The return from the west : A humanist tale

chapter Five

The Initiation

He came to Kuala Lumpur with his wife, and although they had heard each other’s voices and seen each other through screens, this was their first time meeting in person. Despite the familiarity built over phone calls, FaceTime sessions, and shared pictures, a gentle nervousness hung in the air an uncertainty and excitement that only a first real-life encounter could evoke.

When he finally emerged from the arrival hall, she felt her breath catch. He looked exactly as he did in the photos calm, composed, the faint trace of a smile beneath weary eyes. They had spoken over the phone before, and the moment she heard his voice again, she recognised it instantly the same low, steady tone that had once travelled across distance and time zones, now vibrating through the air between them.

Without thinking, she stepped forward, bowed, and touched his feet a gesture she had practised for this very moment. It was her way of showing humility before the one she believed would guide her from darkness to light, whatever that might mean. For a heartbeat, the chaos of the airport faded. All she felt was the cold floor under her palms, the brush of fabric against her fingertips, and the quiet pulse of something she couldn’t quite name reverence, disbelief, perhaps even fear.

In her life, there had been many teachers, each leaving their own mark. Ms. Angelina Yip the no-nonsense nursing tutor from her first year in nursing school fierce, exacting, yet deeply admired. Then there was Cikgu Sulaiman, her Malay teacher from secondary school, who once told her he’d “fallen in love” with her because she knew how to run her mother’s business. She never quite knew if he meant it, but his words left her uneasy, and she’d kept her distance ever since.

But this teacher this guru was something else entirely. He was not here to instruct her in anatomy or grammar or any lesson that could be neatly written in a notebook. What he was offering had no syllabus, no textbook, no examination. It was something she could not yet name something of the spirit, of the inner terrain she had never dared to map. And perhaps that was what frightened her most. For the first time in her life, she did not know what was expected of her.

A spiritual guru was unlike any teacher she had ever known in this world, the relationship did not end when the lesson was over. She was told that the bond between guru and student is an ongoing one subtle, invisible, and enduring. It is like the bond between a mother and her child: the umbilical cord may be severed, but the connection remains, pulsing quietly beneath the surface of life.

This was not a contract she could walk away from, not a class she could drop. It was a relationship that would follow her, guide her, and unravel her whether she was ready or not.

How he became her guru that was a story she still couldn’t quite explain. She hadn’t stepped into the group seeking a teacher. She wasn’t looking for enlightenment, apprenticeship, or surrender. She was simply there, curious and wandering, content to sit at the edge of things. If anything, she avoided anything that sounded like “spiritual hierarchy.”

A guru was the last thing on her mind. But as she understood it, especially within the Tantric tradition, a guru wasn’t a luxury it was a necessity. Tantra was like scaling a dangerous mountain, an Everest of the inner world. No one climbed it alone. You needed a guide who knew the hidden paths, the safe footholds, the silent dangers. And if she truly wished to walk this path with honesty, she knew she would eventually need such a guide.

But who? She had no teacher in mind. And certainly not him. He had already made it clear he wanted nothing to do with “guruship,” which made him the last person she ever expected to respond if she even dared to ask. In fact, she had always been wary of seeking one.

She had seen too many people “guru-shopping,” hopping from master to master like spiritual tourists. She had read stories of false gurus: charismatic predators offering cosmic shortcuts for a fee, demanding obedience, devotion, or worse. She had watched seekers lose themselves in webs of manipulation disguised as mysticism. So she guarded herself. She told herself she would never fall for a guru. Never surrender her mind. Never become one of those seekers. Which is why she didn’t notice what was happening.

There was no recruitment. No ritual or pressure. He didn’t even want the role. In their early online conversations, he had said he distrusted the entire notion of “guruship.” The pedestal was dangerous, the ego too easily seduced.

“I’m not prepared for that,” he once admitted. “Honestly, I don’t think anyone is.”

And yet, somewhere between their conversations those ordinary moments of speaking, listening, laughing something shifted. Gently, quietly, like a thread being tied without their awareness. It grew not from desire but recognition. He saw her stumbling in places she didn’t yet know she was stumbling. And despite his reluctance, he had the kind of conscience that refused to walk past someone struggling on the road.


“You don’t choose these relationships,” he once said. “Sometimes the path chooses you. Sometimes a person chooses you without knowing they’ve chosen anything at all.” A spiritual guru was not like any teacher she’d ever known. There was no syllabus, no graduation. The bond was said to be ongoing, subtle, enduring, like the connection between mother and child.

