The return from the west : A humanist tale

chapter Three

The Third Person

Shakti Sadhana was an online group, but for her it felt like stepping into a mandala bright, intricate, full of symbols and energies she did not yet understand.

It was her first time being part of anything that called itself “spiritual.” And suddenly Mira found herself surrounded by people who spoke about the Mother Goddess as if she were an old friend.

They spoke of Her presence with a tenderness that felt almost intimate. Shaktas invoked the Devi as the very heartbeat of existence. Shaivites traced every discussion back to the stillness of Shiva. Vaishnavites quoted the Gita with the ease of reciting family stories. Yogis dissected breath, posture, and energy as if unveiling the architecture of the universe itself. I wandered into this space with no map, no lineage, and no expectations. Just curiosity.

And perhaps a little awe Some threads felt like temple conversations, devotional, poetic, woven with bhakti. Others unfolded like academic seminars where Sanskrit terms and philosophical arguments flew faster than she could process. And then there were moments where the group transformed entirely into something else: a kind of cosmic courtroom drama.

That usually happened when Devi Bhakta stepped in. Whenever he appeared, the whole atmosphere shifted. His replies came with the precision of legal submissions, each point neatly labelled, each argument dismantled with clinical grace.

And there she was sitting quietly at the edge of the virtual courtroom feeling very much like his sidekick intern. Or maybe the paralegal who was allowed to sit in only because no one had the heart to chase her away. She watched him work with the kind of awe usually reserved for watching a senior lawyer spar in a high-profile trial.

Except this trial involved scriptures, philosophy, and the occasional yogic insult. And her? She was just trying to keep up, taking mental notes and trying not to drop my metaphorical files all over the floor. The peak of these courtroom dramas always happened when Devi Bhakta clashed with the Hatha Yoga guy.

She still don’t know his real name. In her head, he has always been “Mr. Hatha Yoga,” because every sentence he typed somehow circled back to two things:

1. Hatha Yoga came first,
2. and therefore Tantra must politely sit down.

Naturally, Devi Bhakta did not agree. Naturally, neither of them backed down. Naturally, the rest of us grabbed popcorn.

Their exchanges would begin politely enough:
Hatha Yoga Guy: “Historically, Hatha Yoga predates your understanding of Tantra.”
Devi Bhakta: “Your premise is inaccurate. Allow me to dismantle it point by point.”

And that was it. The bell rang. Court was in session. Mr. Hatha Yoga would quote some text. Devi Bhakta would quote five more. Mr. Hatha Yoga would argue lineage. Devi Bhakta would argue metaphysics. Mr. Hatha Yoga would assert chronology. Devi Bhakta would politely slice chronology into philosophical pieces.

The best part was watching how Devi Bhakta structured his replies, paragraph numbered, sources cited, logic clean enough to frame and hang on a wall. It was like watching a senior counsel argue with a stubborn yoga instructor who refused to yield an inch.

And her? She was the sidekick intern in the corner, following every paragraph like a trainee paralegal in her first big trial. Sometimes she wanted to whisper, “Sir… he’s contradicting himself… get him.” But of course, Devi Bhakta didn’t need help.

He already saw everything. Through their debates, she learned more about Tantra, Yoga, and the tangled history between them than she could have learned from any formal class. It was chaotic. It was scholarly. It was occasionally petty.

And it was endlessly entertaining. But while Devi Bhakta and Mr. Hatha Yoga were busy arguing about which came first Tantra or Yoga, she was quietly beginning her own journey.

A different kind of study. A more personal one. She started with the individual Devis. At first, it was simple curiosity. Who were these goddesses everyone spoke about with such confidence? What made each of them unique? Why did they appear in so many forms?

So she began with the familiar trio: Parvati, Saraswati, and Lakshmi. The “mainstream” team, you could say. The ones most people know because they are gentle, benevolent, and socially acceptable.

