The return from the west : A humanist tale

chapter SIx

Inner Reconnaissance

As she walked down the aisle and took her seat on the plane, a familiar voice returned his voice. “Never put me on a pedestal,” he had once told her. “If I ask you to do something you’re not comfortable with, reject it. You must question me. Never follow blindly. That is not the path.”

She remembered how clear he was about it his tone calm but firm, leaving no space for worship or dependency. Looking out the window as the plane taxied down the runway, she thought about everything he had said, everything he had stood for.

He had never wanted to be a guru. She had never meant to become a disciple. Yet somehow, their paths had crossed just long enough for him to steady her, to hand her the tools she would need to walk on her own.

His words resurface again through her train of thoughts, this time, clear and calm: "Be careful when you make promises to people. We’re here to help, but we have limitations. Know your limitation." Now she understood why he was sometimes hesitant when people came to him asking for advice or divine insight. She saw the hesitation in his face, the heaviness in his eyes.

She once has asked, "Why the pain? You’re just saying what’s right." His answer stayed with her: "What feels right now may not be right later. That’s the danger. People will cling to your words as if they’re divine truth. They stop thinking for themselves."

She understood it better now. The pain wasn’t from not knowing what to say. It was knowing the weight his words could carry and how easily they could be misused.


As the plane lifted off, she leaned back and closed her eyes. His voice still lingered calm, steady, reminding her of everything he had taught. To question, to think, to never follow blindly. To walk her own path.


And then, the scene at the cemetery came back to her the quiet air, the smell of grass after rain, the stillness of that night. She remembered how he had laughed when she told him about her little stunt at the cemetery and the lies she’d told her husband to make it happen.

He had sounded like a cheeky boy then, amused by the whole thing, as if he’d sent her on a harmless dare just to see what she’d do. Now, sitting on the plane, she found herself smiling the same way. She miss hearing his laugh.

She remembered exactly how it started. “If you’re brave enough,” he had said, stirring his tea, “go to a grave. At night. Not to mourn just to sit, and see what dies.” He never explained. Never insisted. Just smiled, like someone who had done it before and was curious to see if she would.

“When you’re done,” he added, “come back and tell me if there’s anything left of you to tell.” She had asked,

“Why a grave?” He smiled again, the way someone might who had buried his own self long ago.

“You know how I feel about all this grave stuff,” she said. “You’re sending me back to the one place I avoid most.”

“Go,” he said. “Experience it. Then we’ll talk.” No explanation. No comfort. Just that.

So she went. Not in daylight. Not in moonlight either. The sky was dark the kind of darkness that feels like a test. Bidadari Cemetery wasn’t wild or remote. It was known, documented, once a resting ground for Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and others.

Now, mostly cleared, but a few headstones still remained, jutting from the earth like forgotten markers. She chose Bidadari for a reason. It wasn’t the quietest or the most hidden, but it felt right a place of stories, of endings and beginnings. Marked for exhumation.

The signs were already up. Clearance notices. Future development maps. What was sacred would soon be swallowed by progress. Graves moved. Memory paved over. She felt a kinship with the place. “We’re both being dismantled quietly.”

Bidadari was the perfect mirror. She had come to bury a self she no longer needed. And this place, too, was preparing to let go of its dead. No one would mourn what vanished from here. No one would mourn what vanished from her.

It was the perfect place to disappear. So she planned. She went in the day. Scoped the surroundings. Checked sight lines. Noticed which parts had construction barriers. Which corners were overgrown. She mapped shadows and shortcuts like a ritual cartographer.

“Enter from Mount Vernon side,” she noted to herself. “Rest behind the slope near the banyan tree. Watch for the streetlamp glow near Upper Serangoon too exposed.”

She picked a grave. Not because it meant anything. But because it was quiet. Slightly sunken. Forgotten. Unmarked. Perfect. She chose an unmarked grave. Not because she was drawn to the mystery. Not because it was safer. But because it was nameless.

“I don’t want to sit with someone else’s story,” she whispered. “I came to bury mine.” A named grave comes with identity dates, lineage, religion, sometimes even poetry. But an unmarked grave? It is pure potential. No identity. No memory. No ego.

Just a space where the formless rests. Just like the self she came to leave behind the version of her worn thin by expectations, roles, applause, guilt, and the endless need to explain. There was no headstone for that version of her. No eulogy. Only this silent, sunken patch of ground. And that was enough.