Even after the cord is cut, something essential remains. She had not gone looking for a guru. He had not wished to become one. Until one day, during a long conversation with Devi Bhakta about the whole question of guruship. They were discussing Osho, the Hugging Mother, and all the well-known names who had gathered crowds of seekers around them. The conversation drifted from one teacher to another, then finally circled to him the third person, the one she could never quite categorise.

Half joking, half trembling inside, she confessed, “Devi Bhakta… if destiny ever places a guru in my path, I hope it’s him. His experience, his grounding… it just speaks to me. I mean, isn’t it like choosing a badminton or swimming coach? You’d want someone who actually knows what they’re doing, right? But how on earth do I bring it up? He’s so resistant to the whole idea of guruship.”

For a moment, Devi Bhakta went completely quiet. Not the “I’m thinking” quiet, but the “uh-oh, something is coming” quiet. Then he said, gently, “Okay… I’m going to share with you a conversation I had with him yesterday evening. You read it, and then you decide what the next step should be.”

She hesitated, then read the message Devi Bhakta send over the copy chat lines transcript. And there, in his own words, was the one sentence she never expected to see: “I am waiting for Mira to ask me. She needs to ask. I cannot go and tell her ‘I am your guru’… that would be so unbecoming.”

For a moment, she stopped breathing. It felt like someone had pulled the ground out from under her feet and replaced it with something both terrifying and inevitable. She had spent all this time thinking he wanted nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, he had been quietly waiting for her. And suddenly, she understood: This was not about titles or rituals. It was about permission, readiness, and dignity.

A guru did not claim a student a student must take the step. But that was exactly what terrified her. And she was scared of stepping in the wrong direction scared of looking like one of those “guru shoppers” who hopped from master to master the way some people hopped between badminton coaches. It was almost funny, really. Earlier, she and Devi Bhakta had been like two tigers prowling in circles around him, sizing him up from a distance before finally inviting him into the admin role.

Now here she was facing the same man and suddenly they were two different tigers: a potential guru who thought he wasn’t ready, and a potential śiṣyā who was scared to ask in case she chose wrongly. Both circling each other with spiritual anxiety, both pretending they weren’t circling at all, both waiting for the other to blink first.

It was, in its own strange way, a cosmic comedy. Devi Bhakta had been watching them for days : two spiritual tigers pretending not to stalk each other. On one side, him: the reluctant guru who kept insisting, “I’m not ready,” “I’m not qualified,” “I don’t want a disciple,” while simultaneously dropping hints subtle as boulders. On the other side, her: the accidental śiṣyā who kept whispering, “What if I choose wrong?” “What if he says no?” “What if I get scammed like those guru-shopping stories?” while staring at him like he was the last packet of Milo at NTUC.

To Devi Bhakta, the whole thing looked like a spiritual comedy written by the universe for its own entertainment, and the comedy reached its peak when both turned to him at the same time over the chat lines with matching confused-tiger expressions and asked: “Devi… what do you think our next step should be?”

That was the moment he cracked. He didn’t sigh this time. He laughed like a man who had seen too much. “For heaven’s sake, both of you are behaving like confused tigers circling the same watering hole. One tiger thinks he’s not strong enough, the other tiger scared she will drink the wrong water but both of you are thirsty!”

Devi Bhakta continued, utterly exasperated: “Look he is waiting for you to ask. You are waiting for him to be ready. If both of you keep waiting, you’ll be sitting here until the next lifetime. You want me to tell you the next step? The next step is simple. JUST TALK. Both of you. One conversation”

Mira knew the next step had to come from her. But how? How does one ask a man who is terrified of guruship to become a guru? One wrong move and he would retreat into reclusion faster than a startled tortoise. She had to be careful. Tactful and Gentle. Like approaching a skittish deer with a bowl of milk.

So she turned to the one thing she knew best a story. He loved her stories. He loved her dreams even more. In their conversations, he always listened with that quiet intensity of his, as if dreams were holy texts, and she the accidental oracle delivering them. So she waited for the right moment. A calm evening. No heaviness in the conversation. He was relaxed. Present. And then she said softly, “Can I tell you something that happened at work? And a dream that came after?”

He said yes immediately of course he did he never missed her dream stories. So she began. She told him about the elderly patient she brought for a toilet bath. About the quick mistake just turning away for a towel and returning to find the patient on the floor. No fractures. No physical injuries. But the emotional hit was brutal, for the patient and her. She carried the guilt like a second skin. Sleepless nights and stomach in knots. Her mind replaying that single moment over and over and over.

