The Ethics of Tenderness

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While We Are Here

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 04:41:34 GMT

Photo by Wiki Sinaloa on Unsplash

I have been thinking a lot lately about the strange preciousness of being human. And about how easily the attention given to us can become occupied by things that seem important for a time. These two pieces sit together as a small meditation on that movement: the gift of human life, and the desires for profit, adoration and distinction that can quietly shape how we inhabit it.
I find myself returning to a simple question. What might become possible if, for a little while, I paid closer attention to what I am doing with this life, and to what my heart is learning to value?

The Human Form of Life

There are moments
when I look at a human face
and wonder at the strange privilege
of being here.

To wake beneath a morning sky,
to hear the birds begin their small songs,
to hold a warm cup between the hands,
to know that one day
these hands will grow still.

The body arrives
without asking our permission.

We are given eyes
and spend years learning how to see.
We are given a voice
and spend years discovering
what is worth saying.

We are given a mind
that can remember yesterday,
imagine tomorrow,
and, for a brief and astonishing moment,
become quiet enough
to notice what is here.

Perhaps this is the preciousness
of the human form.

Not simply that we can think,
or build,
or gather things around ourselves,
but that somewhere within all our wanting
there is the capacity to turn inward
and ask:

Who am I
beneath the names I have been given?

What is this life
asking me to notice?

What remains
when the roles fall away?

A bird knows the morning.
A tree receives the rain.
An animal seeks food, shelter, affection,
and moves instinctively
toward life.

We share these ancient hungers.

Yet human life carries
this curious pause.

We can stop.

We can look at our own desire
before following it.
We can feel anger rise
and wonder where it came from.
We can lose something
and still choose tenderness.
We can receive another living being
as something more than an object
in the landscape of our needs.

We can remember
that life is passing through us.

This body will change.
The face in the mirror
already belongs partly to yesterday.

Still, something in us
longs for what does not pass so quickly.

A longing for meaning.
For truth.
For love that is not possession.
For a way of living
that leaves the heart
a little clearer than it found it.

Perhaps devotion begins there,
in that quiet turning.

A flower placed gently
upon an altar.

A name remembered
with affection.

A meal received with gratitude.

A moment of kindness
when nobody is watching.

A hand resting on another hand
without needing to explain anything.

The sacred may be much closer
than I sometimes imagine.

Perhaps the human form
is precious because it gives us time
to become conscious of our belonging
to something larger than the small story
of the self.

And yet we forget.

Of course we forget.

We hurry through the days,
scrolling past faces,
collecting opinions,
measuring our lives against lives
we cannot possibly know.

Then something happens.

A child laughs in the next room.
An old tree gives shade.
Someone forgives us.
Someone we love leaves.

For a moment
the machinery of the mind stops.

We are simply here.

Breathing.

Listening.

Alive.

And I wonder
if this is part of the gift:

that human life gives us
the possibility of remembering
what we are beneath the noise,

and of offering our attention
back to life itself.

Not as an achievement.

Not as a doctrine.

Just this quiet opportunity
to see more deeply
while we are here.

Because the years move quickly.

The body comes.
The body goes.

But while it is ours to inhabit,
perhaps we can learn
to use these eyes for seeing,
these hands for serving,
this mind for understanding,
and this heart
for remembering love.

For one brief human lifetime,
we have been given
the astonishing chance
to awaken.

Profit, Adoration, Distinction

I have watched how quietly
these three can enter a life.

Profit.

Adoration.

Distinction.

They rarely arrive announcing themselves.
They slip into ordinary things.

A little more money.
A little more recognition.
A name spoken with admiration.
The feeling of being someone
worth noticing.

There is nothing strange
about wanting to live well.

I understand that.

I like comfort.
I like beautiful things.
I know the small pleasure
of someone saying,
“That was beautiful.”

The trouble begins somewhere deeper,
in the moment the heart
starts keeping accounts.

What did I receive?

Who noticed?

Who thanked me?

Who knows what I have done?

I can feel it in myself sometimes,
that small movement inward,
where an offering becomes a transaction
and kindness quietly waits
for an audience.

Profit has its place.

We need food,
a roof,
enough to live.

But when profit becomes the measure
of what is worthwhile,
the world begins to shrink.

A tree becomes timber.
A field becomes property.
A person becomes useful
or inconvenient.

Even time becomes something
to be converted into gain.

And then there is adoration.

How easily I can begin
to hunger for the gaze of others.

A compliment arrives
and I carry it for days.

Silence arrives
and I wonder what I did wrong.

I tell myself
I am sharing something beautiful,
yet somewhere underneath
there may be a small wish
to be seen as beautiful too.

This is such a subtle thing.

The heart can hide its motives
even from itself.

Distinction is quieter still.

The wish to stand apart.
To be exceptional.
To have a place
slightly higher than the rest.

I can dress it in noble language.

Knowledge.
Success.
Spiritual understanding.
Good taste.

Still, beneath it
there may be that old human whisper:

Look at me.

See that I am different.

And perhaps this is where
the teachings of bhakti
touch something very ordinary in me.

They turn my attention
away from what I can accumulate
and toward what I can offer.

The question changes.

Not,

How much can I gain?

But,

What can I give?

Not,

Who is admiring me?

But,

Whom am I remembering?

Not,

How can I become important?

But,

Can I become useful
to something beyond myself?

I find this strangely freeing.

The flower does not need applause
for opening.

The river does not keep a record
of who drank from it.

The sun gives light
without asking which face
deserves it.

Perhaps devotion carries
something of that simplicity.

To act carefully.
To work honestly.
To receive what comes
without making it the centre.

To offer what I have
before I begin calling it mine.

Even distinction changes then.

I may still become good at something.
I may still create,
write,
build,
teach,
earn.

Perhaps excellence itself
is not the difficulty.

It is the little claim
I place around it.

Mine.

My achievement.

My importance.

My name.

And I wonder
what happens when that claim
loosens, even slightly.

The work remains.

The beauty remains.

The usefulness remains.

Only the hunger
to possess the praise
begins to soften.

Profit can become provision.

Adoration can become gratitude.

Distinction can become responsibility.

And the heart,
for a moment,
has a little more room.

Room to notice another person.

Room to serve without being seen.

Room to remember
that whatever I have been given
was passing through my hands
for a while.

Perhaps that is enough.

To live in the world
without allowing the world
to become the measure of the heart.

To receive.

To offer.

To remember.

And, when I forget,
to begin again.

On the Other Side of the Line

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 03:36:28 GMT

Image: TShirtEmpire

There is always an other.

Someone standing
on the far side of a line
I barely noticed being drawn.

The stranger on the train.
The neighbour whose beliefs
make me uncomfortable.
The person scrolling past my words
with a life I cannot imagine.

I can make the distance
feel very reasonable.

A difference in language.
A different god.
A different politics,
a different way of loving,
of living,
of seeing the world.

It is remarkably easy
to place another human being
inside a category
and then forget
there is a heart beating there.

But sometimes I stop.

I wonder
what I look like
from the other side.

Perhaps I am someone’s other.

Someone has looked at me
and quietly drawn a line.

Too strange.
Too certain.
Too spiritual.
Too much.
Too little.

Perhaps somewhere
I am the person
someone has decided
they cannot understand.

The thought catches me.

Because I have spent years
looking for the place
where I belong,
while forgetting
how often belonging
is built by deciding
who does not.

And then there are moments
when something in me softens.

A face becomes a face again.

A stranger becomes
a person carrying a morning
I know nothing about.

The argument becomes
a human voice.

The person I had reduced
to a single word
opens, briefly,
into a whole life.

I do not suddenly understand them.

Perhaps I do not need to.

I only need to look again.

This, I think,
is where devotion begins for me.

Not in having the right answers,
nor in becoming
some perfected version of myself,

but in learning to see
a little more carefully.

To remember
that whatever name I give
the person before me,
there is something sacred
I cannot quite name
looking back at me.

And perhaps
that is the quiet irony:

I keep searching for God
somewhere beyond the other,

while the other
keeps appearing
in front of me.

And I am there too.

The stranger.
The difficult one.
The one who thinks differently.

The other.

Perhaps we have been
standing on opposite sides
of a line
that neither of us drew.

Perhaps consciousness
is simply the moment
I notice the line

and take one small step
towards the heart
that was there all along.

If There Were No Others

I sometimes wonder
what the world would look like
if we stopped making others.

Not strangers.
Not enemies.
Not people on the other side
of some invisible line.

Just people.

Perhaps the morning news
would sound different.

A face would appear on the screen
and I would see a face
before I saw a nationality,
a religion,
a party,
a border.

Perhaps I would listen
a little longer.

On the train,
someone speaking a language
I do not understand
would simply be someone
speaking.

A woman crossing the street
with a tired child
would not need to belong
to my kind of people
for something in me
to recognise her.

Perhaps the neighbour
whose opinions irritate me
could remain my neighbour.

I would still disagree.

I would still walk away
sometimes.

Human beings would remain
complicated.

But perhaps I would no longer
need to make another person
smaller
so I could feel secure
inside my own idea of myself.

What would happen
to the words we use
when we want to divide?

Them.
Us.
Those people.
People like that.

Would they begin
to sound strange
in our mouths?

And what would happen
inside me?

I suspect this is where
the real work would begin.

Because it is easy
to imagine a world
without others
while quietly keeping
a few people
in the category.

The difficult one.
The selfish one.
The ignorant one.
The person who hurt me.

Perhaps even then
I would need to ask:

Can I see the person
before the story I have made
about them?

I wonder if the world
would become quieter.