“Let it end here,” she said, “Where no name is needed. Where forgetting is freedom.” She noted an exit route. Left a change of clothes hidden nearby just in case. This wasn’t superstition. This was preparation. She won’t wear white as that would’ve been too obvious. Too theatrical and ghosty.

She often wondered why ghosts were always dressed in white. She didn’t want to be a ghost.If she ever had to fade, she thought, she’d rather blend into the darkness itself, quiet, unseen, part of the night. She will wear all black. Black pants. Black shawl. Comfortable. Breathable. Easy to move in. Not for ritual. For blending.

She didn’t come to perform. She came to disappear. And in Bidadari’s shadows, with the trees rising like quiet witnesses, black was the safest thing she could wear. She didn’t want anyone to see her. Not the strays. Not the night walkers. Not the living. Not even the dead. Just the unmarked grave. Just the stillness. This wasn’t superstition. This was preparation. But before the grave, before the silence, before the death-of-the-self there was the lie.

She couldn’t say the truth. “I’m going back to Singapore to sit at a cemetery in the dead of night so I can spiritually combust and emerge as a new human weapon of wisdom.”

So instead, she made dinner. Stirred slowly. Waited for the moment. “Mak Lang’s not well,” she said, quiet, gentle. That got his attention. He looked up from his laptop.

“The one from Serangoon?” She nodded. “You know the one who raised me since I was two months old. She keeps calling. Asking me to come back. She’s not saying it outright, but I think… I think she needs me.”

That was all it took. He sighed. “You should go.”

“I won’t be long.”

“Call when you land.”

She smiled. "I will."

She packed light. Just herself, her courage, and her beautifully-crafted lies. And honestly? That was enough. She moved like a shadow. Black shawl pulled tight around her. No flashlight. No phone. Just memory and moonless dark.

The path through Bidadari was uneven half-cleared, overgrown in places. Old brick markers peeked out from weeds. Signs of a place once visited, now waiting to be erased. She stepped over a low moss-covered wall, careful not to make a sound. A distant car passed on Upper Serangoon. A dog barked once, then stopped. Her mind was still. No guilt. Just focus. She thought about the lie she told her husband.

The calls. The dramatic tone. The unspoken urgency. It was a good lie. A safe one. Believable. But she didn’t feel bad about it. Not even a flicker of guilt. “You don’t need permission to heal,” she thought, stepping onto soft earth. “You just need a window.”

He wouldn’t understand why she needed this. Few would. And some journeys don’t survive explanation. They crumble under the weight of language. They turn into punchlines, or worse pity. So no, she didn’t lie to deceive. She lied to protect something delicate. Raw. Holy.

“Not every truth has to be honest,” she whispered to the night. “Some truths are too wild to be spoken without being caged.”

Ahead, the unmarked grave waited. A shallow hollow in the earth. No name. No memory. Just enough room to let something go. She tightened her shawl. Breathed once. And stepped forward. She sat. No cushion. No incense. No mantras. Just her and the dark and the dead.

And the question the guru never asked out loud: Are you still afraid of disappearing? She hadn’t set foot in a graveyard since her father’s funeral. Didn’t believe in them. Still didn’t.

“Wasted land,” she’d always said. “Graves are for the living to feel better about themselves.”
To her, cemeteries were prime land doing nothing. A space that could’ve been a playground. A community garden. Public housing. A space for the living children laughing, old uncles doing tai chi, young families hanging out on weekends. Instead? Fenced-off stillness. Stones and silence. It made no sense to her. Cremation was more efficient. More honest. One clean fire, and you’re gone. Scatter the ashes, return to the cycle. Done.
“You don’t need a plot to prove you mattered,” she once told someone. “Live well. Be remembered in the hearts you touched. Not in the real estate you occupy after you're gone.” She never romanticised death.

When her father died, she came home late. Too late. By the time she landed, they had already moved him from Sembawang. Her sister called, said to come straight to the cemetery. She refused. “I need to see her first,” she had said, meaning her stepmother.

“The dead is dead. It’s the living who need tending.” She still believed that. But still… somewhere between flights back home and years of quiet ache, she found herself drifting back to Sembawang. Not the town. Not the house. But him.