Then she told him about the dream. “I was sitting at the nursing station,” she said, “full of guilt, full of worry. And an elderly lady walked past me. She looked at me straight into my eyes and said: ‘I know you’re worried… but you don’t have to be. Everything will be alright. You will get whatever you wish for… but you need to ask.’”

She paused. He was silent the good kind of silent the listening kind, the soul-listening kind. And then, with her heart pounding like a drum, she continued. “That dream wouldn’t leave me,” she said softly. “And… I know I need guidance. I know I can’t walk this path alone. So…” She took a breath. “I need guidance.”

The words hung in the air, bright and fragile. A request wrapped inside a story, delivered through vulnerability, disguised as a dream, yet unmistakable in its purpose. And there they stood the reluctant guru and the accidental śiṣyā bound by a thread neither of them intended, yet somehow responsible for holding.

Remembering that moment, Mira would laugh about it. The whole thing reminded her of the way her boyfriend once “proposed” not with a ring, not with roses, but with a very Singaporean: “How about we apply for HDB?” Which, as every Singaporean knows, actually means: “Let’s get engaged. Let’s get married. Let’s build a life.”

Just like that, her request simple, understated, practical carried the weight of a sacred commitment. Her own version of “Shall we apply for HDB?” in the spiritual world. And that was how it began. Not with a ceremony or a blessing or an immediate, enlightened response. But with silence. Right after she said it right after she laid her vulnerability bare with “I need guidance” he went offline. Just… gone. No explanation. No goodbye. No “I need to think about this.” Nothing. He simply disappeared for several days.

At first, she tried to convince herself it meant nothing. Maybe he’s busy. Maybe his Wi-Fi died. Maybe he’s somewhere with poor signal. But the truth sat heavy in her chest. She felt as if she had touched something too sacred, stepped too close, said something that made him retreat into the forest of himself.

A familiar guilt crept in that old, tight feeling in her ribs, whispering she had crossed a line she shouldn’t have crossed. For the next few days, she came online quietly, cautiously, almost timidly. Every time her screen lit up, she found herself scanning for his presence that little notification, that green dot, that simple sign that he was there. But nothing. Even Devi Bhakta, who normally had long, nightly conversations with him, began to notice the absence.

One evening he messaged her: “He’s quiet… too quiet. I’ve been checking in, but I can’t reach him.” Which only made the knot in her stomach tighten. She felt responsible. As if her request had pushed him into reclusion the very thing she feared most. She replayed the moment over and over: Should I have waited? Should I have been gentler? Should I have not asked at all?

It was like the days after her HDB “proposal” moment that same awful suspense, wondering whether she had said the wrong thing… except this time the stakes felt spiritual, destined, and frighteningly intimate. The silence stretched on each day a quiet ache. She didn’t know it then, but this silence was not a rejection. It was the beginning of something neither of them knew how to face.

Then, one quiet evening, while she was compiling Devi Bhakta’s exchange with Mr Hatha Yoga for the group website, her screen blinked. A new message. From him, after days of silence. Two words: “It’s time.” Her heart skipped. She stared at the message, unsure if it was real.

“Time?” she typed, fingers trembling. His reply came almost instantly as if he had been waiting behind the screen, long enough to decide, but not long enough to steady his heartbeat.

“Tomorrow at 9pm. We will begin.”

That was it.No explanation.No elaboration.No guidance on what she should prepare, or what “begin” meant, or whether she needed incense, a notebook, or emotional first aid.

Before she could even type another question, his status flipped to offline. Gone. Just like that. She stared at the empty screen, her mind a storm.

Begin what?
Begin how?
Begin where?

It was so him, so perfectly, bewilderingly him, to disappear for days, return with a cryptic instruction, and then vanish again before she could breathe. She let out a small, helpless laugh. But beneath the confusion, beneath the frustration, beneath the ridiculousness of it all…something settled inside her.

Tomorrow at 9pm whatever it meant was the next step in the thread they never meant to weave, yet somehow were both holding. She nodded. But speaking felt impossible. The next day passed strangely. By dinner time, around 7pm, she felt a heaviness settle inside her not sadness, not fear, just a deep, electric quiet.

She sat at the table with her husband, moving her fork mechanically, eating in total silence. Her husband looked at her closely.

“You okay?” he asked. She nodded. But speaking felt impossible. How could she explain it? The slow, steady heat rising inside her not from her chest, but from where she was sitting. A warmth forming at the base, deep and grounded, as though something had been lit beneath her spine. It rose gradually, a gentle current moving upward through her body, quiet and insistent.