Not peaceful exactly.

There would still be grief.
Anger.
Loss.
Politics.
Broken hearts.
Doors that need to be closed.

There would still be
things we cannot permit,
wrongs that need naming,
boundaries that protect
what is tender.

Yet perhaps
a boundary would remain
a boundary
without becoming a wall.

Perhaps difference
could simply be difference.

A river does not need
to become the ocean
to belong to the water.

A tree does not ask
the tree beside it
to become another tree.

And perhaps I could stand
beside another human being
without requiring
either of us
to disappear.

I imagine looking around
and seeing fewer categories,
fewer camps,
fewer faces carrying
the burden of representing
an entire people.

Just this person.

And this one.

Each carrying
a private universe
I will never completely know.

Perhaps that is what
the world might look like
without others:

not a world
where everyone agrees,

but a world
where no one needs
to be reduced
to remain separate.

And perhaps,
in that kind of seeing,
something quietly changes.

The stranger remains a stranger.

Yet somehow
the distance is gone.

The Night I Lost My Beads at Sri Radha-kunda

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 03:10:13 GMT

Images: Lumi

It was sometime in the early 1980s when a convoy of buses gathered in front of Krishna Balarama Mandir in Vrindavana, India, for the annual journey to celebrate the Appearance Day of Sri Radha-kunda. There was at least half a dozen buses lined up. Each filled with devotees from every corner of the world. Seats had been allocated in advance, although “allocated” in India has always possessed a wonderfully flexible meaning. The familiar dance of organised pandemonium unfolded as everyone searched for their places. Bags were passed through open windows. Names were called above the commotion. And someone was forever convinced they were on the wrong bus.

By late afternoon we were finally moving.

Vrindavana slowly slipped behind us as the bus rattled through the Braj countryside. The road seemed almost alive. Bullock carts creaked beneath impossible loads of hay. Women in brilliant saris carried brass pots upon their heads with effortless grace. Herds of white cows wandered wherever they pleased, occasionally deciding the middle of the road was the perfect place to rest. Children waved enthusiastically as our buses passed, while old men wrapped in white dhotis sat beneath banyan trees watching another day drift quietly toward evening.

Dust rose in soft clouds behind every passing truck, tinting the lowering sun a deep copper. The warm breeze carried the scent of earth, wood smoke and fresh cow dung fires. Somewhere nearby a temple bell echoed across the fields. Inside our bus, the gentle murmur of japa mixed with quiet conversations and the rhythmic chanting of “Hare Krishna” that would begin, fade away, then begin again as different voices joined.

India never really becomes quiet.

Eventually we reached one of the railway crossings that everyone dreaded (if you know, you know!). As the barriers came down, a procession of buses, bicycles, tractors, bullock carts and pedestrians started to gather. Vendors somehow materialised from nowhere, weaving effortlessly between vehicles selling roasted peanuts, sweet chai, sliced guavas dusted with chilli, and tiny clay cups filled with milk. The wait seemed eternal, until finally the distant whistle announced the approaching train. It thundered past in a blur of metal. Passengers leaning from open windows. Children waving enthusiastically as if we had been waiting only for them. Then, as suddenly as it had stopped, the whole river of traffic lurched back into motion.

Darkness had settled by the time we arrived near Radha-kunda.

The township itself had become far too crowded for buses to enter. Tens of thousands of pilgrims had come from every part of India, and the world, to honour the sacred day. Our buses were parked well outside the town, leaving us to continue on foot beneath a moonlit sky.

The streets had become rivers of humanity.

Oil lamps flickered before tiny shrines. Shopkeepers called out softly to passing pilgrims. The fragrance of incense mingled with wood smoke, jasmine garlands and fresh sweets frying in enormous iron karahis. Everywhere came the sounds of bells, conch shells, kirtana, children laughing, old women softly reciting prayers, wandering sadhus greeting familiar faces, and the endless murmur of thousands of feet moving toward one destination.

Every lane seemed to lead toward the water.

When at last we reached Radha-kunda, the crowd seemed to soften into reverence.

My spiritual teacher, Śrīla Prabhupāda, had instructed in The Nectar of Instruction that devotees should never enter these waters with their feet. Radha-kunda is understood to be the most sacred of holy places. Non-different from Srimati Radharani herself. Rather than bathing in the ordinary sense, we respectfully offered our obeisances and sprinkled three drops of the sacred water upon our heads.

That was enough.

More than enough.

Afterwards many of us simply sat upon the ancient stone steps descending into the still, dark water. The moon rested gently upon its surface, broken only by the smallest ripples.

Our fingers moved quietly over our japa beads.

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.

Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

There was no hurry anymore.

The sounds of the festival seemed distant now, as though the chanting itself had become another current flowing through the night.

Later we walked together to a small ashram tucked away among the narrow lanes. The room was illuminated only by candles and a few oil lamps. Shadows danced across weathered walls while a saintly sadhu spoke about the glories of Radha-kunda, of Sri Radha’s immeasurable love, and why this small body of water has been cherished by saints for centuries beyond counting.

Time felt strangely absent there.

The candlelight, the Sanskrit verses, the quiet faces gathered shoulder to shoulder—it all seemed to belong to another age.

Eventually we rose to leave.

Our buses would depart at a fixed hour, and thousands of pilgrims were now making the same journey back through the crowded streets toward waiting buses bound for towns and villages across Uttar Pradesh and far beyond.

Halfway back, my heart suddenly stopped.

My japa beads.

I had left them behind.

For most people they would have looked like little more than wooden beads in a cloth bag.

To me they were irreplaceable.

Before initiation, the guru personally chants upon those beads before placing them into the disciple’s hands. From that day onward they become intimate companions in one’s spiritual life. Every morning, every prayer, every whispered Holy Name passes through those same beads.

I could not leave them behind.

Yet the buses would not wait forever.

If ours departed without me, I would be stranded alone in the middle of the night in a place I scarcely knew, carrying little more than a cloth shoulder bag and no money.

For a brief moment fear and faith stood facing one another.

Then my feet had already turned around.

I plunged back into the crowd.

Only now the human river flowed directly against me.

Wave after wave of pilgrims pressed forward while I pushed in the opposite direction. Families, old men with walking sticks, children clinging to their mothers, saffron-clad sadhus, groups singing loudly, others silently absorbed in prayer. Dust filled the air. Voices called out. Bells rang from unseen temples. Incense drifted through the night. Bodies brushed against mine from every direction as I searched desperately for familiar landmarks.

Every narrow lane looked like the last.

More than once I wondered whether I had become completely lost.

Still something deeper than certainty kept pulling me onward.

I simply could not stop.

Then, almost impossibly, there it was.

The ashram.

I climbed the steps, hardly believing I had found it again.

The sadhu recognised me immediately.

Without surprise, without question, he smiled gently, reached beside him, and placed my japa beads back into my hands.

I have often wondered how they remained there waiting for me amid the hundreds of people moving through that little room.

Some would call it good fortune.

Others might call it coincidence.

Even now I quietly think of it as mercy.

Clutching my beads tightly, I offered my respects and thanks to the sadhu and hurried back once more.

This time the crowd carried me.

Instead of fighting against the current, I became part of it. The same sea of pilgrims that had moments before seemed impossible now gently swept me toward the waiting buses.

By the time I arrived, I discovered I had not been the only one delayed. A handful of other “stragglers” had also returned late from their own unexpected adventures, and one final bus had remained behind to gather us all before beginning the journey home.

As the bus rolled away into the Indian night, my fingers instinctively found the familiar beads resting inside their cloth bag.

I remember thinking how easily sacred things can slip from our hands, even when we believe we are holding them tightly.

And perhaps how patiently grace waits for us to turn back.

Epilogue

I have thought about that night many times over the years.

At first, I remembered it simply as the night I almost lost my beads. Later, it became the story of how I somehow found my way back through a town overflowing with pilgrims. Now, after all these years, it feels as though the beads were only the visible part of what was happening.

There are moments in life when devotion quietly asks a question: What is truly precious to you?

My mind was full of practical calculations. The bus would leave. I had no money. I scarcely knew where I was. It was the middle of the night in a place crowded with strangers. Every sensible thought argued for continuing on with everyone else.

Yet something deeper had already decided.

I turned around.

Perhaps that is how grace often enters a life. It does not always remove uncertainty. Sometimes it asks us to walk straight into it, carrying only the conviction that what we seek is worth the risk.

I still remember the feeling of pushing against that great tide of humanity. Thousands of people were moving in one direction while I struggled in the other. It occurs to me now that the spiritual journey can feel remarkably similar. The current of the world has its own momentum. It is easy to be carried wherever everyone else is going. Much harder to stop, turn around, and retrace one’s steps toward something that cannot be replaced.

Finding the ashram again remains one of those memories I have never fully explained. The lanes all looked alike. I had paid little attention to where we had walked the first time. Yet somehow I arrived at the right door, and there was the sadhu, quietly waiting with my beads, as though he had known I would return.

I have long since stopped asking whether it was coincidence.

The language of mercy rarely submits itself to proof.

When I think of that evening now, I do not remember the fear first. I remember the moon resting upon the still waters of Radha-kunda. I remember the gentle weight of my beads passing once again through my fingers. I remember climbing onto the last bus, not because I had succeeded through determination alone, but because I had been carried by kindness I could neither arrange nor deserve.

The beads themselves have grown smooth over the decades. Thousands upon thousands of Holy Names have passed through them since that night. They have travelled with me across countries, through seasons of certainty and seasons of doubt, through losses I never expected and joys I never imagined.

