up there? That’s another story.

She was born a Muslim girl. Went through all the rites. Attended all the classes. Learned all the teachings. And often, during her religious studies, she was told the same thing that “idol worshippers were ignorant. That they were stupid “ Her teachers would say, “If you throw an idol into the drain, it won’t climb out by itself yet people worship it.”

She didn’t question it at the time. She accepted it. Repeated it, until one day, on her way to work at Singapore General Hospital, she passed the Sri Mariamman Temple in Chinatown. It wasn't her first time passing it. She had walked by it hundreds of times. But that day, something made her stop.

She stood quietly outside the gate, watching. This was one of the oldest Hindu temples in Singapore built in the 1800s by Indian labourers from India who had come here in search of a new life. They brought little with them. Just their hands, their hope, and their gods. Now the temple stood like a monument to that history colourful, noisy, alive. But that’s not what caught her attention.

She wasn’t looking at the architecture. She wasn’t looking at the idols. She was looking at the people. Men and women. Young and old. Bowing. Praying. Lighting lamps. Whispering their pain into the silence of the sacred. And that’s when the question surfaced quietly, but clearly: “These people aren’t ignorant. They’re not stupid. They’re educated. Doctors. Lawyers. Civil servants. People with advanced degrees and sharp minds.”

They knew what the idol was, and yet they bowed to it.

And then came the question that changed everything: “What do they see that I don’t?”

That question refused to leave her alone.

As a nurse, she had always been told: “Before you can truly nurse a patient, you must be the patient.” It was something her seniors used to say during training. And she had taken it to heart. You must feel the needle to know how to hold it. You must lie in the hospital bed to know how to comfort someone in it. It was a principle she lived by to understand something, you must first experience it. Not from the outside. But from within.

And so, when the question came when she looked at those people in the temple and saw not ignorance, but devotion she knew what she had to do. If she wanted to understand, she had to experience it for herself. Not believe blindly. Not convert. Just see. What are they seeing that I don’t? That was the beginning. Not a grand vision. Not a spiritual awakening. Just the willingness to step into another’s shoes the same way she had always done as a nurse.

Before she found Shakti Sadhana, there were the dreams.

As a nurse, she often helped send elderly patients home especially those in the C-class wards. Some had families. Some didn’t. In cases where no one came for them, the hospital arranged a nurse and ambulance to send them home. She had done this more times than she could count. So when the dream came, it felt familiar.

In the dream, she was told to accompany an elderly lady home. The daughter came along. The three of them were in the ambulance. But when they arrived, it wasn’t a house. It was a temple.

She looked around, confused and then realised something. “Eh... isn’t this the temple I once stood at the door of?” It was the same one the temple she had passed by near the hospital. The one she had watched from outside.

But this time, in the dream, she was inside. There was no one else in the temple. Just her, the elderly lady, and her daughter. She turned to the daughter and asked, “Okay, where’s your room? I’ll help you settle your mother in.” The daughter pointed toward the centre of the temple. There was a small room no doors, just a curtain. She went ahead to check. Pulled back the curtain. Inside, there was nothing. Nothing except a figure standing in the middle of the room.

She was confused. Turned back but the elderly lady and her daughter were gone. She was alone in the temple.

The next day at work, she told the Indian healthcare attendants about the dream. They all looked at each other. Silent. Almost uneasy, She asked, “What does it mean?”

One of the older attendants said quietly, “Amma is calling you.”

“Who?”

“Amma,” she repeated.

“Me? Why me?”

Another replied, “Maybe you go there and ask her yourself.” She frowned.

“Ask her? It’s just an idol.” But something in her head whispered: Is it? Just an idol? Still unsure, she asked, “If I’m going to visit... what should I bring?”

One of them smiled. “What do you usually bring when you go visit your mother?”

She had thought about it the night before not obsessively, but enough to let the idea sit in her chest like a pebble she couldn’t quite ignore. What would really happen if she went? Would the statue move? Speak? Laugh at her for coming?

The thought felt both foolish and irresistible. By the next afternoon, she stopped questioning herself. Perhaps curiosity had grown heavier than doubt. After work, instead of taking her usual route home, she turned toward the temple. Sri Mariamman Temple was within walking distance from SGH, where she worked.

She bought a small bouquet of flowers and a few fruits from a roadside stall unsure if it was the right thing to do, but it felt polite, almost like visiting an old friend whose customs she didn’t fully remember. She reached the temple around three.

The main doors were closed, but a smaller side entrance stood ajar. She washed her feet, stepped in quietly, and found the place almost empty just as she’d seen it in her dreams. The air inside the temple was heavy with the smell of incense long burnt out.