Her husband noticed the flush in her face. “You look warm,” he said softly. “Why don’t you rest? I’ll wash the dishes.” She nodded again. She lay down for a while. Not to sleep simply to let her body settle, because something was happening, and she needed stillness.

At 8:45pm, she sat up. The warmth was still there steady, glowing, almost purposeful but not as intense as before. She dressed simply but neatly, her hands trembling slightly as if preparing for a conversation that would change the shape of her life. At 9pm approaching, she reached for her laptop.

Took a deep breath. And went online. At exactly 9pm, his name appeared online.

Not 8:59 or 9:01 but 9:00 pm sharp. As though he had been waiting for the clock to align with something only he understood.

Before she could even type a greeting, his message appeared: “Something happen earlier?”

Her breath caught. How did he know? She told him about the sudden rush of heat rising from where she sat, travelling upward in quiet waves, making her unsettled, forcing her to lie down. She told him how it wasn’t an emotional reaction, but something physical, strange, familiar yet unfamiliar, like her body had answered a question she hadn’t asked.

When she finished typing, there was a short pause. He replied with a single message: A smiley. Nothing else. No explanation. No concern. No elaboration. Just a small, contained smile. She stared at the icon, baffled.

What does that even mean??Is it reassurance?Approval?Amusement?“Congratulations, your internal heater is working”?

The smiley was maddeningly ambiguous the kind of response that told her everything and nothing at all. Seems like he knew something about her experience that she could not yet name. After the enigmatic smiley, another message arrived. This time, there was no hesitation, no uncertainty, no trace of the reluctant man she knew. Only clear direction.

“This is what you need to do.” She sat up straighter. “For the next 7 days, you are to recite this specific verse from the Saundarya Lahari 108 times.” Her breath tightened. She knew the text. Of course she knew it. The Wave of Beauty Shankara’s luminous hymn to the Devi, a blend of tantra, devotion, and metaphysics.

And the verse he sent her… she recognised it immediately. Seen it discussed in the group forum many times. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard as she read it. “You start tonight.” A shiver went up her spine. Not fear recognition. There it was. The beginning he had promised. Before she could ask Why this verse? or How do I prepare? or What happens after the seven days? he went offline again. Just like that.

One moment, the voice of a guide. The next, gone vanishing into silence as though his task was done for the night. She stared at the empty chat window, half exasperated, half amused. She opened the text. She found the verse. And she began. He had just given her the mantra simple, precise, powerful.

The seven days passed quietly, steadily, each one marked by the rhythm of her recitations the verse he chose, the verse she carried into her mornings and nights. Something in her shifted during those days. The warmth she felt earlier had settled into a kind of inner clarity, a stillness she didn’t have before. Her mind felt sharper. Her breath slower. Her body lighter, yet grounded.

On the seventh evening, just as she finished the final cycle of the 108th recitation, her screen blinked. He was online. For a moment she froze half expecting another smiley, half afraid he’d disappear again. Instead, a message appeared: “This is your mantra.” Then another. “You are to recite it daily.”

She inhaled deeply, reading the line he sent a mantra of weight, precision, and unmistakable personal significance. Mantras are never assigned casually. This one felt chosen for her alone. Before she could type a single word, his final message arrived: “Recite it every day… till I come and see you in person.”

She blinked. Read it again. He was coming. To Kuala Lumpur. To see her in person.

A small shock ran through her part disbelief, part excitement, part the quiet recognition of how far things had moved from a dream, a story, a trembling question. The reluctant guru was no longer reluctant. He had crossed the line she thought he would never step over. She stared at the screen, her heart racing like someone had just proposed in the most spiritual, non-romantic, deeply confusing way possible.

He had just given her the mantra, She stared at it for a moment, blinking. Then, before she could stop herself, she typed: “Only one?”

He replied: “Yes. Only one.”

But her mind was already running ahead. Because she remembered something how Devi Bhakta once mentioned, with great pride, that he had been given a full seven-syllable mantra. Seven! Like a deluxe spiritual package! A buffet of sacred sound!

So naturally, her next question came out: “Then… how come Devi Bhakta got a full seven-syllabus mantra…and I only got one?”

There was a short silence. A silence in which she imagined him either laughing or shaking his head in total disbelief. Then he replied: “Because you don’t need the others. For you… only one.” Just one. Exactly one. Chosen. Tailored. Specific.

She stared at the answer, then she typed: “Ooooh.” A very Mira “ooooh.” The kind that meant: Okay okay… I accept… But also I’m still comparing a little bit. And honestly, she couldn’t help it.