Sometimes, when they rest quietly in my hands before dawn, I think of that crowded township in Braj, the candlelit ashram, the smiling sadhu, and the impossible path that somehow opened through the night.

I no longer see that journey as a story about something I almost lost.

I see it as a reminder that the Lord is often caring for what we cannot keep hold of ourselves.

Our part is simply to turn back when the heart recognises what it has left behind.

Sri Radha-kunda ki jaya!

When Questions Become Offerings

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 01:15:33 GMT

There are journeys we choose, and then there are journeys that seem to choose us.
These two poems grew out of a question that has followed me for many years: What changes a life? Not what changes an opinion, or wins an argument, but what slowly alters the way we see ourselves, other people, and the world we share.
The first poem, From Skepticism to Spirituality, delves into the quiet movement from asking whether there is more to life than what can be measured. Or toward discovering that some of life’s deepest truths are encountered rather than proven. It is less about arriving at certainty than learning to live with greater openness, humility, and wonder.
The second, From Spirituality to Seva, continues that journey. It reflects on a realisation that has become increasingly difficult for me to ignore: that whatever insight we receive remains incomplete until it finds expression in the way we live. Spirituality, left entirely within ourselves, can become another possession. It only comes fully alive when it flows outward as kindness, attention, generosity, and service.
Although these poems were inspired by a spiritual tradition that has significantly shaped my life, they are not written for followers of any particular path. They are offered to anyone who has ever questioned, searched, doubted, hoped, or felt the quiet pull toward becoming a little less self-centred and a little more available to love.
Perhaps every authentic journey begins with a question; and perhaps every authentic journey continues with an offering.

From Skepticism to Spirituality

I did not arrive carrying faith.
I arrived with questions folded neatly
inside a mind that preferred evidence,
a heart that mistrusted easy answers,
and hands accustomed
to building a life from things that could be measured.

Wonder felt expensive.
Certainty belonged to louder people.

So I watched.

I watched trees surrender autumn
without calling it failure.
Birdsong interrupt the machinery of morning.
Old people become gentler
after grief had sanded away
their certainty about almost everything.

The world seemed to know
a language I had forgotten.

I kept looking.

Not for miracles.
For something quieter.

For whatever makes kindness
feel heavier than ambition.
For whatever leaves a room
after anger has finished speaking.
For the strange ache
that follows beauty
as though it is pointing somewhere
just beyond itself.

The questions remained.
They simply stopped demanding
that every answer
fit inside the mind.

I began to notice
that love asks very little
about my opinions.

It was patient enough
to wait outside the locked gate
of my conclusions.

Some mornings
I found myself listening
instead of analysing.

Some evenings
gratitude appeared
before I had remembered
to earn it.

Nothing spectacular happened.

No lightning.
No voice from the clouds.
Only the slow discovery
that attention itself
can become a kind of home.

The world had not changed.

The same headlines.
The same disappointments.
The same unfinished versions of me
walking through ordinary days.

Yet something subtle
had shifted direction.

I no longer stood
at the centre of every story.

Life felt less like a possession
and more like a gift
passing quietly through my hands.

Perhaps spirituality
was never another belief
waiting to replace skepticism.

Perhaps skepticism
had simply carried me
to the edge of itself,
where questions
learned humility,

and the heart,
without argument,
remembered
how to bow.

Not to fear.

Not to certainty.

But to the quiet mystery
that has always been waiting
beneath the noise,
asking only
that I become
a little more available
to love.

From Spirituality to Seva

There came a time
when collecting beautiful thoughts
no longer felt enough.

I had filled journals
with moments of awakening,
underlined passages
that seemed to know me,
spoken often
of presence,
gratitude,
stillness.

Each one was true.

Each one remained unfinished.

A tree does not admire
its own rootedness.

A river does not pause
to congratulate itself
for flowing.

Somewhere
I began to suspect
that the deepest things
are always moving outward.

Not to impress.
Not to rescue.
Simply because
love has a direction.

I noticed
that the smallest acts
left the longest echoes.

The patient conversation
no one else had time for.

The meal prepared
without expecting thanks.

The bird given water
during another impossible summer.

The stranger
who would never know
my name.

None of it felt heroic.

Most of it
would never become a story.

Yet these quiet offerings
returned home
lighter than they had left.

Slowly
I stopped asking,

What am I experiencing?

and found myself wondering,

What is being asked of me
here?

The world itself
became the invitation.

A broken fence.

A lonely neighbour.

An ageing parent.

A frightened child.

A forest
holding its breath.

The work arrived
wearing ordinary clothes.

Perhaps
this is what spirituality
was always trying to become.

Not another identity.

Not another collection
of comforting ideas.

A pair of hands
that forget themselves
while helping.

A heart
less interested
in being seen
than in seeing.

And somewhere
between the giving
and the forgetting,

I realised

that service
had never diminished me.

It had quietly dissolved
the walls
I once mistook
for myself.

What remained
was unexpectedly simple.

This life
had never asked me
to become extraordinary.

Only available.

Only willing.

Only loving enough
to let each ordinary day
become
an offering.

The Canary Is Screaming

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 07:46:01 GMT

Image: Lumi

Earlier this week I was listening to Canary in a Coal Mine by The Police, and it set me wondering about the expression itself. Where had it come from, and why had it endured? The more I sat with it, the more it seemed to describe a feeling that has quietly grown in me over recent years: the sense that we are surrounded by warning signs, yet have become remarkably good at explaining them away.
Before electronic gas detectors existed, coal miners carried canaries deep underground because the little birds were far more sensitive than humans to invisible, poisonous gases. If the canary stopped singing or showed signs of distress, it was time to climb back to the surface. The phrase has since become a metaphor for an early warning that something is deeply wrong. This poem begins with the thought that the canary is no longer quietly signalling danger. It is screaming, and the question is whether we are still willing to hear it.

Once,
they carried a small yellow bird into the dark
before they carried themselves.

Its tiny lungs
measured the invisible,
finding what human certainty
could neither smell nor see.

When the singing stopped,
wise men climbed back toward daylight.

I keep thinking of that bird.

Because the canary is singing again.
Only this time
its song has become a ragged cry
echoing through forests stripped to stumps,
across oceans warm enough
to forget their own boundaries,
through cities glowing all night
while sleep grows thinner
inside the people who built them.

It screams
from the cracked soil,
from rivers carrying more memory than fish,
from insects disappearing
without anyone noticing
until spring arrives
strangely quiet.

It screams
through children who inherit
algorithms before wonder,
through faces bent toward glowing glass
while the evening sky
waits without complaint.

The canary is screaming
from lonely houses,
where conversations have become notifications,
where neighbours know passwords
better than each other’s grief.

It screams
from markets that price everything
except enough,
from leaders rehearsing certainty
while the ground beneath them
keeps quietly shifting.

The strange thing is this:

we hear it.

We quote it.
Share it.
Argue about its meaning.

Some even remix its cry
into entertainment.

Still,
we descend a little deeper,
convinced that this time
the rules of the mine
have somehow changed.

Perhaps every age
believes the warning belongs
to someone else.

Perhaps the hardest thing
is not hearing the canary.

It is admitting
that the air surrounding us
has already entered our own lungs.

So the little bird
goes on screaming.

Not because it has abandoned hope.

Because hope,
I am beginning to suspect,
has never been the absence of warning.

Hope is the courage
to climb toward the light
while the song can still be heard.

Could it be that the canary has been singing within us all along, while the noise and distractions of the world slowly drown out the conversation between the soul and the Divine?

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 02:22:06 GMT

Image: Lumi

Dear friends,

I hope this finds you well.

My last post marked the end of a journey that has occupied my heart and thoughts for many months. Reflections on the Battlefield is now complete. Eighteen chapters later, the final piece has found its place, and I can finally say the series is finished.

To those of you who began with Chapter One and stayed with me all the way to Chapter Eighteen, thank you. Your comments, encouragement, reflections, and quiet presence made the journey feel like something we were walking together. Writing can often feel like a solitary conversation, so knowing you were reading, thinking, and responding along the way meant more than I can easily express. I am deeply grateful for your support.

As many of you requested, the complete series is now available as an eBook.

— eBook Offer —

If these pages have stirred your heart, you can now carry the full 18-part journey with you in eBook form; crafted to return to
again and again, and offered by donation
so you may give what feels right.

Let it be a gentle companion through your own questions, reflections, and moments of surrender, a quiet reminder that devotion and presence can turn every act,
every breath, into offering.

Click the Tip Jar button below to secure your copy.

The suggested donation amounts are simply options.
You’re welcome to enter any amount that suits you in the $ field.

In the message section, please include “Reflections on the Battlefield eBook”, together with your name and email address, and I’ll send your eBook to you.

om tat sat

If you’d like a free copy, let me know in the comments below.

This week we will revisit some pieces from the archive. Quite a few people have joined this little community since I first began publishing, and many of those earlier essays and poems have quietly disappeared beneath newer posts. Rather than letting them gather dust, I’d like to bring a few back into the light. Some may feel different when read with fresh eyes, while others seem to have found new meaning simply through the passing of time.

Whether you’ve been here from the beginning or have only recently arrived, thank you for reading, for thinking alongside me, and for being part of this community. Your presence continues to make this a welcoming place to write.

With gratitude,

Urvasi

From the Archive

Reflections on the Battlefield - Part 18

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 06:16:00 GMT

In the final chapter, Krishna brings the teachings of the Bhagavad-gita As It Is to their completion. Arjuna asks once more about renunciation and the true meaning of giving up attachment. Krishna responds by summarizing the paths of knowledge, action, and devotion, showing how each finds fulfillment when offered to the Supreme Person.
The heart of the teaching becomes unmistakably clear: the soul’s highest peace lies in surrendering to the Divine with trust and devotion. The journey that began with confusion now ends with clarity and choice.
Please read to the end for a special offer!