Her mind kept returning to the old room. To the shape of his chair. To the weight of his hand resting in hers as she sat on the floor by his bed. So eventually quietly she went. Not to pray. Not to weep. Not for some spiritual awakening. Just to stand there. To see it.

To witness the final location of his body so her mind could stop imagining he was still lying in that bed, waiting for her to come home. “I needed to see where he ended,” she had once told herself. “

So I could let go of the part of me still holding his hand.” And maybe that was when the idea first planted itself. The idea that the grave, though it held nothing she believed in, could still be the place where something in her was finally set free.

Here she was. Walking back into a graveyard. At night. Not because she had changed her beliefs. But because her beliefs had nothing to do with what needed to happen. She wasn’t here for the dead. She was here to sit in the one place nobody expected her to be. To let the old version of herself slip into the earth.

Quietly. Privately. Unmarked. Just like the grave she chose. She sat at the grave. No moon. Just shadow, breath, and her heartbeat echoing in the back of her neck. She wrapped her black shawl tighter, not from cold, but to hold herself in. Her guru never told her what to do once she sat.

“Choose your graveyard,” he had said. “Sit there. All night. Till just before sunrise. Don’t think. Don’t visualise. Just… clear.”

“Clear what?” she had asked.

“Everything,” he said.

Great. She wasn’t even sure if she was doing it right. So she sat. Breathed and Listened. And, of course, her mind did what minds do. It wandered. First, to her father. then to her mother. Then to the list of the dead she carried like a secret catalogue: friends, teachers, old neighbours… cats. She smiled.

Her first pet cat, Rusty. Buried behind the kampung house. She had cried for hours. And then without planning started singing. She had no idea why. But it felt like the only way to say goodbye.

“I sang to a dead cat,” she muttered now. “And here I am again. Full circle.” She almost laughed. “But I can’t sing here. That’s how ghost stories start.”

Just as she started to settle in again Click. Then another. Click. Click. She froze. That was not her imagination. That was a camera. She turned slowly. Toward the roadside. There’s a man. Standing half-hidden behind a tree. Holding a camera. Clicking at her.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Running would make it obvious. Suspicious. So instead, she stood up. Calm. Composed.

Covered the lower half of her face with her black shawl. And started walking. Directly. Towards. Him. Not too fast. Not too slow. Just enough to scare the afterlife out of a grown man with too much curiosity.

The man panicked. His eyes widened. He stumbled. He ran. Dropped his camera. She blinked. Sighed. Picked up the camera.

“All I wanted… was to be alone. Even that… can’t be done in peace.” She carried the camera a little further into the graveyard. Found a tiled grave with a built-in bench. Laid it there. Gently. Like an offering. Then walked away.

“This guy better not turn me into another Bidadari legend.”

She returned to KL like nothing happened. Landed quietly. Unpacked the same bag she left with. Same clothes. Same smile. One less self. Over dinner, he asked, casually: “How was Mak Lang?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Better now. She just needed to see me. Like a reset. Old people sometimes just want familiar faces.” He nodded. Didn’t press. Didn’t ask if Mak Lang actually picked up her meds. He never did like dealing with aunties anyway. So the lie floated, perfectly intact.

She exhaled. “Mission complete,” she thought. She really believed it, too. That she had buried what needed burying. That the silence had stayed in the graveyard. That the dead and the story would rest. But the truth was… The mission wasn’t over.

She was just sitting there at the dinner table deep in reflection of what has happen : I went to dissolve my ego. Instead, I gave it a fan base.

He noticed and from the dining table, while eating, his eyes looked at her, he asked: “You’re good? Everything under control?” That was his phrase. “Everything under control.” The same words he used for work, the car, the rice cooker, their marriage. She nodded and smiled.

“Yeah. Just tired. I think I sleep early tonight” But deep down, she knew the truth: It wasn’t just a trip. It wasn’t a ritual. It was spiritual espionage. She had to vanish to find herself. Slip into shadow. Dismantle her psyche under a moonless sky. Become a ghost to her own expectations. And now she was back. Whole, but untraceable. And now? She was a different woman standing in the same kitchen. Sitting across from a husband she had lied to. Holding a truth no one would ask about.

She didn’t feel guilty. Not really. She felt... distant. Like she had returned home with someone else’s skin. “Some truths aren’t ready to be spoken,” she thought. “And some men never ask the right questions.”

