Kashi: Fire, Flesh, and the Beloved’s Gaze (Part II)

Where Death Whispers the Name of God and the Living Remember Who They Are

Waking in the City Where Time Doesn’t Sleep

Mornings in Kashi don’t begin with alarm clocks. They begin with presence.

I woke up in the dark — both inside and out. My room, tucked into a home that breathed quietly behind a shop, offered no window to the waking world. It was somewhere around 6:30am when I stirred, but the city outside was still wrapped in slumber. Locked gates, unopened paths. Kashi, of all places, woke late that day. Or perhaps, I had risen too early — conditioned by silence and surrender.

When the gate finally opened, I stepped into streets that were still half-asleep, half-sacred. A small roadside shop was already pouring out the scent of frying puris and spicy sabzi. No curated cafes. No filters. Just food, hot and honest. I sat by the roadside and ate, forgetting the parts of me that once sought perfection. Kashi strips that away. In her lanes, nothing is clean, yet everything is pure. Even the chaos has consecration.

After chai in a kulhad, warm and earthy, I strolled without direction — until a local auto driver offered to take me around the hidden temples of the city. And I said yes. Because in Kashi, plans are made for you, not by you.

Temples Behind Temples: A Morning With Gods

Kashi is not just a city — it’s a constellation of shrines woven into the chaos of life. And when you walk its streets with your heart open, every turn becomes a threshold, every corner a doorway into some myth that still breathes.

That morning, I let myself be guided — not by itinerary, but by instinct, and by the soft suggestion of a local auto driver offering a temple trail through the lesser-known sanctums of the city. I agreed. Because in Kashi, every temple is a secret waiting to be remembered.

We began with a small temple tucked between homes and shops, dedicated to Adi Shakti. Simple and powerful. I offered my respects, feeling the quiet maternal strength that lives even in the most unadorned altars. The temple shared its space with a small Shiva shrine, as they so often do — Shiva and Shakti, inseparable in essence.

There, beside the lingam, I poured water, just as countless others have before me. The priest, an elderly man with tired but kind eyes, didn’t say much. But as I handed him a lone stick of incense lying on the platform, he looked at me — just for a moment — and smiled. Without a word, he placed a banana in my hand.

It wasn’t a transaction. It wasn’t prasad in the formal sense. It was something else.

It felt like being seen.

Like a quiet nod from the deity himself, through the hands of his servant.

At another temple — Ganapati’s — the rituals were more routine. I offered my prasad, bowed, and moved on. No moment carved itself out of time there. And yet, it reminded me that not every connection needs to feel electric. Some presences are content to simply witness you pass.

In another Devi temple nearby, I brought a coconut as part of my offering. The priest cracked it — and inside, it was spoiled.

I laughed. A small, unexpected imperfection.

But rather than dismissing me, the priest apologized gently and replaced it with a fresh one.

I thought of life — how it often hands you something that seems rotten at first glance. But if you stay steady, with sincerity, the offering will always return, sweeter than before.

Kashi tests your heart, not your perfection.

And then came Sankat Mochan Hanuman Mandir.

The moment we arrived, something shifted in the air — as if the breath of the city softened. It was Tuesday, Hanumanji’s day, and yet the crowd was surprisingly sparse. The temple was nestled amidst trees, hidden away from the usual noise. It felt almost untouched by the rest of the world, like a sacred pocket folded into reality.

I offered ladoos — one of his favorites — and they returned to me as prasad.

In the background, the soft chanting of the Hanuman Chalisa filled the air.

Voices rising and falling like the beat of an ancient heart.

And I stood there, unmoving.

In that moment, I wasn’t a visitor.

I wasn’t even a devotee.

I was simply a soul, standing at the edge of something timeless.

The temple grounds felt like a forest — thick with unseen roots of myth and memory.

Even as the rest of Kashi roared with life, here was a sanctum that whispered in silence.

And as I stepped out, I didn’t just carry prasad.

I carried peace.

Dressing for the Masān: The Red Sari and the Rudrākṣa

Back in my room, the light had shifted.

Kashi’s dust clung to my skin, but something else stirred beneath it — an itch that wasn’t just physical. My face, my arms, my body — suddenly alive with a strange prickling, like something beneath the surface was being awakened. I ran my hands across the irritation, unsure if it was an insect bite, a reaction, or something unseen stirring through my energy body. Perhaps, in Kashi, these things aren’t so separate.