Chapter Eighteen

Conclusion - The Perfection of Renunciation

Arjuna asks one final question.

“What truly is renunciation?”
he wonders.
“What does it mean
to give something up?”

Krishna answers carefully.

Renunciation, He explains,
is not the abandonment of action.

The body must act.
Life itself requires movement.

What must be released
is attachment;
the insistence that every action
belong to oneself.

When work is done
for personal reward alone,
the soul becomes bound
to the consequences.

But when work is offered
as service to the Divine,
its chains fall away.

Action remains.
Bondage dissolves.

Krishna reviews the patterns of nature
once more.

Knowledge can be clear,
ambitious,
or clouded.

Action can be selfless,
restless,
or careless.

Even determination
can shine with clarity
or be tangled
in desire and fear.

Human life moves
within these influences.

But beyond them
stands the soul;
capable of choosing
where its loyalty rests.

Krishna reminds Arjuna
of something deeply personal.

Each person has a nature,
a calling woven
into the fabric of life.

Peace comes
not from imitating another’s path,
but from offering one’s own duty
to the Divine.

Better imperfect sincerity
than borrowed perfection.

Then Krishna speaks
of the One
who lives within every heart.

The Supreme Person
guides the wanderings of all beings;
not as tyrant,
but as the quiet witness
who allows each soul
to learn,
to choose,
to grow.

Still, Krishna does not force surrender.

He pauses.

“I have spoken this knowledge to you,”
He says.

“Reflect on it fully.
Then act as you wish.”

Freedom remains.

Yet love cannot remain silent forever.

And so Krishna offers
His final invitation.

“Fix your mind on Me.
Become My devotee.
Offer your homage to Me.

You will come to Me;
this I promise,
because you are dear to Me.”

Then the teaching reaches
its deepest simplicity.

“Abandon all varieties of duty
and simply take refuge in Me.

I will deliver you
from all reactions.

Do not fear.”

It is not a command.
It is a promise.

All the philosophy,
all the explanations,
all the careful distinctions
have led here.

Relationship.

Trust.

Surrender born not of defeat,
but of recognition.

Arjuna’s confusion,
the despair that opened this journey,
has dissolved.

His voice is steady now.

“My illusion is gone,” he says.
“My memory has returned.
I will act according to Your word.”

The battlefield has not changed.

But Arjuna has.

The warrior who once dropped his bow
now lifts it again;
not in anger,
not in pride,
but in service.

Krishna remains beside him,
friend, guide, beloved Lord.

And the teaching of the Bhagavad-gita
settles into its final truth:

The soul finds its perfection
not in escape from the world,
but in offering life itself
to the One
who has always walked beside it.

Epilogue

A Whispered Offering

The bow is set aside.
The breath settles.
The battlefield lies quiet,
yet alive with all that has passed.

Arjuna, like each of us, has walked the currents of fear and doubt,
the twisting branches of desire,
the restless winds of the mind.
And through it all,
the Beloved has remained;
a steady presence within the heart,
a light that does not dim,
a hand extended in every choice.

Life, Krishna teaches, is never separate from devotion.
Every act can be offering,
every word can be prayer,
every longing can turn to love.
Not by leaving the world,
but by seeing it clearly,
and placing the heart in the One
who holds all things gently, eternally.

So the soul rises—not in silence alone,
but in the quiet rhythm of surrender,
in the joy of service,
in the steady remembrance of the Divine.
The path continues,
each step a hymn,
each breath a soft garland,
leading ever closer
to the One who has always walked beside us.

And in that walking,
all fear falls away.
All sorrow finds meaning.
All life—
even battle, even loss, even desire
becomes the tender, luminous offering
of a heart returned home.

— eBook Offer —

If these pages have stirred your heart, you can now carry the full 18-part journey with you in eBook form; crafted to return to
again and again, and offered by donation
so you may give what feels right.

Let it be a gentle companion through your own questions, reflections, and moments of surrender, a quiet reminder that devotion and presence can turn every act,
every breath, into offering.

Click the Tip Jar button below to secure your copy.

The suggested donation amounts are simply options.
You’re welcome to enter any amount that suits you in the $ field.

In the message section, please include “Reflections on the Battlefield eBook”, together with your name and email address, and I’ll send your eBook to you.

om tat sat

If you'd like a free copy, simply leave your email address in the comments below.

For further bhakti readings click here.

These Reflections from the Battlefield are inspired by the teachings of
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

om ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-salakaya
cakshur unmilitam yena tasmai sri-gurave namah

nama om vishnu-padaya krishna-preshthaya bhu-tale
srimate bhaktivedanta-svamin iti namine

namas te sarasvate deve gaura-vani-pracarine
nirvisesha-sunyavadi-pascatya-desa-tarine

The Child Who Learned Silence

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 23:56:24 GMT

I was twelve
when childhood quietly folded itself away.

There was no ceremony,
no one announcing that I had crossed a threshold.
Just two younger sisters,
a father working shifts,
and a house that had to keep breathing
after my mother left.

People speak of absence
as though it is an empty chair.
I remember it differently.

It was a sound that no longer came,
a voice that no longer answered,
a space in the day
that slowly taught me
to stop expecting.

So I learned the ordinary miracles
that children should never have to learn.

How to keep a kitchen moving.
How to soften another child’s tears.
How to measure time
by school lunches,
washing,
bedtimes,
and whether everyone else
had what they needed.

Somewhere inside all of that,
I became dependable.

Dependable is a beautiful word.

It can also be a lonely one.

My sisters shared a room.
I slept alone.

At the time,
it seemed like an ordinary arrangement.

Only years later
did I understand
that the day ended
exactly as it had been lived.

They had each other.

I had responsibility.

At school I had one close friend.
One seemed enough.
Perhaps it was.
Or perhaps I had already learned
that the safest way to love
was one heart at a time.

The years gathered quietly.

People came.
People went.

I found myself standing in conversations,
smiling,
listening,
caring,
while something transparent surrounded me.

Not a wall.

A bubble.

I could see everyone clearly.

They could see me.

Yet there remained
a thin, invisible distance
through which no one quite passed.

I never thought of it as sadness.

It simply felt like the way
the world worked.

Even now,
I can arrive at a room full of laughter
and feel the old instinct awaken.

Where is the door?

How long before I can leave?

Not because anyone has been unkind.

Because somewhere inside,
freedom has always meant
knowing I can go.

People sometimes mistake this
for shyness.

It isn’t.

It is the quiet vigilance
of a child
who discovered too early
that staying
could become a responsibility.

For years
I admired that girl.

She was capable.

She kept going.

She helped hold a family together
with hands still small enough
to be called a child’s.

Only later
did sadness arrive.

Then tenderness.

I began to see
that beneath all her competence
was a little girl
who had simply wanted
someone to stay.

Not forever.

Just long enough
for her shoulders
to remember
they were never meant
to carry so much.

These days,
I no longer ask
why the bubble existed.

I know.

It was built
by love,
by necessity,
by loyalty,
by the quiet promise
a child makes to herself
when life asks more than it should.

I will manage.

And she did.

Wonderfully.

Terribly.

I don’t wish to dismantle
what protected her.

I only hope,
sometimes,
to find a soul
who does not stand outside
tapping on the glass,

but gently discovers
there has always been
a door.

Perhaps it has been there
all along.

Waiting for the girl
who learned to carry everyone else

to discover
she can set the weight down,

if only for the length
of one unguarded conversation,

and simply belong.

Perhaps this is why I write now.
For years I tucked my feelings away until they became silent.
Writing is how I have been quietly teaching them to speak again.

Beside You

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 05:50:29 GMT

Image: Lumi

Perhaps we have overlooked what birds, and other living entities, can feel…

I do not know
the names you give to death.

I know only
that you were singing this morning,
and now
the wind moves through your feathers
without an answer.

I remain beside you.

Hunger calls from the undergrowth.
The forest continues its endless business.
Seeds ripen.
Insects stir beneath bark.
Light slips between the leaves
as though nothing has changed.

Yet everything has.

I do not leave.

There are no flowers gathered here,
no careful words spoken into the air,
no hands folded in farewell.

Only my small body
keeping company with yours,
as if love itself
could keep watch
a little longer.

Perhaps those who pass beneath these trees
believe
grief belongs only
to the creatures who build cities,
write poems,
or carve names into stone.

Yet the heart
does not ask
what shape a body wears.

It simply knows
when another heartbeat
has fallen silent.

Something within us
arrives carrying a quiet light
that no eye can measure.

For a little while
it lives beneath feathers,
or skin,
or fur,
borrowing each form
like a traveller resting for the night.

Then it goes on.

The empty place it leaves
is always recognised
by those who loved it.

I have seen this truth
beyond the shelter
of my own small grief.

From the branch
of an old tree
overlooking the riverside paddock,

I watched
as one of the cows
was laid into the earth.

When the people had gone,
the other cows came.

One by one
they gathered around
the fresh mound.

No voice summoned them.
No creature showed them how.

They simply stood together
in a silence that seemed full,
their great bodies still,
their gaze resting
where their companion
had vanished from sight.

For a long while
they remained.

It felt as though
they were offering something
that needed no language.

Respect.
Presence.
Love.

Then, as gently
as evening settles over grass,
they turned
and walked away together.

The earth remained still.

The absence remained.

So did the bond.