Then she went deeper into Durga, Kali, and the Mahavidyas. And that was when the world truly opened. She wanted to understand each Devi intimately not just their stories, but their symbolism, their weapons, the number of hands they held, the animals they rode, the gestures they made.

She wanted to know why a goddess would carry a lotus in one hand and a weapon in the other. Why she needed four hands. Or six. Or eight. Or ten. Why some had faces all around their head. Why some smiled. And why some did not. Most importantly, she wanted to understand the multiplicity of divinity.

Why were there:
• Eight Durgas,
• so many Lakshmis,
• so many Saraswatis,
• and ten Mahavidyas who seemed to stretch from serene to terrifying?

Even Kali too with her 12 manisfestations.

It felt almost like studying a vast cosmic ecosystem one where divinity didn’t shrink to fit a single form, but exploded into many expressions to capture every shade of human experience.

And then came the one who absolutely broke all her ideas of “gods behaving properly”: Chinnamasta. The goddess who cuts off her own head. And stands there, calm as ever, while the blood streams into the mouths of her attendants.

Now that, that was revolutionary to her. She remember staring at her image thinking, “Okay… this one is not here to play. This one is saying something serious.” She was shocking. Fearless. Unapologetic. A complete disruption of everything she thought “spirituality” was supposed to look like.

Chinnamasta symbolism hit her like a slap:
• self-sacrifice without victimhood,
• ego severed at the root,
• life-force shared,
• and the reminder that transformation is bloody, messy, and sometimes requires cutting off your own comfort. She didn’t ask for permission. Or soften herself to make others comfortable. She simply was.

And maybe that’s why Chinnamaste fascinated her the most. But the deeper she went into these goddess traditions, the stories, the symbolism, the philosophy the more she began to notice something else. Something that felt… contradictory.

For all the reverence toward the Divine Feminine, for all the hymns praising the Mother as source of creation, liberation, knowledge, and power, the patriarchy was still very much alive and breathing in certain parts of the Shakta system.

Some mantras were still “for men only.” Some temples still forbade women from holding positions in the executive committee. And the most baffling of all the obsession with menstruation. She tried, truly tried, to understand what they had against women who were menstruating.

The explanations ranged from “purity” to “energy flow” to “ancient science.” None of them convinced her. And yet the contradiction kept widening: Worship the Goddess with ten hands, but fear the woman with two. Honour Kali dripping in blood, but forbid a woman who bleeds naturally. Bow to the Divine Mother, but deny the dignity of actual mothers, daughters, sisters, and female devotees.

One day, after weeks of debates, late-night readings, and her increasingly obsessive study of the Devis, she confessed something to Devi Bhakta.

“Look at us,” she told him. “Two people trying to manage a Shakti cyber-temple. You’re the lawyer debating half the universe, and I’m the intern who still doesn’t know why some goddesses have ten hands. We’re doing our best, but honestly… I’m terrified. I don’t know if we’re doing this right.” It wasn’t a dramatic confession. Just the truth. She was still learning. Still fumbling. Still googling Sanskrit terms at 2 a.m.

And the responsibility of holding a spiritual space even an online one felt enormous. What if we said the wrong thing? What if we misunderstood something important? What if we misrepresented the Mother?

So she told him, “I think we need a third person. Someone more experienced. Someone who actually knows the practical side of these things.” Devi Bhakta agreed immediately.

“We do,” he said. “But I’m not sure who we can approach.” And without thinking,

She blurted out, “You know… I think our third person is already in the group. He or she is silently observing us. Waiting for us to make one single mistake. The moment we slip, that’s when he or she will appear and start scolding us.” she said it as a joke. But it landed with a strange kind of truth.

The day Devi Bhakta brought her into the group, something happened something neither of them expected. One by one, the other moderators quietly left. They didn’t say why. They didn’t need to. Some of them moved to another group. Some stayed for a while to watch… then slipped away.

And yet, despite all that, the members stayed with us. Not only stayed the group grew. Steadily. Unexpectedly. To the irritation of those who had abandoned ship. She heard the criticisms, of course.