Until two nights later, scrolling mindlessly past food reels and cat memes She saw it. The Society of Paranormal Investigators (Singapore). A familiar name from her ghost-obsessed teenage years.

Now with a new headline: “Unidentified Spirit Spotted at Bidadari Cemetery” Captured on Vintage Camera. Mystery Deepens.” She clicked. There it was. The photo. Her. Grainy. Veiled in black. Mid-step. Face blurred. Floating? Maybe. Depends on your imagination. She stared at it, blinking slowly.

“They caught me,” she whispered. Or rather they caught something. Not her. Not really. Just the silhouette of a woman who didn’t want to be seen. And they didn’t know the half of it. The shawl. The outfit. The very “ghost” they were now dissecting frame by frame.

She had already folded it neatly, packed it into a plastic bag, and hidden it under the bed in Sembawang, where her stepmother still lived.. “Espionage protocol,” she muttered. “Leave no trace. Came to bury an ego, and now become an urban legend.”

As the story goes the man, said he didn’t mean to be near a graveyard that night. He was just taking a shortcut home after supper with friends. His motorbike had broken down near Bartley, and instead of waiting for a tow, he thought: “It’s faster to cut through the side road by Bidadari.” Bad idea. The road was poorly lit. The kind that gives you goosebumps even when you’re on a date.

He was walking fast. Head down. Trying not to imagine anything. And then he saw her. At first, it was just a shape. Dark. Sitting still near the edge of the grave. His brain didn’t register danger. Just oddness. Then she moved. Slowly. Gracefully. Purposefully. And his brain bless its dramatic little circuits panicked.

“Who goes to a graveyard alone at midnight?” “Why wearing black?” “Why is she sitting Infront of an old unmark grave?”

He reached for his camera. Old-school Polaroid. He liked the aesthetic. Thought maybe it was just someone doing art, or ritual cosplay, or filming a scene. He took one picture. Then another. Then she turned. And started walking toward him. He froze. He couldn’t see her face. Only her eyes. And somehow they glinted. Not with menace. But with stillness. And that terrified him more.

“She’s not human.” He ran. Dropped the camera. Didn’t look back. The next day, he returned with friends. Brought the Society of Paranormal Investigators. Brought excuses. They found the camera she left carefully on a tiled grave. They developed the film. Posted the story A ghost, they said. Clear evidence, they said. Intelligent haunting. He nodded along. Said all the right things. Even gave a quote. But later when no one was watching, when the noise died down, He sat alone in his room and stared at the photo again. Blurred figure. Covered face. Black shawl.

The Eyes haunted him. And something in him shifted. “Maybe it wasn’t a ghost,” he thought. “Maybe it was something else.” Because deep down, he knew what he saw. Or at least he knew what he thought he saw and that… was enough to haunt him.

She groaned into her pillow. “All I wanted was to be alone… even that also cannot. This guy had to come. Take pictures. Bring a society. Like I’m some endangered species.” Life goes on. Tea. Emails. Laundry. Trying to act like she didn’t singlehandedly launch a spiritual panic in Bidadari. But curiosity is a tricky thing. So she kept checking.

The Society of Paranormal Investigators (Singapore) had updated their site. “Ongoing Watch: The lady in Black” Ongoing?! she muttered into her tea. The first image had gone viral in certain circles—those who loved ghosts, conspiracy threads, and speculative spiritual theory. Then came the new sightings.

A man wrote in, claiming he saw the same figure a few nights before the reported incident. “All black,” he wrote. “Face covered. Just the eyes… glowing. When I looked, something shined over me. Like... a wave of heat and light.” Another claimed she was “hovering.”

One said she vanished mid-step. A taxi uncle swore she crossed the road near Bartley and didn’t trigger the traffic sensor. “I’m a ghost with road safety issues now?” she muttered. She kept reading. Against her better judgment.

Theories had spiralled out of control:

• A lost soul from pre-colonial Singapore

• A forgotten spirit-guardian of Bidadari

• A modern-day bomoh performing midnight exorcisms

• The manifestation of Death herself

She clicked on a comment thread titled: “Why the Eyes Glow: Esoteric Analysis of Spirit Energy” That’s when she closed the tab. Sighed. “All I wanted was to sit at a grave. Breathe. And leave quietly. Now I’m glowing?!”