Nature teaches this
every day,
although few
stay long enough
to notice.

The doe searching
the edge of the clearing.

The whale
carrying her lifeless calf
through the sea.

The elephant
lingering beside old bones.

The bird
who refuses
to abandon
its companion.

These are not
borrowed feelings.

They are life
recognising life.

Love
recognising love.

Separation
understood
long before
it is explained.

I cannot tell you
where you have gone.

I know only
that what looked through your eyes
was never contained
by the fragile form
that now lies before me.

The song has fallen quiet.

The singer
has continued.

So I remain beside you
until the light begins to fade.

Not because
I believe
I can call you back.

Because love
does not bargain
with time.

It does not ask
how long a life should last,
or where a journey leads.

It simply stays
for as long
as the heart is able.

The forest understands this.

The wind carries it
through every leaf.

The river whispers it
over every stone.

Nothing living
truly belongs
to itself alone.

We arrive,
we meet,
we leave.

Yet something unseen
passes gently
from one life
to another,

and every act of love,
whether spoken,
sung,
or held in silence,

continues
long after
the wings
have ceased to move.

The Quiet Return

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:45:11 GMT

Image: Lumi

There are moments when I begin to suspect that the deepest truths have never been hidden from us. They have simply been difficult to see beneath the layers of certainty, fear, memory, and habit that quietly shape the way we meet the world.
These three poems grew from that suspicion. They do not attempt to explain a philosophy or arrive at definitive answers. Instead, they trace the slow movement of a heart learning to see with greater clarity, to remember what has always been present, and to discover that understanding reaches its fullest expression not in possession, but in offering.
If they ask anything of the reader, it is only this: to linger for a while with the possibility that wisdom is less about becoming someone new than allowing what is most deeply true to emerge.

What Was Always There

I spent years believing
that truth waited somewhere ahead,
hidden behind one more book,
one more conversation,
one more perfectly arranged thought.

So I gathered.
Words.
Certainties.
Carefully polished opinions
that fit together
until they almost resembled peace.

Yet something remained
just beyond their reach.

It arrived quietly,
not as an answer
but as a loosening.

A certainty I had carried for years
slipped from my hands.
Then another.
I discovered how much of what I called knowing
had simply been the shape
of my own attachments.

The world did not become different.
My seeing did.

The river had always been flowing.
I had been watching
the reflection of my own face.

Little by little,
the dust settled.
Not because I commanded it,
but because I stopped stirring it.

The heart has its own windows.
We cloud them
with the breath of wanting,
the fingerprints of fear,
the smoke of becoming someone.

Then, sometimes,
through no achievement I can claim,
the glass clears.

Nothing new appears.

The sky was always there.

Perhaps wisdom is not built
stone upon stone,
as I once imagined.

Perhaps it is uncovered,
like a path beneath autumn leaves,
or a familiar voice
heard after the room falls silent.

The soul remembers
what the mind cannot manufacture.

It waits with astonishing patience,
never demanding,
never absent,
only hidden
behind the stories
I keep telling myself.

I no longer think
that knowledge belongs to those
who possess the most.

It belongs,
if it belongs to anyone,
to the one who has become transparent enough
to receive what has never stopped
calling them home.

The Dust We Mistake for Ourselves

I used to think
I was collecting wisdom.

A sentence here.
A teacher there.
A shelf bending gently
under the weight of answers.

Each one felt like another stone
placed carefully
into the house
I imagined I was building.

Only later
did I notice
how little light
reached the rooms inside.

The trouble was never
that the window
faced the wrong direction.

It was the dust.

Years of it.

So ordinary
I had forgotten
it wasn’t part of the glass.

Some of it had settled
before I learned my own name.

Some arrived
disguised as success,
or certainty,
or fear that sounded
remarkably like wisdom.

Some wore the quiet voice
that kept repeating,
This is who you are.

I believed it.

Not because it was true,
but because I had heard it
for so long.

Then something unexpected happened.

I stopped trying
to polish my opinions
and began
to clean the window.

It was slower work.

Less impressive.

There were no discoveries
to announce,
only small moments
when another layer lifted
and the world
looked strangely familiar.

As though nothing
had changed outside.

Only my seeing.

The trees had not become
more alive.

The stranger
had not become
more worthy of kindness.

The sky
had not moved closer.

Something within me
had become less crowded.

Perhaps that is why
the deepest truths
rarely shout.

They have been waiting
beneath the noise
all along.

The soul,
I am beginning to think,
does not need
to be rewritten.

It remembers.

Patiently.

While the heart,
washed a little each day
by love offered
without bargaining,
begins to lose
its taste for illusion.

The dust does not argue
when the rain comes.

It simply lets go.

And through the clearing glass,
I do not discover
a new world.

I begin to recognize
a Presence
that had never departed,
only waited
with immeasurable patience
behind every restless thought,
every borrowed certainty,
every name I mistook for my own.

The heart remembers first.

The mind,
a little later.

And what I once called
finding the truth

becomes,
almost without my noticing,

the quiet joy
of being found.

The Hands Remember

There came a morning
without announcement,
when I noticed
I was no longer
trying to become
someone wiser.

The questions
had not all disappeared.
Neither had my faults.
The world still carried
its old griefs,
its unfinished sorrows,
its impossible distances.

Yet something
had fallen silent.
The need
to stand at the centre
of every moment.
The quiet insistence
that life
owed me an explanation.

My hands
seemed to know
before I did.

They reached
for the watering can.
They paused
to hear a friend’s unfinished sentence.
They placed a fallen bird
beneath the shade.
They folded themselves
around gratitude
before a simple meal.

Nothing remarkable.
Nothing
that would ever
be remembered
by history.

And yet,
these small gestures
began to gather
like light
across an ordinary day.

I had spent so long
searching
for extraordinary moments
that I almost missed
the miracle
of becoming
available.

Perhaps love
has always spoken
this quietly.

Not asking
to be admired.
Not asking
to be understood.
Only asking
to be given
somewhere to live.

A listening ear.
An honest word.
A loaf divided.
A flower
placed where
no one else
would think to look.

I once believed
the journey ended
when I saw
more clearly.

Now I wonder
if clear seeing
was only
the beginning.

For what the heart
finally recognizes,
the hands
cannot help
but offer.

And somewhere
between the giving
and the letting go,
I discover
that the life
I had been seeking
was never waiting
at the end of the path.
It had been unfolding
each time
love quietly
passed through me
and asked
for nothing
in return.

Reflections on the Battlefield - Part 17

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 05:12:17 GMT

Krishna explains that faith itself reflects the influence of the three qualities of nature: clarity, restless desire, and ignorance. A person’s worship, food, discipline, and charity all reveal the quality of faith guiding the heart. Yet Krishna’s purpose is not to judge these differences harshly, but to show how faith can gradually be purified. When faith becomes directed toward the Supreme Person with sincerity and devotion, life’s ordinary acts—speech, work, sacrifice, and giving—become offerings that uplift both the soul and the world.

Chapter Seventeen

The Divisions of Faith

Arjuna asks a thoughtful question.

“What of those,” he wonders,
“who act with faith
but without understanding
the guidance of sacred wisdom?”

Krishna replies gently.

“Faith,” He says,
“arises from one’s nature.”

Whatever qualities shape the mind
will also shape
what the heart believes.

A person of clarity,
influenced by sattva,
naturally seeks what uplifts.

His worship is sincere.
His actions steady.
He looks for truth
rather than applause.

Faith like this
illumines the mind.

Another person,
moved by restless ambition,
directs faith toward gain.

Ritual becomes performance.
Effort seeks recognition.
Discipline aims at reward.

The heart moves quickly,
yet seldom rests.

And when faith grows in darkness,
under the shadow of ignorance,
it loses its compass entirely.

Practices become harsh,
confused,
sometimes even harmful.

The body is mistreated.
Others are neglected.
Devotion becomes distorted
by misunderstanding.

Krishna does not mock these paths.

He simply reveals
their direction.

Faith, like water,
takes the shape
of the vessel that holds it.

Then He turns to everyday life.

Even food, He says,
reflects the qualities of nature.

Food that nourishes gently,
(fresh, balanced, sustaining)
supports clarity of mind.

Food driven by excess,
(too bitter, too sharp, too intense)
stirs restlessness.

And food left stale,
lifeless or careless,
pulls the mind toward dullness.

Sacrifice too
can be shaped in three ways.

When performed with sincerity,
simply because it is right,
it uplifts.

When performed for prestige
or recognition,
it binds the heart to expectation.

And when done without understanding,
without care or respect,
it loses its sacred purpose entirely.

Charity follows the same pattern.

Giving at the right time,
to one who truly needs,
without demand for return;
this is charity in clarity.

Giving for display
or obligation
belongs to restless ambition.

And giving carelessly,
without thought or kindness,
reflects ignorance.

Through all this, Krishna shows Arjuna
that the details of life matter.

Speech matters.
Food matters.
Intention matters.

Every act quietly reveals
the quality of faith within.

Then Krishna offers
a simple anchor.

The ancient syllables
“Om Tat Sat”
remind the soul
that all sacred acts
belong ultimately
to the Divine.

When actions are performed
with this remembrance—
not for pride,
not for gain,
but as offerings—
they become purified.

Even ordinary life
begins to shine with meaning.

The battlefield still waits.

But Arjuna now sees
that devotion is not only
in moments of prayer.

It lives in the way one speaks,
gives, eats, works,
and remembers.

Faith shapes the path.

And when faith rests in Krishna,
the scattered acts of daily life
gather themselves
into a single offering;
quietly rising
toward the One
who receives them all.