It’s the same energy as:
“Why my friend’s durian got more flesh than mine ah?” or
“Why my husband propose with HDB and her husband propose with ring?” or
“Why Devi Bhakta’s mantra so long like a train, and mine so short like MRT one stop only?”

And in a strange, quiet way, it made her feel seen completely. And she saw that message again “Recite it every day… till I come and see you in person.” She blinked. Read it again. He was coming.

He was coming. To KL. To meet her. To guide her. It was no longer abstract. No longer digital. No longer hypothetical. It was real. And already in motion.

And then of course before she could respond, ask a million questions, or even breathe properly he went offline again. Just like that. Leaving her staring at the empty screen, “he’s coming to KL”


He smiled, unhurried, as though he had known this moment would come all along. His wife was warm, kind, observant the sort of presence that steadied the room without saying much. They stayed at her condominium. She had prepared a guest room, simple but neat fresh sheets, flowers by the window, a sense of quiet readiness she couldn’t explain. Her husband took over the practicalities: greeting them, lifting their bags, offering help. And soon they were all walking toward the car.

The drive from KLIA to Mont Kiara was about 45 minutes, but for Mira, it felt suspended outside of time. She sat in the front passenger seat, silent, her body still carrying the echo of the moment at the airport. From behind, her husband’s cheerful voice filled the car, asking all the normal, hospitable questions:

“How was the flight?”
“Crowded or okay?”
“Turbulence bad or manageable?”
“You managed to sleep on the plane?”

Her guru replied politely, steadily, giving short, calm answers. His wife added a few remarks of her own, gentle and grounded. And Mira? She managed only the occasional “Yes…” “No…” “Mmm…” whenever someone spoke to her directly. Her mind was elsewhere entirely still kneeling on that cold airport floor. Still hearing his voice the real one, not the one in her earphone. Still trying to process the surreal truth: he was in her car. He was in her city. He was less than an arm’s length away.


By the time they reached her condominium, she still hadn’t found her words. They stepped out of the car, breathing in the humid evening air. The city lights of Mont Kiara flickered softly against the sky. At the door, he spoke first. “We will rest,” he said gently. “We woke very early to catch the flight. Now we are quite tired.”


Of course they were. She nodded quickly, almost too quickly. “Yes, of course. Please rest first.” She led them to the guest room she had prepared simple, neat, fresh sheets, flowers by the window, and a quiet sense of readiness she herself did not fully understand. As they stepped inside, she felt something in her settle. He’s here. Not in a chat box. Not in a phone call. Not in a dream or a story. Here. And even in the silence of that moment, she knew this was the real beginning.


By early evening, after they had rested, dinner at the nearby Indian restaurant in Mont Kiara a cosy place Mira had chosen because the food was familiar, uncomplicated, and somehow comforting. The moment they sat down, her husband slipped easily into host mode, chatting warmly, asking what they felt like eating. His wife smiled, scanning the menu with curiosity.


And he…he sat there with that same calm presence, watching everything quietly, as if absorbing the space before speaking. Mira, on the other hand, barely tasted her food. She nodded when spoken to, answered politely, but her senses were on high alert every gesture, every pause, every shift in his tone seemed to land on her skin like a signal. She didn’t know if this was excitement or some subtle energetic shift or simply disbelief that this man the one who had guided her through text, mantra, dreams was now stirring dhal in front of her.

Then, in the middle of dinner, as casually as if he were mentioning a grocery run, he said: “I will be going to Tanzania next.”

Her husband paused mid-chew “Tanzania?”

“Yes,” he said. “Where the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ICTR is based.”

Mira blinked. ICTR? She had to take a second to process the weight of that. He continued calmly, “I will be one of the prosecutors there.”

Her husband lit up immediately. “Wow, that’s incredible work. Very meaningful. Very heavy also, right?”

He nodded gently. “Yes. It has its challenges.”

His wife added softly, “He has been preparing for some time.”

Mira listened in stunned silence. Prosecutor for the Rwanda tribunal. This wasn’t just a man with spiritual depth. This was someone carrying the weight of history, someone standing in a courtroom where the worst of humanity was confronted, someone whose inner world held truths she couldn't yet imagine. And suddenly, her earlier thought “This is the man to guide me? My guru is an international Human Right lawyer”

Yet here he was. Sharing biryani. Sipping chai. Speaking to her husband like any visiting friend. Composed, grounded, as though the spiritual and the worldly had no tension at all inside him. She realised, with a quiet jolt, that she was still learning who he was. Not just the reluctant guru. Not just the quiet guide, but a man with a life of immense responsibility, carrying stories that stretched far beyond her little condominium in Mont Kiara.