She had only gone once. One night. One grave. One quiet personal ego-death. But humans are wild. One grainy Polaroid and the whole kampung lost its mind. Newspapers ran with it. The paranormal investigators came with walkie-talkies and sage sticks. One even claimed she “smelled like ancient sorrow.”

They camped out for two weeks. They found nothing. Not a whisper. Not a wail. Not a floating head. Eventually, as all good ghost stories do, this one died quietly. People moved on. Back to politics, price hikes, and drama plot twists.

Later that week, she called her guru over the phone. As always. She told him everything. The grave. The camera. The ghost story. The comments. The eyes-glowing theory. The viral photo. The shawl under the bed.

There was a pause on the line. Then he laughed. Long, deep, and completely unbothered. He took a breath. “See how the human mind works?” That was all he said. No long lecture. No guidance. No holy verse. Just that. And somehow, it was enough, because he was right. All she did was sit in silence.

They saw a ghost. All she did was walk away and they created a legend. Later that week, she spoke to her guru again, he had already laughed once at the photo, the Society, the ghost rumours. But now his voice turned casual again. Almost too casual.

“No plans of doing it again?” he asked. “After all, the first one got disrupted. This time, you go further in. Away from the main road. Somewhere secluded. Can’t be seen from the roadside.”

She paused. The idea was tempting. Too tempting. Not just because of the silence. But because it was starting to feel like a mission. A secret one. In. Out. Leave no trace. Just presence. There was a thrill to it. The kind that makes your heart beat slower, not faster. Like slipping into a liminal space between the seen and unseen. No audience. No explanation. Just stillness... and risk.

“I should,” she said. “But the challenge now is what to tell my husband. I can’t go on lying to him like this.”

“What did you tell him earlier?” the guru asked, amused. She told him. The Mak Lang story. The emotional reset. The sickly aunty who wasn’t really sick. He laughed again. Couldn’t help himself.

“My issue,” she continued, “is that I don’t feel guilty about it. Is that bad?”

His voice softened. “No. Don’t feel bad. You did what needed to be done. You were protecting him. Not from death but from knowing what he couldn’t handle.” That was the assurance she didn’t know she needed, especially from another woman’s husband.

She smiled into the silence. “Alright then. Give it two or three months,” she said. “Let’s see what other stories I can come up with.”

They both laughed. And of course, two months later she got the call. “Your uncle passed away.” She stared at the phone. “Okay, universe. I get it. No need to be so dramatic.” And so she went back.

For the funeral and other things on the side. This time, no lies were needed. The universe handed her an alibi on a silver tray. That phone call from her cousin is all she needed. She packed her bag calmly. No need to fabricate stories. No need to sneak past suspicion. The funeral was the surface.

But beneath the rituals, the tears, the catered bee hoon a different plan was unfolding. She returned to Bidadari. But not the same spot. This time, she chose another unmarked grave. Further in. Deeper. Away from the road. No street lamps. No curious photographers. No boys with cameras. Just solitude. And enough silence to sit inside herself without interruption. The mission had evolved. The agent had upgraded.

“No more hauntings,” she thought. “Just clean entries and quiet exits.” She moved like someone who belonged in the dark. Not to hide but because this was her ground now. She didn’t flinch when the shadows thickened. Didn’t pause when the road disappeared. This wasn’t fear anymore. This was protocol. “No visa. No border. Just breath,” she thought.

“My spiritual passport gets me through everything these days.” And as she sat down again, breathing into the earth, she smiled. “Let’s see what gets born this time.” It was peaceful again. She sat, eyes closed, breath soft.

The earth beneath her was cool, grounded, undisturbed. Insects sang their invisible chorus. She could hear the wind even though none was blowing. The trees spoke in creaks and rustles, even in their stillness. And then, a silence settled. Not quiet, but emptiness. In that emptiness, she saw herself. Not sitting, but buried. Six feet underground, earth packed above her, breathless and still.

Then her form, rising from the soil, silent and slow, like memory in reverse. She emerged, transformed, cloaked in something new. She walked away from the grave. A different face. A different self. And then another wave of emptiness. Timeless.


She didn’t know how long she’d been there. But suddenly, something snapped.

Her guru's voice, distant and clear, cut through the stillness: "Now rise." Her eyes opened. She looked at her watch. 3:02 AM. Still hours before sunrise, but the state was broken. The thread had been pulled. No point in sitting longer. The moment had passed. She stood slowly, adjusted her shawl, and began walking the narrow path back. Past the big tree. Feet quiet against the grass. Eyes soft but alert.