For further bhakti readings click here.

These Reflections from the Battlefield are inspired by the teachings of
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

om ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-salakaya
cakshur unmilitam yena tasmai sri-gurave namah

nama om vishnu-padaya krishna-preshthaya bhu-tale
srimate bhaktivedanta-svamin iti namine

namas te sarasvate deve gaura-vani-pracarine
nirvisesha-sunyavadi-pascatya-desa-tarine

No Words Between Them

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 03:09:41 GMT

Image: Lumi

The poem that follows grew from a morning I spent on the ghats of Varanasi in the late 1990s, somewhere near Kedar Ghat. It wasn’t a festival day or a moment that drew crowds. It was simply another morning on the banks of the Ganga, where countless acts of devotion unfolded with little regard for who might be watching.
Among the many pilgrims, priests, washermen, and wandering ascetics, an elderly sadhu and his young disciple quietly caught my attention. Between them they owned almost nothing: a few cloths, a brass lota, and the handful of simple things needed for their daily life. Without speaking a single word, the younger man carefully unwound the old sadhu’s long jaṭā, helped him through his morning ablutions, waited while he offered his prayers to Mother Ganga, then patiently washed, dried, and wound the heavy locks once more into the familiar crown upon his head.
I watched them for perhaps half an hour. Throughout the entire ritual, neither man uttered a word.
The silence was never awkward. It carried the ease of two lives shaped by years of shared practice, where service had become its own language and every movement seemed to arise from quiet understanding. More than twenty-five years have passed since that morning, yet the memory remains as vivid as the light on the river.
This poem is my attempt to honour that moment.

By mid-morning the stone steps had begun
to warm beneath the patient feet of pilgrims,
while the Ganga carried away
what no one could quite name.

The old sadhu lowered himself without hurry,
his bones remembering movements
older than memory itself.
Behind him, the younger man
untied the long jaṭā with careful hands,
drawing each rope of hair loose
as though unfastening years.

Neither spoke.

Speech would only have disturbed
what silence had already arranged.

A brass lota caught the river’s light.
Water rose and fell
over weathered shoulders,
over ash and skin,
over the invisible weight
of another passing day.

The disciple washed the matted locks,
lifting them gently,
patient as someone tending roots
rather than hair.
The river received every handful of water
without asking who offered it.

Prayers moved through worn lips,
quiet enough to disappear
into the sound of oars,
the calling of boatmen,
the wings of pigeons startled
from the temple roofs.

When the bathing was done,
the younger man gathered
the heavy strands once more,
coiling them high upon the old man’s head,
layer upon careful layer,
building a small mountain
that only discipline could carry.

Between them
a cloth, a begging bowl,
the faithful brass pot,
a few possessions
that seemed almost embarrassed
to call themselves possessions.

The river flowed.

The city continued
its endless argument with time.

And the two of them,
having spoken nothing at all,
left the ghat
as though silence itself
had been the morning’s longest prayer.

Looking back, I realise this morning on the ghats was only one chapter in a much larger adventure. My journeys through India have left me with memories that continue to surface unexpectedly, each revealing something different about the places I visited and, perhaps, about the person who was doing the seeing. You'll find links below to some of those stories if you'd like to wander a bit further with me.

A Handful of Whispers

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 05:45:20 GMT

Macleay’s Swallowtail Butterfly (Graphium macleayanus) and Pink Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera). Image: Urvasi Devi Dasi

This week, the essay I had hoped to share is still asking for a little more time.
Rather than hurry it into the world before it’s ready, I thought I’d open a different drawer.
Over the past months I’ve been sharing a series of lyrical poems on the Substack app.
Some of you may already have come across them there. Others may be meeting them for the first time. I’ve also included one poem that hasn’t yet appeared anywhere.
Poems arrive differently from essays. They tend to begin with a feeling, a fleeting image, or a quiet question that lingers long after the moment itself has passed. These are small pieces, but each carries something that stayed with me.
I hope you’ll find a moment to linger with them, and perhaps discover one that speaks to something quietly unfolding in your own heart.
Let me know which ones resonated with you.
Thank you, as always, for reading.

The Butterfly and the Pink Lotus

At first light,
when the pond still carried the hush of night,
a butterfly drifted across the water.

Its wings were painted with fragments of sunrise,
though it did not know this.
It only knew movement.
One flower,
then another.
One fragrance,
then the next.

Near the center of the pond stood a pink lotus.

She had risen slowly
through dark water
and tangled roots.
Day after day
she had unfolded her petals toward the sky.
She knew the patience of mud,
the weight of rain,
the long waiting before bloom.

The butterfly circled once.
“Why do you stay in one place?” it asked.

The lotus smiled.
“Why do you fly so much?”

The butterfly laughed.
“There is a whole world to see.”

“And is it enough?” asked the lotus.

The butterfly did not answer.
It was already dancing above the water,
following a breeze
whose destination neither of them knew.

Morning passed.

The butterfly visited lilies,
reeds,
and wildflowers growing along the bank.
It chased reflections.
It followed dragonflies.
It rested on leaves
that trembled beneath its weight.

Yet several times it found itself returning to the lotus.

By afternoon it landed gently upon one of her petals.
The pond reflected a sky filled with drifting clouds.

“You never seem lonely,” said the butterfly.

The lotus considered this.
“I spend my days looking upward and my roots reach downward.
Somewhere between those two directions, I find company.”

The butterfly thought about this.
It had spent its life moving
from place to place.
Sometimes movement felt like freedom.
Sometimes it felt like searching.

“What if there is something important beyond the pond?” it asked.

“Then you should fly there,” said the lotus.

“And what if I miss something by leaving?”

The lotus looked at the water shimmering around her.
“You will miss something whether you stay or go.
That is the nature of wings.”

The butterfly sat quietly.

A breeze moved through the pond,
carrying the scent of warm earth
and distant eucalyptus.
For once,
neither of them spoke.

As evening approached,
the sky softened
into shades of rose and gold.
The butterfly watched the lotus glow
in the fading light.

“I used to think happiness was somewhere ahead,” it said at last.
“At the next flower. Beyond the next hill.”

“And now?” asked the lotus.

The butterfly folded its wings.
“Now I wonder if it appears for a moment
whenever I truly arrive where I am.”

The lotus said nothing.
She closed her petals
little by little
as the evening sky surrounded them.

The first stars appeared.

The butterfly rested there until darkness settled over the pond.

And from a distance,
anyone looking across the water
might have mistaken them
for a single flower:
the pink lotus rooted in stillness,
and the butterfly discovering,
if only for one night,
that stillness could also be a kind of flight.

Image: Lumi

What the Mountains Cannot Hide

Before a word was written,
before a prophet raised his voice,
before parchment carried sacred names
across deserts and centuries,
the world was already speaking.

The mountains stood in their ancient patience,
their stone faces turned toward the sky,
bearing a message older than language.
The sea gathered light
and scattered it in a thousand fragments.
The stars burned through the dark
without demanding applause.
The wind crossed valleys unseen,
yet no leaf doubted its passing.

There were those who listened deeply
and heard a sermon rising from creation itself.
Not a sermon of arguments,
nor of careful proofs,
but of presence.

Every sunrise arrives
carrying a question.

Who taught the morning
to find its way?
Who stretched beauty across the wings of birds,
placed order within the seasons,
and taught the seed to remember
the tree concealed within it?

The world was filled with fingerprints.
Not the Maker Himself,
for no eye could contain such glory,
but traces,
echoes,
the lingering warmth
of a fire just beyond the hill.

Eternity had left
its reflection upon temporal things.
The invisible had clothed itself in visibility.
Power moved beneath the roots.
Wisdom turned within the stars.
Love sustained a universe that could not sustain itself.
Every river carried the same secret.
Every field whispered it.
Even silence knew.

The tragedy was never
that the signs were hidden.
The tragedy was
how often we passed them by.

We stood beneath vast heavens and called them ordinary.
We walked through miracles and named them coincidence.
Yet still creation continues,
patient as ever.

The dawn returns.
The ocean breathes.
The galaxies wheel through darkness.
And all of them,
without speech or tongue,
continue their ancient proclamation:

Look deeper.

What you see
is not all that is here.
The visible world
is a veil woven of light,
and through its countless openings
the Eternal shines.

Image: Lumi

The Hidden Face

From a fullness beyond measure
the world arrives whole;
mountains,
rivers,
wingbeats,
dust,
the small green courage of leaves.

Nothing stands apart.

What comes forth from abundance
still carries its own completeness,
and the Source is never diminished.

For a while we are given a place among these things.
Enough is already here.
The earth is not a possession
passing from hand to hand.
We are guests,
caretakers of borrowed light.

Work, then.
Plant, mend, build, listen.
Let your actions flow cleanly,
without fastening chains around the heart.

A deeper darkness waits when we forget who we are, or mistake cleverness for wisdom.

The mystery moves faster than thought,
yet remains perfectly still.
It is distant as the farthest star, nearer than breath.
Inside every creature,
outside every boundary.

Whoever begins to see this
finds fewer enemies.
The dividing lines soften.
The life in another
is not separate from the life within oneself.

Then fear loosens its grip.
Anxiety, too, begins to thin
like mist under morning sun.

The world of facts has its place.
So does the world beyond measurement.

Both must be learned.

To know only the visible
is to walk with one eye closed.
To know only the invisible
is another kind of blindness.

Wisdom arrives
when both are held together.
And when the body grows tired,
when its borrowed elements
return to earth and air,
another longing remains:

Not for more years,
nor for possession,
but for the veil to lift.
For the Hidden Face at the heart of life
to reveal itself at last.