It humbled her, and it frightened her. And it deepened her respect in a way she had not anticipated. Dinner ended with gentle conversation and warm goodnights. But inside her, something had shifted again something that told her that whatever path she had stepped onto was wider, heavier, and far more real than she had understood.

Before they retired to bed, he called her aside and quietly said, “The initiation will be tomorrow, after lunch.”

Earlier that morning, she had already prepared the offering before they went out for sight-seeing. She could have brought only fruits and flowers, as was always done. But when she thought of guru dakshina, the image of the keris rose in her mind unbidden, certain. She had found the keris years ago in an antique shop tucked away in a back alley of Cheras not one of those tourist shops, but a dim place that smelled faintly of sandalwood and iron, where the shopkeeper spoke of blades as if they carried memories.

The moment she saw it, she stopped mid-step, transfixed. For a heartbeat the rest of the shop dissolved, and there was only the blade cold, silent, yet somehow calling her. She bought it without knowing why, then placed it in the display cabinet in her living room. Almost every day, whenever she sat there, her eyes would drift toward it.

The keris seemed to hum in its silence, as if trying to speak though what it wanted to say, she could never quite hear. Her guru-to-be had once spoken of the warrior path in the Indian tradition. At the time, it meant little to her. Yet when she thought of what to offer him, the keris felt like the only choice. Perhaps, without realising it, she had decided to place a piece of herself at his feet.

They came back to the condominium after lunch to rest and prepare for the occasion. The initiation was held in the study. She had read about initiations before the general concepts, the symbolism, the rational structure behind them. But tantric initiation was different. Every lineage had its own variation, its own method, its own secrets. Some used rituals. Some used mantras. Some used silence. Some used nothing external at all.

So she had no idea what to expect. All she knew was that this would not be the kind of initiation described in books or websites. It would be his way shaped by his lineage, his understanding, and whatever he saw in her. That uncertainty made her both curious and nervous.

She could prepare her mind, she could steady her breath, but she couldn’t prepare for the unknown. And maybe, she realised, that was the point. The Initiation was a private moment between guru and shishya. No audience. No witness. All that was unnecessary. Only two people were meant to be there the one who gives, and the one who receives.

Outside, the city carried on traffic, voices, the slow rhythm of an ordinary afternoon. But within those four walls, time seemed to pause. The air was still. The city sounds from below seemed far away, softened by distance and the hour. He sat cross-legged on the floor, facing the doorway, already waiting when she entered quietly with the tray held carefully in both hands. The keris lay among marigolds, jasmine, and ripe fruits simple offerings, but arranged with intention.

She lowered herself into a full prostration, touching both his feet a gesture that said, without words: I am ready. Then she placed the tray before him and sat cross-legged across from him. He looked first at the offering, then at her steady, measuring, as though confirming something he had already sensed. “I accept your guru dakshina,” he said.

He lifted his left hand and pointed to her forehead, just above the space between her eyes. Almost touching. For a moment, it felt as though he held a sword and rested its tip against her brow steady, unyielding. Not cold. Not sharp. But unmistakably penetrating.

“Recite after me,” he said. This time the mantra was different. Longer and different sound. She did word by word the sounds flowing from somewhere deeper than thought. She didn’t know the meaning, but she knew the rhythm, as if it had been waiting inside her. When he placed both hands on her head, the air shifted. Not a vision, not a trance but a weight, an awareness. The walls seemed to breathe. The silence thickened, as though carrying the memory of rituals long gone.

“Do you feel that?” he asked.

“I don’t know what I’m feeling.”

“That’s because it’s not yours yet,” he said. “But it will be. When the time comes, you’ll know exactly what to do.”

He picked up the keris and placed it in her hands. The metal was cold, heavier than she expected. They both held it, not saying a word. For a moment, it felt like something moved between their palms, a faint pulse, or maybe just their own nerves. The air in the room grew still. He looked straight at her, not blinking.


His eyes didn’t move, didn’t soften. It was steady, almost too steady like the blade itself was looking through her. She felt it, sharp and real, and her breath caught. Neither of them moved.


“Like this keris,” he said softly, “that is what you must be. Cold or warm. Hidden or seen. No label. No name. No side. Remain true to yourself.”

She nodded but said nothing. The keris did not move. But something in her had though she wasn’t sure what. Her thoughts? Her emotions? Her breath? She couldn’t tell. It was as if something inside had shifted position, quietly, like furniture moved in a dark room.