Then movement. A man. Walking toward her from the opposite direction. He must've entered from the carpark nearby. They met halfway. They both froze. She saw his eyes widen. His mouth part. A flicker of disbelief. Then panic. He screamed. He tried to turn and run but slipped and crashed sideways into the grass.

She gasped too, caught off guard, let out a startled cry of her own. They locked eyes for a fraction of a second. Then she turned sharply, slipped back into the inner cemetery, and disappeared between headstones.

She took the long path to the other exit, change into her other cloths, walking fast, heart hammering. She didn’t stop until she reached her stepmother’s home. Quietly, she slid the black shawl and outfit into the bag and tucked it neatly back under the bed. Then she lay in the dark, pulse still racing, listening to the silence around her.

Two days later, it was in the papers. A man had reported seeing a ghost at Bidadari Cemetery. He’d pulled over at the roadside late at night, needing to relieve himself. He claimed to have encountered a woman in black. Covered entirely except for her eyes. Eyes, he said, that stared right through him.

“She screamed,” he told the reporter. “No we screamed. I think she screamed first. Or maybe I did. I don’t know.” Then came the question: “And the scream what did it sound like? Human?” The man shook his head. "No. No, it didn’t sound human at all. More like…” He paused for dramatic effect. “Like two cats about to go into battle. That kind of shriek. Wild. Untamed. Ancient.”

She nearly choked on her tea reading that part. “Cat fight?” she muttered. “Please.” She texted her guru and told him about the incident. "Do I need to start wearing a nametag that says: NOT A GHOST?"

He replied: "No. Just get your spiritual passport renewed." And he send he a laughing emoji.

She stared at the emoji a skeleton and laughter. She sighed. Then laughed again. Not because it was funny. But because of course he would send that. Because what else was there to say?

“I went looking for silence and came back a supernatural meme,” she thought. And then the update came in at the online site, as the story goes, apparently the man had driven straight to the nearby emergency department. They admitted him because his blood pressure had shot through the roof. He kept muttering about "the eyes" how they stared through him, haunting, like they knew things he didn’t want to remember.

She winced. "Enough is enough. So she made a decision. No more night visits at cemetery. No more accidental hauntings”


This wasn’t about proving anything anymore. She had gone to die to herself, not to inspire emergency room admissions. As she sat there, cross-legged in the dark in her balcony, it came to her. Not all at once. Not like lightning. More like a tide that had been waiting patiently for her to sit still long enough to notice.

She wasn’t visiting a grave to mourn. She wasn’t here for the dead. She was here… for what needed to die inside her. The grave wasn’t for them, it was for her. She sat where endings live. Where breath slows. Where illusions lose their grip and in that space, she became the bridge. Between the woman she had been, and the one who was quietly emerging beneath her skin. The grave was a meeting point between worlds. Not just between the living and the dead but between who we think we are, and who we are finally ready to become. This is more like spiritual espionage.

Not prayer, meditation or ritual. He is sending me back behind enemy lines, into my own mind. See what’s hiding there. At the time, she laughed, thinking he was joking. This wasn’t about spying on others it meant herself. The fears. The habits. The memories she’d buried so deep that even she no longer knew where they were.

The mission was simple: go to the place you avoid most, the place that still holds power over you and just sit there. Watch what rises and what dies. That’s what the cemetery stunt all about. Not as an act of bravery, but as a kind of secret operation into the unknown.

Every real journey inward is a form of espionage, you sneak past your own defences, gather what truth you can, and return quietly, without fanfare. No medals or witnesses. Just knowledge. She sat in the stillness, smiling. And when she told him later just a short message, typed fast, not overthinking “I get it now.”

She could picture his face, grinning like a cat that knew this would happen all along.

“Yeeeeees,” he typed back. “You got it.”

Later, when they finally spoke again, he told her “you actually don’t need to go to the grave to experience all that”

“No?” she replied confused

“Yes. No need.”

She blinked. “Then why did you send me there in the first place?”

She could see him sitting there in-front of the computer grinning “To see if you were up to it.”

She stared at him. “So all that effort... and you’re telling me now there was a shortcut?”

“Sometimes,” he said, “the long way is the shortcut.” She rolled her eyes. “Now that you’ve crossed that... you’re ready for the next phase.”