Maybe the priests were resting it was, after all, the quiet afternoon hour. But one of the temple workers noticed her. She showed him what she had brought.

He nodded and pointed to a small table in front of the sanctum. She placed the items there, as instructed. Then stood still. The curtain to the sanctum was drawn, but in her mind, she could still picture what stood behind it black figure, regal and still, draped in cloth and gold, just like in the dream.

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And in her mind, without speaking aloud, she said, “I’m told you called for me. I’m here now.”

There was silence. She didn’t know if there was a reply or if she had even expected one.

For a brief moment, her mind flashed to a scene from a film she’d seen years ago something about Kali. She could picture it so clearly: the heroine crawling before the goddess’s statue, begging for help as the villain lunged toward her.

The camera zooms in, the music swells, and suddenly Kali’s eyes flick open wide, fiery, and alive. Then comes the wild, terrifying dance, her tongue out, her laughter echoing through the temple.

A nervous laugh almost escaped her. What if something like that happened now? The thought was absurd, and yet, standing there in the still air, surrounded by the smell of flowers and oil lamps, a small part of her the part she rarely acknowledged wondered, what if? But something inside her stirred like something had shifted, quietly.

For a moment, she felt like she wasn’t quite in her body. Not fully awake. Not dreaming either. Just… suspended. Then, like someone gently pulling her back, the moment ended. She turned around. Walked out. Didn’t look back. And walked all the way home.

Still not sure what really happened in there. But she knew, somehow that she wasn’t the same person who had walked in moments ago. Something unseen had moved. It was as if the path had already been laid before her, and for the first time, she could see where it led.

And she knew, deep down, what she needed to do next. The true start of her journey was not curiosity. It was empathy. Curiosity had brought her to the temple, but empathy that quiet recognition of something shared, something human was what opened the path before her.

Before she found the Shakti Sadhana group, she had been hanging around some of the old pagan forums online. She didn’t always understand what they were talking about. They spoke about gods and goddesses like they were right there beside them as if they were housemates, ancestors, friends.

It was strange at first. But she didn’t leave. She just stayed. Reading. Watching. Listening. There was something in the way they spoke casual, yet reverent, that made her want to understand more. Not the details. Not the doctrine. Just the feeling. At that time, she had recently married a non-practising Hindu a man whose father managed a small Kali shrine.

She didn’t think much of it. But during one of the shrine’s annual festivals, she brought her camera and took photos. The colours, the rituals, the movement she found it all fascinating. Not just religious, but cultural, theatrical, alive. Later, in a casual chat with one of the women from the pagan group, she mentioned the photos.

The woman asked to see them. She did. And the reaction surprised her. The woman got excited. Not just polite-excited, but genuinely moved. She encouraged her to share the photos in the group. So she did. To her surprise, the others loved them too. They commented with emotion and recognition.

As if those photos meant something sacred even though she had taken them as an outsider. It confused her a little. Why were these strangers people from another part of the world moved by pictures of a Kali festival she had barely understood? But she was still at the beginning of the journey. And in the beginning, confusion is normal.

So she did what she always did when she didn’t understand something: She stayed, listened and absorbed. And that, too, became part of the path. Why pagans? Because, to her, pagans represented the original religious mind the tribal worldview that saw the sacred everywhere. Gods in the sky. Goddesses in the soil. Spirits in the trees. Power in the wind.

They believed in many things at once and didn’t feel the need to apologise for it. She understood "pagan" to mean people who honoured multiple divinities: gods and goddesses, ancestors, elemental forces. Before she could understand temple worship, idol devotion, or spiritual ritual, she wanted to understand this. The tribal mindset. The world of metaphor and symbol. Where the line between myth and reality wasn’t fixed and didn’t need to be.

What she noticed most was that these people spoke freely. They didn't argue about what was true but instead spoke about what felt true. They didn’t preach but they shared. And perhaps that’s why she stayed. It was the first space where the sacred wasn’t claimed by one voice. It was plural, open, even playful.

And before she could enter a Hindu space, before she could sit before a guru, she needed to first learn how to sit with plurality. It was after she posted the Kali shrine photos in the pagan group that the invitation came.

One of the members messaged her privately. “You might enjoy this other group it’s called Shakti Sadhana.” She didn’t think too much of it. Just clicked the link and joined. She didn’t understand a word.

The posts were full of Sanskrit terms, scriptural quotes, and esoteric references that meant nothing to her. She tried to read but nothing stuck.

So instead, she wandered into the group’s photo albums, and that’s when something caught her attention.