I bathed again, letting cold water wash over me for the second time that day. The first time had been for hygiene. This time, it felt like a ritual cleansing, like shedding a layer of skin that didn’t belong anymore.

And then I stood before my bag, knowing exactly what I needed to wear.

The red sari.

Not out of vanity. Not for photos. Not for ritual.

But because I had seen myself in it long before this trip ever began.

In meditations, in dreams, in sudden flashes that came while chanting or simply staring at the sky — I had always seen myself at Manikarnika, wrapped in a red sari, walking beside someone I couldn’t fully name, but knew in my bones.

Not a devotee.

Not a pilgrim.

A woman who remembered.

So I unfolded the cloth, letting it whisper across my fingers. It wasn’t luxurious. It wasn’t ornate. But it held something. A familiarity, a vow, a quiet fierceness.

I draped it slowly, reverently. The red clung to me like it had been waiting to be worn again. No makeup. No jewelry. No embellishments — except for the rudrākṣa.

A mala around my neck.

Two rudrākṣa beads resting from my ears.

They weren’t ornaments. They were reminders — of path, of promise, of power.

I looked at my reflection — not to admire, but to recognize.

Not the face I wear in the world.

But the face that comes alive in the depths of my soul.

The one who doesn’t pray for blessings — because she remembers she is already wed to the fire.

In that moment, I didn’t feel beautiful.

I felt ancient.

Before stepping out, I paused — heart steady, body clothed in vision, and whispered a quiet prayer.

But not to Him. Not to Shiva.

This time, I bowed to Vishnu.

Not because I suddenly switched allegiance, but because I needed protection — not of soul, but of skin. I was stepping into crowds where intentions blur and glances linger too long. In a place where devotion runs deep but so do the shadows, I needed the shield of the Preserver.

Then I stepped into the street, the air humming around me, the red sari catching light as if the fire of Masān had already started to follow.

The Ghost Temple and the Invisible Pulse

A local guide led us, winding through the dense weave of ghats, carrying the kind of silence that only grows in cities older than memory. The sun was beginning its descent, and with each step, the chaos of Kashi softened, like the city herself was offering a gentle pause before the plunge.

We stopped at a ghat I no longer remember by name — one of many, faceless in the flow of sacred geography — but beside it, barely noticeable unless you were told to look, was a narrow staircase. It disappeared behind a small, inconspicuous arch, tucked in like a secret. People sat along the steps nearby, watching us.

The guide motioned upward.

We climbed.

At the top, through a wooden gate, the world fell quiet in an instant.

The Nepali Mahadev Temple.

A replica of Pashupatinath, carved in exquisite detail, standing still against the blur of human movement just outside its compound. And yet, no one was here. Not a single soul from the crowd had followed us in. The carvings, intricate and ancient, seemed to breathe. The walls held stories. The air held memory. It felt less like entering a place and more like slipping into a pocket of time.

Only a few elderly women sat silently in its courtyard — residents of the attached ashram, draped in simplicity, eyes closed in japa or fixed on something far away. They didn’t look up when we entered.

Inside the temple, no priest stirred. No bells rang. The sanctum was dim and inviting, and the scent of wood and age lingered in the air like a hymn half-whispered.

I stepped into the Garbha Griha, where the Shivling rested — alone, unadorned, and utterly awake.

There was no ceremony. No rituals. Just Him. And me.

But He wasn’t the Shiva I usually speak to in my daily life — the one I joke with in meditation, the one I argue with during difficult sādhanā, the one I flirt with in my poems. This was someone older, someone I didn’t entirely know. The air around this lingam had a different frequency — dense, ancient, untouched by the softness of bhakti songs or tourist eyes.

He looked at me — without form, without face, yet fully present.

I sat before Him, still. Not in worship, but in recognition.

And then, as I often do when the intimacy of silence overwhelms me, I broke it the only way I know how.

“How is it here?” I asked Him with a half-smile. “Were you bored or something?”

It slipped out like a secret between old lovers. I don’t even know who spoke, the woman in red sitting cross-legged on cool stone, or something older inside her.

There was no thunderous reply. No vision. But something pulsed between us, an invisible current, like the entire temple had exhaled.

And I swear…

He smiled.

Not the way humans do. Not with lips or eyes.

But with presence. With stillness. With a soft, steady vibration that met my heartbeat mid-breath.