“Which is?”

“Visualization.” She frowned. “Like imagining things?”

“No. Like seeing without your eyes. Creating internal forms with stillness and fire. Making your inner world more real than anything outside.” She paused. “So... no more cemeteries?”

“No more need, the grave was the mirror. Now you enter the space behind the mirror.”

“Sounds... cleaner.”

“For now,” he said. “Until the mind screams louder than that man in the grass.”

She laughed. “Okay, okay. I’m ready.”

Sitting in the plane, she drifted between thoughts the stunt at the cemetery, his laughter when she told him about it, the look on his face when he said, “Go, experience it, and then we’ll talk.” It all played like an old film in her mind, one scene after another the cemetery, the pyre, the initiation, the keris.

Each moment felt distant now, like it belonged to someone else, yet somehow still hers. She didn’t notice the trolley rolling down the aisle until a soft voice interrupted her thoughts. “Would you like to have a drink, madam?”

She looked up at the air stewardess a young woman with a polite smile and tired eyes. “Yes, please,” she said after a pause.

“Apple juice.” The stewardess nodded, poured the drink, and handed it to her with practiced grace. She thanked her, took the glass, and held it for a moment before drinking. The coldness against her palm felt strangely grounding, a small, ordinary thing pulling her back from all that she had been remembering.

Outside, the clouds stretched endlessly beneath the wings, white and silent. For the first time in days, she took a long breath and simply sat no mantra, no memory, no effort. Just stillness.

She took a sip of the apple juice, cold and tart, and leaned back in her seat. Her thoughts drifted again this time to the group forum, to the endless discussions that had once filled her evenings. She remembered one man in particular, another spiritual aspirant, always talking about sādhana as a way to gain power.

Power over people. Power to influence. Power to be seen. She could still hear the arguments that followed some agreeing, others warning him. And then her guru’s quiet response: “The moment you seek power, you’ve already lost the path.” He had explained that real sādhana was never about control.

It was about clarity learning to see things as they are, not bending them to your will. That true power doesn’t dominate it frees. Power, when not understood, invites ruin. Power, when held with wisdom, becomes service. That is the way."

She was silent. Trying to grasp what he just said. “The word power…” She paused. “It sounds like something out of a comic book. Superman. A superhero. A great leader who commands armies and changes the world with a speech.”

She looked at him. “Are we talking about the same kind of power?” He smiled, just slightly. Not amused but approving.

“No,” he said. “Their kind of power shines. It seeks eyes. It wants applause. The power you carry, result of sadhana, it hums, hides and listens. It does not want to be known. Superheroes save the world with their fists. You use your power through your silence. With the choices you make when no one is looking. Power not as strength. Not as victory. Not as visibility. Power not equal to superhero. Not equal to great leader. Not equal to applause. It was something else. Quieter. Older. Heavier. True power is not in being seen. It is in knowing when not to be. Not all who carry power are remembered. Some simply keep the world from falling apart… and vanish’

She shifted her eyes from the clouds outside to the screen in front of her. Maybe a movie would help pass the time. She scrolled through the list action, romance, drama but nothing caught her interest. One by one, she flicked through the titles until the screen suddenly went blank and for a moment, she saw her own reflection staring back.

The image triggered a memory, a conversation they once had. “I once saw a movie,” she told him then. “The mirror came alive. The person looking into it got pulled in swallowed by it. Inside, there were mirrors within mirrors. Endless reflections. No way out.” She looked down. “Sometimes I think about that when I see myself. What if I get pulled in too? What if I lose myself in all the versions I’ve been trying to forget?”

He didn’t laugh. He nodded. “That,” he said, “is not just a movie scene. That is maya, illusion. The mind spinning stories, trying to protect you, yes… but also keeping you trapped.” He leaned forward, deliberate. “But what if the mirror doesn’t pull you in? What if it returns you to yourself?”

She gave a small, uneasy laugh. “Is the mirror a true reflection of the self or just what the mind wants to see?” His eyes lit up. He clapped once, smiling.

“Ah, that’s deep. That’s the real question. Shall we talk about it?” And just like that, the conversation shifted from fear to philosophy. From haunted memory to inquiry. From keris to consciousness. From object to essence.

“You know,” he said, “in the Shakta path, the mirror is not something to fear. Some sādhikas perform pūjā in front of it. They sit, gaze at their reflection.”