People talk. “She has no background in Hinduism.”
“She’s from Southeast Asia what does she know about Shakti traditions?”

“She’s a nobody.”

They weren’t wrong. She was a nobody. No lineage. No training. No qualifications to speak of. Just someone curious enough to study the Devis, stubborn enough to stay, and sincere enough to learn. So she stayed.

Even when it felt uncomfortable or when the criticism stung. When she felt like an imposter walking barefoot across holy ground. She wasn’t there to impress anyone or to claim authority. She was there to learn. And somewhere in that strange crossroads of devotion, scholarship, conflict, and growth she began to feel it: That sense that someone was indeed watching, listening and waiting.

We didn’t know it yet… but the third person was already on the horizon. And then it happened. One perfectly ordinary day, Devi Bhakta posted a little story in the group a funny travel anecdote from his friend’s holiday trip to India. It wasn’t spiritual. It wasn’t philosophical. It wasn’t even remotely connected to Shakti worship. It was just… comic relief.

A break from the constant stream of scriptures, meditations, and academic debates. Most of the members in the group took it in the spirit it was intended: a light-hearted moment, a breath, a chance to laugh. But not everyone laughed. Out of nowhere, one particular member erupted. He blasted us. Not gently. Not politely. Not with the careful precision of a scholar. He came down like a thunderbolt thrown by an offended deity.

In his view, the story wasn’t harmless at all but it was an insult to India. An insult to culture and dignity. An insult to well, everything. The outburst was so sudden, so intense, that the whole group froze. She stared at the screen, speechless. Devi Bhakta, who could debate twenty people at once immediately turned apologetic.

That alone was a sign something unusual was happening. But for her, it was not the reaction that caught her attention but the force of it and the authority. The way he spoke like someone whose words carried weight not ego, but experience.

As if he had seen things they hadn’t, practiced things they couldn’t imagine, lived through traditions they only read about. So she did what any responsible paralegal/intern/sidekick with a healthy sense of curiosity would do: she went to do her due diligence.

Five minutes into her search, her eyes widened. Ten minutes later, her jaw dropped. By the twentieth minute, she was gasping dramatically in a way that would have made any theatre company proud. This man, the one who shouted at them, wasn’t just some random offended member. He was an experienced tantric practitioner. A senior and deeply trained. Highly respected in circles they didn’t even know existed.

She ran back to Devi Bhakta in private message as if she had just uncovered state secrets. “DEVI BHAKTA,” she typed with the urgency of a messenger carrying news from the battlefield. “I found out who he is… He is our third person.” And that was how the third person entered the story. Not through gentleness, or gradual bonding, or friendly conversation. But through one dramatic outburst over a holiday story that had absolutely nothing to do with anything.

Spiritual life, she learned, has its own sense of humour. And the Mother always sends the right people, sometimes softly, sometimes fiercely, sometimes while scolding you for laughing at the wrong joke.

They didn’t approach him right away. After all, someone who can explode over a holiday story, disappear, and then reappear with the aura of a seasoned tantric practitioner… you don’t pull that person into your team immediately.

They wanted to observe him first. And clearly, he was observing them too. It became a strange, silent dance. A mutual surveillance. They watched how he commented in the group. He watched how they handled situations. They analysed his tone, his reactions, his posts. He analysed their judgment, mistakes and chaos.

It was like two tigers circling each other, respectful, cautious, and mildly suspicious waiting to see who would blink first. Meanwhile, on the side, the hate mails never stopped. Every day, two or three would arrive in her inbox. Sometimes polite insults. Sometimes creative ones. Sometimes long angry paragraphs from people who could never quite explain why they were so personally offended by my existence.

Most days, she deleted them. Some days she rolled her eyes. Occasionally, she laughed. But the obsession was real and rather ridiculous. And then, out of nowhere, the third person finally made his move.