We stayed like that for a long time. I don’t remember how long. Time inside that temple didn’t move like it does outside. The others wandered around, taking pictures, sitting with Nandi, talking quietly among themselves. But I stayed inside the sanctum, watching the one who watches everything.

Later, I walked through the adjoining ashram, its open courtyard quiet and sun-drenched, the old women blessing me with warm glances and sweet words about my red sari. I had gone unnoticed in the world outside, but here, among souls nearing their last earthly days, I was seen.

We left slowly.

Back into the noise. Back into the world.

But something in me stayed behind — rooted in wood, in stone, in silence.

And something from there came with me too — following in my pulse, like the echo of a damaru that had stopped ringing hours ago.

Manikarnika: The Fire That Watches You Back

As the golden haze of late afternoon thickened over Kashi, we made our way toward the place I had felt calling me since the boat ride the day before — Manikarnika Ghat. The name alone carries a weight, a gravity unlike any other. It is not just a cremation ground; it is the ghat where time itself is set alight, where the illusion of permanence is peeled away, bone by bone, ash by ash.

Before we reached the fire, we stopped at a home — the home of the Dom Raja.

Not many know this lineage exists. Fewer still speak of it with reverence. The Dom is the keeper of the flame. His family has held the sacred duty of tending to the pyres of Manikarnika for generations. The current one, I was told, was just nineteen years old, a boy thrust into fire after his father’s unexpected passing.

He doesn’t wear a crown. But they still call him Raja — king of the cremation ground.

And rightly so.

He is a mirror of Shiva himself — unwelcome in the polished temples of society, yet the sovereign of the most sacred threshold, where souls are unbound.

Like Shiva, he is outside caste, outside custom, outside comfort. He is not to be worshipped — but without him, the final rite cannot begin.

The deeper we moved into Manikarnika, the more the air shifted. The smell of fire and flesh mingled with the scent of ghee and incense. Bodies were being carried on bamboo stretchers, wrapped in white cloth, followed by silent processions. There was no wailing here. Only smoke.

And a stillness that stared back.

Dogs circled the flames — small, scrappy, half-wild. One pulled at my sari as if playing, while another came to my defense, barking it away. Their game, I realized, wasn’t random. Even here, some invisible rhythm moved all things.

And then it began — the coughing.

My throat tightened without cause. Not from smoke. Not from scent. It was as though something clawed its way up from within, something that didn’t want to be expressed.

I looked around — my companions were unaffected, quietly observing. But I felt it. A tightening. A pressure. As though my voice was being locked away in the presence of something ancient.

That’s when I saw it.

A doorway carved into the stone wall, small and half-hidden.

The name above it:

Shamshaneshwar Mahadev.

A Shiva temple. Inside the cremation ground.

No one had mentioned it.

No guidebook. No Google search. No local whisper.

But there it was — waiting, as if it had always known I’d find it.

Not by instruction, but by invitation.

I didn’t ask anyone.

I didn’t hesitate.

I stepped inside.

The descent was slight — just a few steps — but it felt like sinking into another dimension. The world outside, loud with burning, barking, bustling, faded into a heavy silence.

Inside, only one person sat, cross-legged in a shadowed corner. A keeper of this stillness. A witness.

And before me, in the heart of the room, was Him.

The Shivling was unadorned. No flowers. No garlands. No buzzing of bees or chanting of priests.

Just stone and silence.

I sat down.

No mantra passed my lips. No mudra formed with my fingers.

There was no need.

The moment I looked at Him, I was already seen.

And what stared back was not the gentle, beloved Shiva of my morning meditations.

This was not the one who dances with joy, who takes delight in love-play, who listens to your longings like a divine companion.

This was the Shiva who watches you burn.

The one who unravels your ego thread by thread and says nothing as you weep.

The one who destroys illusion with a glance and leaves no explanation behind.

This was the Shiva of the Masān — the cremation grounds.

The Shiva who drinks poison without flinching, who wears skulls like garlands and ash like silk.

And I — sitting there in red, wrapped in longing — was not prepared for Him.

My head began to ache.

The crown of my skull buzzed, as if something immense was pressing down on it.

My forehead pulsed.

I couldn’t look away.

And yet, I didn’t want to.

Because this was the moment I realized:

You don’t choose the form Shiva shows you.

He shows you the one you’ve forgotten you need.