She frowned. “You mean they worship themselves?”

He smiled. “They worship the truth in themselves. Not ego. Not vanity. But essence. You look into the mirror and instead of seeing flaws or shame, you see Shakti power, presence. You bow to that. Not to the face, but to the force behind it.”

She was quiet.

“Maybe,” he said softly, “you don’t fear the mirror. Maybe you fear what you might see or what you might become once you see it.” Then his voice softened further “Or maybe there’s something you’re not telling me.”

Her eyes dropped. “This fear of the mirror it’s more than discomfort. It carries a story, doesn’t it?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “There is something I’ve never told you,” she said. “Not even my husband knows.” Her voice lowered

“When I was about ten, there was a boy a neighbour, much older. He used to watch us play. One day he called out to me, said my friends were waiting at his house. I followed him. He locked the door.” Her voice trembled, then steadied.

“He hugged me. Started touching me. I fought back. Threatened to scream. He stopped, told me not to tell anyone.” She looked away

“I went home crying. Straight into my room. And the first thing I saw was myself in the mirror. That frightened girl, staring back. I hated her.” Her tone hardened.

“So I hit the mirror. With my fist. It shattered. I didn’t care. I just couldn’t stand her. That look. That weakness. I made a vow that day never again. Never to be weak. Never to let anyone touch me without permission. Never to be taken by surprise. Not ever.”

The room had gone completely still. He didn’t speak at once. He simply nodded slow, deliberate letting her know he had heard.

“You didn’t break the mirror,” he said finally. “You broke the story that mirror was showing you.” She looked up. “You saw weakness,” he continued, “but what I see is power. a girl who fought back. Who made a vow. Who found her fire early.” He paused.

“That moment didn’t make you fearful. It forged your strength. But strength doesn’t mean silence forever.” She looked down again. “The mirror isn’t your enemy,” he said. “It doesn’t hold judgment. It holds presence. You don’t have to see the frightened girl anymore. You can see the woman who lived through it, who carries that fire still.”

He gestured lightly, as if framing an invisible image between them. “Maybe it’s time to sit in front of the mirror again. Not to worship your face, but to bow to the strength that’s always been there.”

She must have dozed off. When she opened her eyes, the cabin lights had dimmed to a soft amber glow. For a moment she couldn’t tell if she was still dreaming, the screen in front of her was still black, and her faint reflection lingered there, half shadow, half self.

Then the captain’s voice came over the speakers, calm and clear: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re beginning our descent into Singapore. The local time is 6:45 a.m” The words broke through her thoughts like a gentle nudge. She blinked, straightened up, and looked out the window. The clouds that had been endless white earlier were now streaked with gold.

The light had changed, softer, warmer, like the day itself was closing a chapter. Below, the faint outlines of ships dotted the sea, lights beginning to glow along the coastline. She sat quietly, hands resting on her lap, feeling that small familiar ache, that mix of ending and return. The reflection on the blank screen had faded. Only the soft hum of the engines remained.



A year later…

Life had settled back into its usual rhythm. Work. Family. Routine. The śiṣyas still kept in touch through the WhatsApp group the same one Guruji had created to communicate with them. Everyone agreed to keep it going, a small way to stay connected.

Occasionally, someone would post a picture of him usually during the anniversaries or when a memory surfaced. Photos of those three days of sādhana together Guruji, Amma, and all of them sitting side by side, smiling, content, unaware of how precious that time would become.

Now, those pictures were all that remained. Moments frozen in pixels, yet somehow still alive in memory. She had many pictures, but she never shared them. Some things, she felt, were meant to stay private sacred in their own way.

What she held on to instead were his words, the ones that returned to her at the most unexpected times. “Do not seek rewards. Through sincere practice, certain abilities will arise, but they are not for your personal gain. Use them to help those in need. Come quietly, do what is needed, and leave quietly. Do not wait for praise or recognition. It is enough that the work is done. It is okay if no one knows it was you.”

And another that always stayed with her: “What I’m doing now is simply this, I’ve stopped, turned around, and reached out to hold your hand, to help you move forward. But a time will come when you’re ready. Then I must let you go, and you must walk your own path, in your own way.”

She could still hear his voice when she needed it most, calm, steady, certain. And she knew now: this was what it meant to continue the journey. Not by following his path, but by walking her own.