She could feel the space was different, even if she couldn’t see what had changed. When she placed it back on the tray, it was the same blade yet not the same at all.

As they stepped out of the study, her husband was there. He had come home early from work and was sitting in the living room, playing with their daughter. They exchanged the usual pleasantries polite smiles, casual conversation.

Then her husband asked, “So, where did you all go earlier today?” She paused. Her mind went blank. She remembered driving around Kuala Lumpur… having lunch somewhere… but beyond that, nothing. The details were gone as if someone had quietly reached into her mind and cleared the shelf. If her mind was a cupboard once filled with things, it suddenly felt emptied.

Her guru smiled lightly, stepping in before the silence grew awkward. “Oh yes, we went to the Orchid garden and the bird park, then lunch at that restaurant in Brickfields,” he said. “Had the banana leaf meal very good food. She ordered…” And he went on, filling in the blanks as if he were recounting a scene she’d lived through, only she couldn’t recall any of it. She just looked at him, puzzled and in her thoughts asking herself “We did all that?”

The fourth day, they headed to Singapore. He had mentioned that he needed to return to India soon there was something that required his attention before his departure to Tanzania, so they decided to travel together. He stayed at his cousin’s house in Singapore, while she went back to her in-laws’ place in Ang Mo Kio.

They met again briefly at the airport before his flight. She had come to send him off not out of obligation, but because it felt right to do so. There wasn’t much said. A few quiet words. A smile. A nod. Then he walked toward the departure gate, and she watched until he disappeared into the crowd. It was an ordinary farewell. And yet, somehow, it didn’t feel ordinary at all.

Before leaving, he handed her a book a thick, handmade volume compiled by him, containing the rituals and mantras they had spoken of. “This is the first copy,” he said. She opened it carefully. On the second page, he had written in neat handwriting: “May you realise Her, Dayaambaa.” He signed his initiated name below it.

For a moment, she just stared at the words. Dayaambaa. It took her a while to realise what it meant that Dayaambaa was her initiated name. She looked up at him, unsure what to say. Should she feel honoured? Awed? Changed? The truth was, she didn’t know what to feel.

Online, she already had several names each one an avatar, a small escape, an alter ego she used to wander through forums and groups when boredom hit. Each name carried a different mood, a different version of her. So when she saw this new name written in his handwriting, she couldn’t help but laugh to herself. Another name to add to the list, she thought.

Only this one felt different not something she had chosen, but something that had chosen her. Instead, she just smiled awkwardly. She didn’t know what to feel maybe nothing yet. It was a name that belonged to a part of her she hadn’t fully met.

She asked him quietly, “Did I pressure you into accepting me as your śiṣyā? Did that request for guidance put you in a difficult position?”

He paused, and she could see the honesty forming before he spoke.

“It wasn’t pressure,” he said. “It was like seeing someone struggle and knowing you can’t just walk away. When you recognise confusion or pain in another person, and you know you can help even a little you help. Not because you want to lead, not because you want to be anyone’s guru, but because turning your back would feel wrong.”

His gaze held hers, steady. “It wasn’t about divinity or power. It was something human. An act of empathy. A quiet duty to respond when someone reaches out.”

She asked him, “Why the reluctance? In the group, I see so many people wanting to be called a guru.” She remembered this one man, a Kashmiri, a Śaivite always going around giving lectures, calling himself a teacher. When he visited her in Kuala Lumpur, he even asked her to arrange talks for him in both Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. He phoned his contacts in each city, urging them to come listen to his spiritual sharing. It felt strange watching him all that self-promotion dressed in devotion.


He listened quietly and said only, “Observe him. Observe closely. Learn from it.” She nodded but didn’t mention about it further.

She did ask, “Why don’t you do the same? Give public talks?” He looked at her for a long moment before answering.

“Because it’s painful,” he said. “Every time I speak in public, it hurts. I only speak in private and even that can be painful.” She wondered why. What was painful about sharing wisdom? But he didn’t explain further, and somehow, she didn’t press him either. Perhaps one day she would.

He told her that the bond between guru and śiṣya isn’t bound by time or circumstance. “It’s not something that exists only in this life,” he had said. “It’s part of a continuum a thread carried across journeys.” She was still trying to grasp what that meant. How could a connection stretch beyond a single lifetime? Was it memory, karma, or simply recognition one soul recognizing another in the vast crowd of existence?

She didn’t know. All she knew was that somehow, in all her wandering, she had found or been found by someone who saw through her confusion, and pointed her back toward herself. Despite everything that had happened, doubt never left her completely. She still questioned herself if this was the right move, if he had made a mistake in choosing her or she deserve all this, after all she was a nobody.