Lead me by what is true.
Remember the love I have offered,
however imperfectly.
Guide me beyond my confusion,
toward the light
that was always here.

Image: Lumi

If You Lose Your Shadow You Have Nothing Left to Lose

The day I lost my shadow
I thought something precious had gone.

For years it had followed faithfully,
stretching across pavements,
climbing walls at sunset,
slipping ahead of me in the morning light
as if it knew where I was going.

I called it mine.

Yet the shadow carried everything
I was afraid to set down:
old names,
old injuries,
the quiet hunger to be seen,
the stories I repeated
until they sounded like truth.

It wore my fears like a second skin.
So when it vanished,
I searched for it everywhere.
I looked in memory.
I looked in desire.
I looked in the mirrors of other people’s eyes.

But the absence remained.

And gradually I began to notice
how light moved through the space
where the shadow had been.

The world seemed strangely unguarded.
Nothing stood between me
and the vastness of things.
The sky entered me.
The wind passed through old locked rooms.

A silence I had mistaken for emptiness
revealed itself as presence.

Perhaps the shadow was never a companion.
Perhaps it was only the outline
cast by standing between myself
and the source of all light.
When that distance disappeared,
the shadow had nowhere to live.

What could be lost then?

Not the body,
which belongs to the earth.
Not the mind,
which drifts like weather.
Not the countless masks
borrowed for a little while.

The one who feared losing everything
was itself another shadow.

And when even that faded,
I found myself standing nowhere,
everywhere,
weightless as a bird crossing an unseen horizon,
held by something older than thought,
more intimate than breath.

If you lose your shadow,
you have nothing left to lose.

Only the light remains,
and the endless mystery
of discovering that it was never other than you.

The Great Village Kerfuffle

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 23:17:18 GMT

My fascination with words began in childhood. My father encouraged me to pay attention to language, not simply to read but to understand how words worked. For years, breakfast often included a dictionary beside my plate and a notebook where I recorded unusual words that caught my attention. That habit never really left me.
Along the way I found inspiration in the playful inventiveness of Roald Dahl, the comic elegance of P. G. Wodehouse, and the delightfully absurd observations of John Lennon and Eddie Izzard. All four demonstrated that words can do far more than convey meaning; they can create atmosphere, character, and laughter.
One evening I came across the word kerfuffle and found myself lingering over its peculiar charm. It led me down a rabbit hole of wonderfully strange English words: codswallop, blatherskite, hullabaloo, and snollygoster among them. Curious about their meanings and origins, I began collecting them.
Before long, a further question emerged: what if these words were not merely explained, but allowed to live together inside a story?
As I wrote, the vocabulary itself seemed to summon a world of eccentric characters, village committees, minor scandals, raffle tickets, and cups of tea. The story felt less invented than uncovered, as though certain words arrived carrying their own people and situations within them.
For readers unfamiliar with some of these gloriously odd expressions, a glossary is included at the end of the story.

By the time I reached the village hall, there was already a tremendous kerfuffle underway.

Mrs Hambleton stood near the raffle table looking completely gobsmacked, clutching a tray of melting sponge cake while a small crowd carried on with enough hullabaloo to wake the cemetery across the road. Someone kept shouting “Codswallop!” at intervals, though it was unclear whether this referred to the missing jam money, the mayor’s speech, or the state of the tea.

I slipped quietly toward the back beside old Mr Crumb, who had become increasingly cantankerous since the council installed what he called “that wonky modern roundabout monstrosity.”

“Whole town’s gone higgledy-piggledy,” he muttered.

Near the stage, young Lionel Babcock — a part-time magician, full-time nincompoop — was attempting to explain why the charity funds had vanished from the biscuit tin. His explanation involved a misunderstanding, a goose, and something he referred to as “administrative shenanigans.”

Nobody looked convinced.

Certainly not Mrs Doyle, who was so miffed her hat trembled.

“You expect us to swallow that mumbo jumbo?” she snapped. “You’ve hornswoggled the entire committee!”

At this, Lionel began blathering like a true blatherskite. He waved his arms about so wildly he knocked over the vicar’s lemonade, startled the accordion player into a mighty guffaw, and sent three pensioners skedaddling toward the exit.

Meanwhile, little Tommy Pike was lollygagging beneath the raffle table with sticky fingers and an expression so gormless it practically glowed.

I began to suspect the missing money might not have travelled very far.

The mayor eventually waddled onto the stage, red-faced and puffing like a kettle. He was a remarkable snollygoster of a man, forever delivering pettifogging speeches about “community synergy” while secretly billing the council for marmalade expenses.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “this brouhaha will cease immediately.”

Nobody paid attention.

Two women near the scones had started tittle-tattling about Mrs Finch’s new boyfriend, a nervous boffin from Sydney who wore purple socks and said “crikey” whenever anyone mentioned gluten.

Then came the real disaster.

Mrs Hambleton’s bulldog, Clementine, escaped from beneath the coat rack, charged through the hall widdershins like a furry cannonball, and collided directly with Lionel Babcock. The impact launched him backward into the raffle wheel, which spun violently and showered tickets over the crowd like confetti.

Absolute pandemonium.

People yelling. Children yabbering. Someone shouting “Absquatulate!” for reasons nobody understood. The accordion player still laughing like a drain.

And in the middle of it all stood Tommy Pike, quietly chewing toffee beside the open biscuit tin.

Inside the tin sat the missing charity money.

Well. Most of it.

A few coins had become mysteriously lodged inside Clementine’s collar.

The room fell silent for a moment.

Tommy blinked.

“I was borrowing it,” he said.

Mrs Doyle closed her eyes slowly, as if appealing directly to heaven for patience.

“You little ragamuffin,” she sighed.

And somehow that ended it. The outrage collapsed into weary laughter. Tea was poured again. Lionel resumed his magic tricks. The mayor pretended he had solved everything personally. Outside, evening settled softly over the crooked little town.

Funny thing about a proper kerfuffle. Half the people involved barely remember what started it in the first place.

Author’s Note

English is a magnificent thief. I keep noticing this every time I wander through old words. What sounds deeply “English” often arrived centuries ago in somebody else’s pockets, slightly altered by weather, trade, invasion, migration, theatre, sailors, markets, drunken soldiers, schoolchildren.

Quite a few of those strange words are borrowed, adapted, or stitched together from elsewhere:

Kerfuffle — probably from Scottish Gaelic roots, related to disorder or puffing commotion. Very Scottish in temperament somehow.
Brouhaha — came through French, though its deeper origins may trace further back, possibly imitating noisy exclamations.
Hullabaloo — uncertain origin; likely playful sound imitation rather than formal invention.
Shenanigans — strongly associated with Irish-English usage; probably from Irish roots.
Gobsmacked — modern British slang. “Gob” meaning mouth.
Skedaddle — likely American in development, possibly from dialect mixtures during the 19th century.
Flabbergasted — origin uncertain, which somehow suits the word perfectly.
Bamboozled — may have roots in thieves’ slang or older French influences.
Mumbo jumbo — possibly connected to West African terms recorded during colonial encounters, though the history is tangled and uncomfortable.
Lollygag — American dialect, probably playful sound-based invention.
Higgledy-piggledy — pure English love of rhythmic nonsense pairings.
Codswallop — disputed origin; one popular story links it to a brewer named Hiram Codd, though linguists remain doubtful.
Naff — possibly from Polari, the old theatrical and queer slang lexicon in Britain, itself a mixture of Italianate, Romani, Cockney, Yiddish, and other influences.
Gormless — from northern English dialect; “gaum” meaning understanding or attention.
Widdershins — from Middle High German roots, entering Scots before wider English use.
Crikey — euphemistic shortening of “Christ,” shaped by spoken taboo.
Gadzooks — similarly softened religious oath from older English speech.

Then there are words English built itself through pure sound-play:

Thingamajig
Whatchamacallit
Doohickey
Collywobbles

Those feel almost homemade. Language amusing itself on a rainy afternoon.

I sometimes think spoken English survives because it refuses purity. It absorbs. Steals. Mispronounces. Keeps scraps from everywhere. You hear a word in a market or on a dock or in a barracks, and two hundred years later someone in a village hall is still calling a politician a snollygoster while eating sponge cake.

The strange words often endure because they carry the fingerprints of ordinary people rather than institutions. They sound worn-in. Passed hand to hand.

I’ve always had a soft spot for words that seem slightly embarrassed by themselves. Words that arrive in conversation wearing odd little hats. Someone says “kerfuffle” in the middle of an otherwise serious discussion and suddenly the room loosens a bit. Language stops marching and starts wandering.

