I watched Arjun work, hammering stone with a rhythm that made the temple walls hum. Every strike was careful, deliberate, almost reverent. My chest tightened. I knew these hands. Not the ones that hit, that drank, that scared me. These hands… these hands could create gods.
And then it hit me.
I had always remembered my father as a storm — his anger, his fists hit me and my mother, the bottles smashing against the wall. I had curled up on the floor as a child, listening to my mother's quiet whispers about the man he had once been. "Your father," she said, "was a great Śilpin, a master sculptor. The gods themselves guided his hands."
I had never believed her. How could the man I lived with, the man who haunted my childhood, ever be gentle? But here he was — or rather, here he had been, long before the storm, long before the guilt and the drink.
I realized why I saw him as unbroken. His eyes were calm. His movements were precise. He guided the stone, not like someone controlling it, but like someone listening to it. The teachings of Śilpa Śāstra, the ancient Sanskrit text on sacred sculpture, weren't just in his mind — they were in his soul. Every curve, every angle, every angula-traya pramāṇam — the three-finger measurement — reflected order, patience, and devotion.
I swallowed hard and spoke, my voice trembling slightly. "You… you're very careful. Every move matters."
He looked up, smiling. "It must. The Rta, the cosmic order, is in everything. If we disturb it, even a little, the universe itself trembles. The Gita says:
Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana, ma karma-phala-hetur bhurmatey sangostva akarmani.
(You have the right to work, but never to the fruits of work. Do not be attached to the result, and do not avoid action.) — Bhagavad Gita 2.47
I repeated it under my breath, feeling it like a pulse. "So… we do what we can, but the outcome… it isn't ours?"
He nodded. "Exactly. Every choice we make spins the wheel of Kāla, the endless time. The past, the present, and the future… they are threads in the same cloth. You've come here for a reason, Mithra. The wheel has begun to turn because of you."
My eyes fell on the sundial in my hand. The cracks, the blood, the carvings… it had brought me here, to this moment, to this man who was my father and not my father, gentle and unbroken, full of possibility.
And suddenly, the weight of it all struck me. The man I had known, the man who had hurt me and my mother, was only one version of him. This version — patient, careful, reverent — was still whole. Still capable of love. Still capable of kindness.
I realized the terrifying truth: the choices I made here — how I spoke, how I acted, how I stayed or left — could shape him, could shape the man he would become.
I swallowed and stepped closer. "Teach me," I said. "Teach me about the wheel, about the stone, about everything."
He smiled again, and the temple seemed to breathe with us. For the first time, I felt part of the Kāla Chakra, the living wheel of time. And for the first time, I understood that the past wasn't just memory — it was alive, and I could touch it.