She knew nothing about Hinduism, could barely recite the Sanskrit mantras without stumbling.

“I feel like a lost tribe of India rediscovered,” she told him once, half-joking.
He smiled and said, “You are, actually.”

It was partially true though she wasn’t sure about the “lost tribe” part. All she knew was that her grandfather had come from India long ago, not sure which part. All she found was a piece of paper saying he's a south Indian and a british subject, following a British ship in search of a new life. He settled in Malacca, married a local Muslim woman and that’s how the family’s faith had shifted. Later they moved down to Singapore, and now here she was a generations later walking the path backward.

“I suppose,” she said with a small laugh, “I’m travelling back to the West to rediscover my spiritual root. My hope, I did not disappoint you”

“You will not” were his only words.

As she stood at the airport, watching him walk toward the departure gate, his words replayed in her mind, the ones he had said right after the initiation, when the keris still rested between their hands and their eyes met.

“I have stopped and turned back to hold your hand,” he had said, “to help you walk this path with the tools you need. But I can’t do this forever. Once you are steady, once you reach where I stand now, I’ll have to let you go. And you must keep walking not in my footsteps, but on your own path.”

She had listened quietly, her breath shallow. “If you keep following me,” he continued, “you’ll never find yourself. And that is the only thing worth finding.”

Now, at the airport, those words echoed again simple, steady, without drama. She didn’t know yet what they would mean in her life, but she knew they would stay.

“Do what you need to do, then leave. Do not wait. Do not linger. Disappear. Do not wait for praises or rewards. Make yourself invisible"

She blinked. "Disappear? Invisible? How?"

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he simply watched her as if measuring the depth of her readiness. Finally, he spoke "Invisibility is not hiding. It is not escape. It is the art of presence without weight, of action without trace. You ask how to become invisible,” he said, “but what I am doing now is the opposite. I’ve stop and hold your hand”

She looked at him, puzzled.

He paused before adding, “Most people want to be seen, to be remembered. But you must learn to do the opposite to act without being seen, to give without holding, to disappear without being gone. Invisibility,” he whispered, “is not erasure. It is essence. Like the scent of rain. The presence of roots beneath the earth. Felt but not noticed. Invisibility is not something I can give you. It is something you must become.”


She was awakened by the sound of her phone ringing. It was Sripriyam. “Guruji’s body is already at his house. Are you coming?” She glanced at the time almost 9 a.m. She got up quickly, took a shower, and went down to the hotel canteen for a simple breakfast. Then she crossed the road toward Guruji’s house.

The others were already there Dr Ravi, Sripriyam, and the rest of the śiṣyas. We hugged one another, trying to find words that wouldn’t come, trying to fill the space left by loss. Then she saw him lying in the refrigerated casket, covered and still. She sat beside the refrigerated casket, unable to take her eyes off him. He looked peaceful, almost as if he had simply fallen asleep.

From what Dr Ravi had told her, that night at the hospital had been difficult. The pain had been clear on his face. He had struggled to breathe even speaking had hurt. Looking at him now, it was hard to believe all that had happened only days ago. The stillness felt unreal too quiet, too complete.

For a long while, she just sat there, not crying, not talking, just watching. Trying to make sense of how a person could be so present one day and gone the next. She was still trying to grasp the idea that he was gone. It felt too familiar, the same hollow space she had felt almost a year ago when her father passed away.

The ache was different in shape but not in weight. Through him, she had shifted her devotion not in worship, but in trust. He had become like a father to her too, someone she could turn to, someone who listened without judgment. She could talk to him about almost anything her doubts, her fears, her confusion and somehow, he always knew how to guide her back to herself.

Now that he was gone, the silence felt heavier. She stayed until the last rites were performed. Dr Ravi led the śiṣyas, and she followed along. But each time they began a ritual or a chant, the others would gesture for her to move to the front. After all, she was his first śiṣya, they all knew that. She didn’t protest. She simply took her place, doing what was asked, trying to hold herself steady.

When the chants began, her voice trembled at first, then found its rhythm. The words she once struggled to pronounce now came with ease, carried more by feeling than understanding. She followed them to the cremation ground : a private, enclosed space away from the noise of the city.

When they placed his body on the pyre, she stepped forward, knelt down, and held his leg. She kissed it gently, one last time. She tried to hold back her tears, but they came anyway slow at first, then freely.
There was nothing more to say. No words left to offer. Only the heat of the moment, the smell of wood and ghee, and the sound of fire beginning to breathe.