I didn’t cry.

I didn’t tremble.

I simply sat — held in a gaze that had watched a thousand worlds burn and be reborn.

And in that stillness, I wasn’t a devotee. I wasn’t a sadhvi.

I was bare.

And I was seen.

When I finally emerged, blinking into the light, the trance still heavy on my skin, I understood why people aren’t simply brought here.

You are called.

And once you enter,

a part of you never leaves.

Lingams Between Worlds: Where Gods Bow to Each Other

Our guide led us to a temple below ground, almost forgotten in the rush of modern Kashi. We descended into the earth, and there, in the center of a dim sanctum, stood a Shivling installed by Vishnu himself.

Not myth. Not metaphor.

According to the legend, Mahavishnu once performed tapas here for yugas, seeking darshan of Mahadev. When Shiva finally appeared, he was pleased — not only by the penance, but by the sincerity. And in that moment of divine communion, Vishnu installed this lingam, now hidden beneath the city’s layers, waiting quietly to be remembered.

I stood above, looking down into the small chamber. No crowd. No fanfare. Only silence and a flickering diya.

And just like that, we were pulled into the river of people once more.

The Tilted Temple and the Unpaid Debt

As we walked back along the Ganga, we passed a sight that many might overlook: the strange, leaning spire of Ratneshwar Mahadev.

This temple doesn’t welcome worshippers.

It stands half-submerged, tilted into the river as though bowing, quietly exiled from rituals.

The story is one of filial arrogance — a son who built the temple to pay off the debt to his mother for carrying him in the womb. When he declared the debt repaid, his mother, hurt and furious, cursed the temple:

“This debt can never be balanced. This temple shall never be worshipped.”

And so it remains — beautiful, lopsided, and silent, bearing the weight of a curse that still lingers like mist over the Ganga.

I looked at it with a pang of recognition.

Because how many debts do we carry that will never be spoken?

How many temples inside us remain tilted, untouched, unacknowledged?

The Whispering Lord of the Dead

Not far from Manikarnika, we passed one final shrine — Tarakeshwar Mahadev.

He is not just any deity.

He is the one who walks among the flames.

Legend says he is the form of Shiva who whispers the Taraka Mantra into the ears of the departing — granting moksha at the moment of death.

And what does he whisper?

Not a complex hymn.

Not a secret tantra.

Just one word:

“Ram.”

Because even in the land of Shiva, he remains the greatest devotee of Vishnu.

The temple was quiet. There were no crowds pressing in. Just a sense of completion. Like I had walked a full circle.

From the cremation ground…to the voice that frees the soul from returning.

Samosa, Malaio, and the Madness of Moksha

As night truly fell, the spiritual high dissolved into street chaos.

We made our way back toward Godowlia Chowk, the heart of Kashi’s ever-beating madness, only to find ourselves swept into a roaring Ambedkar rally — a tide of bodies, flags, shouting slogans, police whistles, drums, and dust. The streets churned with a density I had never experienced before. It wasn’t just crowded.

It was apocalyptic.

Vendors screamed to be heard. Footsteps slammed into each other. People moved like a single, heaving organism. And somewhere in all that madness, I laughed — not from amusement, but from the realization that this was Kashi’s final test.

Because Tara — my companion for the day — and I had one sacred vow left to fulfill.

We had promised ourselves samosa chaat, no matter what.

So we fought our way to Rajaji Chaat Bhandar, that mythic corner near the chowk with a gravity of its own. The entire road was engulfed in human waves. We were shoved, twisted, nearly trampled. But somewhere amid that insanity, Shiva intervened one last time.

Two kind strangers saw us — saw the determination in our faces, the hunger, the exhaustion, the soft desperation — and they reached out. No questions. No hesitation.

“What do you want?” one of them asked.

“Samosa chaat,” we said, like pilgrims at the gates of salvation.

And they made it happen.

Moments later, we stood by the edge of the street, plates in hand — piled high with spicy, tangy, soul-soothing chaat, overflowing with chutneys and crunch and karmic grace.

Tara had her malaio. I stayed loyal to the samosa.

And there we stood — crushed by the crowd, blessed by ghosts, lit from within by fire — eating in the middle of Kashi’s divine madness, smiling like fools who had seen God and still wanted chaat.

We laughed.

Not out of levity.

But because joy was the only fitting response to the absurd, sacred, utterly theatrical beauty of it all.