A private message appeared on my screen. “Hello.” Just one word. But after everything, it felt like a firecracker. Then he added, “I’ve been hearing a lot of… interesting things about you. Some very nasty things, actually. So I thought I should say hello personally to find out what kind of person can inspires other to that level of obsession ”

She burst out laughing. Here was a senior tantric practitioner, a person with decades of experience, probably surrounded by sacred rituals and esoteric wisdom and he was messaging me because other people were too obsessed with hating me.

She laughed. “You’re not the only one,” she replied "she does that to others too I believe. I get hate mails daily. Multiple ones. All from the same woman.”

He asked, “What do you make of her?”

And she answered without thinking, only truthfully: “She’s in deep pain. And she expresses it in the only way she knows how. It just so happens that I’ve become the face of her suffering. If my presence helps her release that, then I’m okay with it. It doesn’t affect me.”

His reply was short, but it stayed with her. “Yes. Indeed.”

If the Mother has a sense of humour, this was Her masterpiece. His curiosity wasn’t malicious. It wasn’t judgmental and practical. Almost scientific. He wanted to know what kind of creature she was, this Southeast Asian “nobody” with no Hindu background who somehow stayed in the group while others ran away and who somehow attracted more negativity than a demon in a puranic story. He wasn’t just saying hello. He was scanning her. Assessing her. Trying to see whether the rumours matched the real person.

And that first “hello” so simple, so unexpected, so calmly delivered became the doorway. The beginning of a connection that neither of them saw coming. And from that first “hello”… (yes, exactly like the Lionel Richie song “Hello… is it me you’re looking for?”) …their friendship began to bloom. Slowly at first. Softly. Almost shyly, then, before she knew it, we became chat buddies.

Every time she logged in, he was there. Not hovering. Not intrusive. Just… present. Like a quiet guardian sitting in the corner of the temple, pretending not to watch you but noticing everything. They spoke often nothing formal, nothing forced. Just two people exchanging thoughts, fragments, silences. And from that conversation, something deeper began to take root. That was the beginning.

Over time, the chats became familiar. Thoughts, fragments, and silences exchanged across screens. They became regulars in each other’s digital world chat buddies, nothing more, nothing less. They talked about everything. Politics. Education. Economics. Spirituality.

She once asked him, “Is this Non-Aligned Movement the one India helped to lead still relevant today?” And they talked about that. For some time. Then another day, she asked, “India has the capacity to exert real influence in Asia especially in Southeast Asia. Why isn’t India doing that, the way China is?”

He loved those questions. She knew he did. He was a retired judge, after all. Sharp mind. Dry wit. Deep reader of people and systems. And she well, she liked to poke at systems and ask why things were the way they were. They never called these chats lessons. But she learned a lot. Not just from his answers, but from the way he listened. He didn’t rush. Didn’t try to impress.

He allowed the space to think things through even if it meant saying, “Let’s come back to that tomorrow.”

They talked about the Devis, the symbolism, the practices and specifically about the posts she wrote and the interpretations she attempted. And he always replied in this gentle, measured way: “Your post is good… but perhaps you might want to see it from another angle.” He never said, “You’re wrong.” Or dismissed my perspective nor made her feel ignorant.

Instead, he opened new doors, pointed toward different lenses, and nudged her softly into deeper waters. It was mentorship without ego. Guidance without superiority. Correction without humiliation. Little by little, she realised something important: He wasn’t just answering her questions. He was teaching her how to think like a practitioner, to see beyond the surface, and how to approach the Devis with both knowledge and humility.

But even then, he never claimed authority. He never said, “Do this.” He simply illuminated alternative paths, letting her choose where to step. And somehow, through these small exchanges message by message, laugh by laugh, lesson by lesson, a friendship grew. A real one. Unexpected and Natural. The kind that forms in silence before you even realise it’s happening. And without either of them saying it out loud, the dynamic began to shift. He wasn’t just observing them anymore.