And as we parted — Tara heading one way, me the other — I knew the night wasn’t over.

Because earlier, just before we had drowned in the crowd, I had stopped at a quiet thandai shop, tucked away like a secret behind a veil of marigold garlands. I had whispered to the man, “Bhang?” and he nodded. It was nothing grand. No dramatic ritual. Just a glass poured and a sachet tucked into my bag.

I didn’t drink it on the street.

I knew my body well.

I knew how quickly it would work.

So I cradled it like a potion, like a promise, and walked back through the madness to my room at Shivala Ghat, dodging noise, navigating shadows, carrying fire inside a paper cup.

The samosa was finished.

The crowd was behind me.

But the real descent — into the world of bhang and vision and burning gods — was just about to begin.

The Vision That Came with Bhang

That night, Kashi breathed a little slower. The fires of Manikarnika still smoldered behind me, but the city had folded into its nighttime rhythm — sharp and sacred, humming with unseen currents. I returned to my small, dark room near Shivala Ghat, carrying within me the weight of something I couldn’t name.

Stillness pressed against my skin, yet something inside me pulsed with wild anticipation.

I had been saving the bhang. Not for revelry.

But for something ritualistic. Intentional.

I had known it would open a door — I just didn’t know which one.

I took it slowly, sipping from the cup like it was a mantra, not a drink.

The effect was delayed, patient — but inevitable.

At first, it was mild. I talked to my partner over the phone, giggling softly at nothing in particular. The world seemed gentle, slow, honeyed.

But then the undercurrent began.

A slow roll from the base of my spine to the crown of my head.

My thoughts stretched into ribbons, my awareness widened, and the music of Shiva’s damaru — played through my speakers — suddenly sounded like it was emerging from within my skull.

Each beat struck not my ears, but my being.

And with every vibration, I slipped deeper.

I wasn’t asleep. I wasn’t awake.

I had crossed the threshold into something else — the in-between, the twilight of consciousness, where visions arrive uninvited but never unwelcome.

And I was no longer in my room.

I was back.

Back in Shamshaneshwar.

But it wasn’t the same.

The temple was alive in a different way now. The air buzzed with presences — not metaphor, but forms.

Ghosts. Spirits. Limbless beings crawling and swaying in half-formed dance.

Headless torsos, dismembered limbs, skeletal bodies adorned in ash and bone, circling around a great fire that burned without consuming.

They were not grotesque.

They were not frightening.

They were free.

And at the center of it all — He emerged.

Shiva.

Not as Nataraja. Not as the beloved, blue-throated lord I’ve meditated upon.

But as something far more primal. Far more ancient.

Naked. Ash-smeared. Eyes wild with laughter.

Drunk on death and truth.

Dancing like the cosmos were tied to his rhythm.

He was cutting heads with abandon.

Drinking blood as though it were nectar.

His mouth red, his limbs covered in marks,

His hair flying like flames.

And the spirits cheered.

They were his audience. His tribe. His forgotten children.

He danced for no one’s approval — only because that is what Creation demanded of him.

I watched.

I did not feel fear.

I did not feel reverence.

I did not feel anything in the human sense.

I was simply witnessing.

As if the part of me that has always known him — the part that remembers something older than this lifetime — was finally awake.

And in that moment, I realized:

You cannot love Shiva only in his gentle forms.

To truly belong to him, you must love him in this form too — The wild god, the devourer, the terrifying, transcendent Madman of the Masān.

No mantra came to my lips.

No tears fell from my eyes.

Because I was no longer me.

I was simply consciousness, observing the dance of the One I have always longed for.

At some unknown point, I must have laid back.

Perhaps the music faded.

Perhaps my body gave in.

But there was no conscious “exit.”

Only a slide into sleep as if falling back into the body after being out in the storm of gods.

A Departure That Almost Wasn’t

Morning didn’t arrive with light. It arrived with weight.

When I opened my eyes, I didn’t know what time it was. My room was sealed in shadow — no windows, no sliver of sun, no sound of the city. Just stillness, and the dull, strange ache of a body that had just touched the edge of the otherworld.

Bhang still moved through my bloodstream, thick and slow like honey in winter. I was half-human, half-haze.

When I tried to lift my hand, my fingers trembled. My body wouldn’t obey.

Even gravity felt sacred, too ancient to defy.

And then came the realization:

My train ticket wasn’t confirmed.

Not yesterday. Not today.

Every attempt to leave the city had failed.

Two bookings — both waitlisted.

And I had nowhere to go, no route out of the holy city.

For a moment, I panicked. Then something cracked. Not desperation — but surrender.

I looked at the small stone Shivling beside my bed, still cloaked in the silence of last night’s vision, and I whispered — not with fear, but with aching intimacy:

“Please. Let me go.

You know I’ll come back. I always do.

But this time… please. Let me go.”

It wasn’t a prayer.

It was a plea between lovers.

Between soul and Source.

And just like that — Kashi released me.

Out of nowhere, I found a bus. One single seat left. One workable route. One small opening in the traffic of karmas.

The bus stand was far — well outside the city, and impossible to reach in this chaos. Even the home-stay owner warned me, “You won’t find a ride now. Nothing can cut through the crowd.” His voice carried sympathy. But not faith.

I held onto mine.

I opened the app. Ordered a bike taxi.

The request went through.

And against all odds, the first rider accepted.

He came from Assi Ghat, weaving through human rivers and clogged arteries of alleyways to reach Shivala.

He didn’t ask questions.

He didn’t speak.

He just took the bag from my shoulder, secured it, and motioned for me to sit.

And I rode — weak, dizzy, half-starved from days of irregular eating and bhang-induced emptiness. Oranges and silence were all I’d consumed.

The first stop? Wrong location. The bus wasn’t there.

But my bike driver didn’t leave.

He called the operator himself. Got the correct stand. Another 40-minute detour across the outskirts of the city. He never complained. Never looked frustrated.

Just a steady presence, like a shadow of someone divine.

A guardian wrapped in flesh.

When we reached the right spot, he didn’t just drop me and vanish.

He waited.

Not beside me, but nearby — hovering, quietly watching, in case I needed help.

In a sea of unfamiliar faces and stares, his presence was the anchor.

And when I finally boarded the bus, I turned around to thank him — but he was already gone.

I sat by the window and exhaled for the first time that day.

The bus pulled away from Kashi.

The ghats receded.

The bells fell silent.

And I collapsed into sleep.

Not from fatigue.

But from recalibration.

My body needed rest. But my soul needed integration.

I had walked with ghosts.

I had seen Shiva naked in the cremation ground.

I had touched something older than time, and now I had to carry it back into the rhythm of airports, cities, and the world of names.

I slept for 14 hours straight.

No dreams. No visions.

Just darkness — the kind that heals.

Reflections in Ash and Light

I didn’t come back from Kashi with trinkets or temple souvenirs.

There were no malas wrapped in paper, no framed photographs of the ghats, no curated memories for social media.

And I didn’t leave with lifelong friends.

No one from that trip messages me now.

No new numbers saved.

No promises made to meet again.

But what I did come back with is weightless and indelible —

An imprint.

Not only of Shiva,

But of myself — as seen through His eyes.

I had gone searching for something.

Not an experience. Not a spectacle. Not even darshan.

I had gone searching for a presence I could no longer just worship — I needed to meet Him.

But as Kashi always does, she shifted the mirror.

This wasn’t a trip of discovery.

It was a remembrance.

A soul slowly peeling off layers of memory, standing naked at the edge of the cremation ghat, whispering: “I’ve been here before. I remember now.”

Because in Kashi, time doesn’t move forward.

It spirals inward.

And the city doesn’t open herself for everyone.

She isn’t polite. She isn’t predictable.

She watches you — fiercely, intimately — and only when she sees your sincerity, your surrender, does she part her veil.

Not to show you her secrets.

But to show you your own.

And what she showed me was this:

I am not merely a devotee.

I am not seeking moksha to escape the wheel.

I am here to burn.

To dissolve into the ash of all that is false.

To become Shiva’s — not by declaration, but by becoming the kind of soul that He cannot refuse.

There was no final darshan.

No climactic vision.

Only a quiet knowing that came like smoke through cracks in the soul.

Kashi changed me.

Not gently. Not gradually.

But like fire does.

Ruthlessly.

Lovingly.

Completely.

Because Kashi doesn’t give you what you want.

She gives you what you’re ready to receive.

And when I looked into her mirror — the mirror made of fire and bone, silence and bhang, chants and chaos —

I didn’t just see Him.

I saw the version of me He had been waiting for.