He was becoming part of the circle, and she learn that He had nothing against menstruating women. In fact, he once said something that made her sit up and laugh: “If you’re not allowed to enter the pooja room because you’re having your menses, then do your puja outside. We create the sacred space not the room, and not the temple.”

To him, menstruation wasn’t impurity. It was biology. And biology is not a sin. She found this incredibly refreshing. Especially coming from someone rooted in a tradition where, in many other lineages, menstruating women are still treated like sources of pollution. Because she grew up in a system that did exactly the same thing where a woman cannot pray, cannot go to the mosque, cannot fast, cannot touch the Qur’an simply because she is menstruating, as if the body doing what it is designed to do is somehow offensive to God.

She struggled with it then. And even in the Shakti group, when she heard echoes of the same mentality from certain members, she felt that same wave of resistance rising in me this deep, instinctive “No. Absolutely not.” It felt repulsive. Small-minded, and deeply unfair. Until she heard what the potential third moderator had to say. His clarity and practicality. His complete lack of superstition around women’s bodies. His insistence that sacredness comes from the practitioner, not the architecture, that changed something in me.

Suddenly, she began to like his teachings. And let be honest she wanted to know more. A lot more. (Let’s just say my curiosity levels shot up faster than Devi Bhakta in a debate.) What struck her even more was the contrast with the Pagan circles she had known.

In the Pagan community, a girl’s first menses is celebrated honoured and welcomed. They bless her and adorn her. Make her feel cherished at the threshold of womanhood. But in patriarchal systems across different religions, different geographies, different centuries the first menses becomes something to hide. To control and stigmatize. To manage with rules written by people who never bled a day in their lives. And in that contrast, something became clear: The Goddess may be honoured in chants and scriptures, but if the body of a woman is feared, then the reverence is only half complete.

That’s when she realised why the teachings of the potential third moderator resonated. He didn’t just worship the Divine Feminine he respected the actual, living feminine. Not the idol or the myth or the metaphor, but the woman. And that, to her, meant everything.

Once in the group, a very pious young Shaivite posted a long, dramatic essay explaining, in his mind the “scientific reasons” why menstruating women were forbidden from entering the temple. She read halfway through and thought, “Give me a break, will you.” (Yes, she said it out loud. And yes, she rolled her eyes hard enough to rearrange her chakras.) Because how do you worship the Divine Feminine with so much devotion …while being afraid of the most natural function of the feminine body?

These contradictions confused her at first and later irritated me. Then they made her question everything, but they also helped her understand one important truth: The Goddess may be divine, but the systems built around Her are still very human. And humans no matter how spiritual have a long way to go.

Eventually, after months of conversation, learning, and observing one another from every possible angle, the moment finally arrived. They invited him to be their third moderator. There was no long speech, no elaborate ritual, no secret initiation. Just a simple message from us and an equally simple reply from him: “Yes.” And just like that, the circle was complete.

But the reaction… that was the part that surprised her. The moment they announced it to the group, there was this collective exhale as if the whole community had been quietly holding its breath all this time. People didn’t say it openly, of course. No one typed, “Finally!” No one declared, “At last, someone qualified!”

But you could feel it in the atmosphere. It was the energetic equivalent of an entire temple going: “Aaaah… now they have a proper guide.” The sense of relief was almost comical. All this while, the two of them, she with her Southeast Asian nobody-background and Devi Bhakta with his courtroom debating style had been trying their best to keep the space steady.

But when the third person stepped in, the energy changed. Shifted. Settled. It was like someone switched on the spiritual version of overhead lights and suddenly, everything felt anchored. Legitimate and Balanced. Not because he was superior but because he carried the kind of quiet authority that comes from real practice, real discipline, real experience.

And the group felt it instantly. As if the Mother herself said, “Alright children, here’s the adult supervision you’ve been waiting for.” From that moment on, the three of them stood together, different backgrounds, different strengths, different temperaments but aligned in purpose.

The trinity was complete.