Here are a few wonderfully strange spoken-English words and expressions that still survive somehow, often because they carry a feeling ordinary words can’t quite manage:

Kerfuffle — a commotion, fuss, unnecessary drama
Brouhaha — noisy public uproar or excitement
Hullabaloo — loud chaos or overreaction
Codswallop — nonsense; complete rubbish
Gobsmacked — utterly astonished
Skedaddle — leave quickly; scatter
Flabbergasted — shocked beyond words
Bamboozled — confused, tricked, mystified
Collywobbles — nervous stomach feelings or anxiety
Thingamajig — a forgotten object name
Whatchamacallit — same territory; verbal fumbling made official
Nincompoop — fool, idiot, harmless simpleton
Lollygag — waste time aimlessly
Mollycoddle — overprotect someone
Cantankerous — bad-tempered in an almost theatrical way
Snollygoster — a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician
Blatherskite — someone who talks nonsense at length
Absquatulate — to leave abruptly
Bumfuzzle — confuse or fluster
Hornswoggle — deceive or cheat
Widdershins — counterclockwise; in the wrong direction
Pettifogging — petty, overly concerned with trivial details
Fuddy-duddy — old-fashioned, resistant to change
Ragamuffin — scruffy, untidy person, often affectionately
Higgledy-piggledy — messy, chaotic arrangement
Mumbo jumbo — meaningless complicated language
Bilk — cheat or swindle
Guffaw — loud, unrestrained laugh
Poppycock — nonsense
Malarkey — insincere talk; rubbish
Shenanigans — mischievous behaviour
Wonky — unstable, off-centre, unreliable
Naff — tacky or unfashionable
Chuffed — pleased, delighted
Yonks — a very long time
Boffin — clever technical expert
Crikey — expression of surprise
Doohickey — unnamed gadget or object
Gadzooks — old exclamation of surprise
Faffing about — wasting time fussing around
Miffed — mildly offended or annoyed
Snookered — trapped or defeated
Tittle-tattle — gossip
Waffle — rambling without saying much
Yabber / Yabbering — talking endlessly
Blimey — surprise or disbelief
Narky — irritable, bad-tempered
Gormless — lacking sense or awareness
Plonker — fool, idiot
Cheeky — mildly rude but often charming
Dillydally — delay through indecision

Some of them feel almost edible when spoken aloud. Hullabaloo. Codswallop. Gormless. I notice how certain words survive because they carry texture as much as meaning. You can almost hear the eye-roll, affection, irritation, or amusement inside them before the sentence even finishes.

English does this a lot. It keeps little linguistic fossils alive in ordinary conversation. Sometimes I think people hold onto these words because plain language can become too efficient. Too clean. A word like kerfuffle leaves room for human awkwardness. The problem matters, but maybe not enough to surrender one’s sense of humour entirely.

Reflections on the Battlefield - Part 16

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 05:27:22 GMT

As we near the end of this series, I am in the process of gathering all 18 Reflections on the Battlefield into a complimentary eBook, creating a single volume that can be returned to whenever a particular reflection, insight, or moment of encouragement is needed. If you would like a copy when it becomes available, please let me know in the comments. It will be freely offered, though those who feel inspired to support future writing projects will be welcome to make a contribution.

In Chapter Sixteen, Krishna describes two broad orientations of human nature: the divine qualities that lead toward spiritual freedom, and the demonic qualities that deepen material entanglement. These are not labels meant to condemn individuals, but patterns that reveal the direction of the heart. Qualities such as humility, truthfulness, and compassion naturally support devotion, while arrogance, greed, and cruelty obscure the soul’s relationship with the Divine. By cultivating the divine qualities and taking guidance from sacred wisdom, the soul gradually walks the path of liberation.

Chapter Sixteen

The Divine and the Demonic

Krishna speaks now
not of philosophy
but of character.

Two kinds of tendencies, He says,
move through human life.

One opens the heart.
The other closes it.

The first are the divine qualities.

Fearlessness
in the pursuit of truth.

Purity of intention.
Compassion for all beings.

Humility,
self-control,
honesty that does not bend
for convenience.

The person who lives with these
does not seek to dominate the world.
He seeks to live rightly within it.

He speaks gently.
He forgives easily.
He restrains anger
before it hardens into cruelty.

Such qualities, Krishna explains,
are not ornaments of personality.

They are signs
of a soul moving toward freedom.

For they align the heart
with devotion.

But there is another direction.

The qualities of darkness
arise when the soul forgets
its relationship with the Divine.

Pride grows first;
the belief
that one stands alone,
self-made,
answerable to no higher truth.

From pride comes arrogance.
From arrogance, anger.
From anger, harshness.

The world becomes
something to conquer,
something to possess.

Desire multiplies.
Greed deepens.
The heart hardens
against compassion.

Krishna describes this life
without condemnation,
but with clarity.

Such a person thinks:

“This world has no foundation.
No higher purpose.
Desire alone drives it.”

And so desire becomes the law.

Endless plans arise:
wealth to acquire,
enemies to defeat,
pleasures to secure.

Yet satisfaction
never arrives.

The mind becomes a web
of worry and ambition,
stretching toward a future
that never rests.

Krishna calls this
the gate to suffering.

Three forces stand at its entrance:

Lust.
Anger.
Greed.

Each one promises fulfillment.
Each one deepens bondage.

Therefore, Krishna says,
these must be abandoned.

Not by repression alone,
but by reorientation;
by turning the heart
toward higher purpose.

Sacred wisdom, He reminds Arjuna,
exists to guide that turning.

When the soul listens
to divine instruction,
life regains direction.

Right action becomes clearer.
Character begins to transform.

And devotion
finds room to grow.

Krishna’s voice softens.

“Do not think,” He implies,
that anyone is fixed forever
in darkness or light.

The path remains open.

Every moment offers choice—
toward humility
or pride,
toward compassion
or indifference,
toward remembrance
or forgetfulness.

The battlefield still waits.

But Arjuna now understands
that the true struggle
does not begin with weapons.

It begins in the heart;
in the quiet shaping
of the qualities
that will guide
every action that follows.

And devotion to Krishna
becomes the steady light
by which those choices
can finally be seen clearly.

For further bhakti readings click here.

These Reflections from the Battlefield are inspired by the teachings of
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

om ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-salakaya
cakshur unmilitam yena tasmai sri-gurave namah

nama om vishnu-padaya krishna-preshthaya bhu-tale
srimate bhaktivedanta-svamin iti namine

namas te sarasvate deve gaura-vani-pracarine
nirvisesha-sunyavadi-pascatya-desa-tarine

Something Had Been Named

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 02:41:33 GMT

The letter arrived hidden inside another envelope, as though it had spent years learning how to travel unnoticed.

The paper was soft with age.
Yellowed at the folds.
Carrying that faint dry scent old documents acquire when they have sat too long in drawers and boxes. The return address belonged to a town she had not seen in more than thirty years. A town she had spent decades avoiding in memory, even while parts of it continued to live inside her.

Perhaps some clerk had uncovered it in a forgotten file. Perhaps it had surfaced during an office move. Perhaps a machine had finally connected a chain of addresses stretching across decades.

Whatever the reason, someone, somewhere, still believed she could be found.

She recognised the handwriting immediately.
The sight of it made her sit down.

For several minutes she did nothing.

Outside, a magpie called from a power line. Children laughed somewhere down the street. The afternoon moved forward without consulting her.

She placed the letter on the kitchen table and turned away from it.

First she filled the kettle.
The water hissed and rattled. When it finally boiled, the shrill cry filled the room.
She let it continue longer than necessary.
The sound felt useful.
It occupied a space she wasn’t yet ready to enter.

Only after the tea was poured did she return.
The envelope opened with surprising ease.

Inside, the handwriting slanted across the pages exactly as she remembered; restless and slightly hurried. As though the words themselves were trying to reach the end before courage disappeared.

She unfolded the first page carefully.
The words seemed to lean toward her.

I don’t know where you are now.
I don’t know if this will ever reach you.
I need to say this anyway.

The date sat in the corner.
Two weeks after the factory fire.

Her chest tightened.
For a moment she was no longer sitting in a quiet kitchen.
She was standing again outside those iron gates beneath a darkening sky.

The memory arrived whole.

The smell of rain on concrete.
The rough wooden stick of the protest sign pressed into her palm.
The voices.
The arguments.
The anger that had built for months and finally overflowed.

Workers had been warning management for years.
Faulty alarms.
Locked exits.
Missing inspections.
Every complaint buried beneath paperwork and promises.

She remembered searching the factory windows.

And she remembered seeing him.
A brief glimpse through smeared glass.
His face turning away.
Pretending not to notice her standing there.

That night the fire came.
The sky glowed orange for hours.

People gathered on sidewalks and rooftops, watching smoke rise into darkness.
Sirens screamed through the streets until dawn.

The newspapers arrived the next morning with photographs and explanations.

Faulty wiring.
An unfortunate chain of events.
A tragic accident.
The dead were counted.

The headlines faded.
The town moved on.

At least outwardly.

She lowered her eyes to the letter.
The sentences grew harder.

I locked the south door.
I told myself it was procedure.
I thought the alarm would work.
When the shouting started, I froze.
I picked my job over them.
I picked myself.

She read those lines once.
Then again.
A third time.

Each reading seemed to strip away another layer of distance.

For years she had suspected there was more to the story. Everyone had.
Rumours moved through the town like weather.

But suspicion was one thing.
Confession was another.

The next page shook slightly in her hands.

They’ve arrested three men.
One of them was on your side.
I could have spoken up.
I didn’t.
I don’t know if that makes me a coward or just human.
I’m not asking you to forgive me.
I only want you to know the truth.
It wasn’t an accident.
It was a choice.

She stopped reading.
The room had become very quiet.
Outside, evening had begun settling over the neighbourhood.

She folded the letter and unfolded it again.
Not because she hadn’t understood.
Because she had.

The weight of certain truths arrives slowly.
They do not strike all at once.
They sink.

Years later she would still remember that sentence.

It wasn’t an accident.
It was a choice.

Perhaps because it reached beyond the fire.
Beyond the factory.
Beyond the town itself.

How much of every life, she wondered, was shaped by choices people later called accidents?

How many silences had altered the course of entire histories?

She knew what happened after the letter was written.
The investigations deepened.
The testimony unravelled.
Eventually he confessed.

Perjury.
Obstruction.

A plea agreement that spared him some years but cost him nearly everything else.

By then the town had already chosen its villains and heroes.
The story felt complete.

Only it wasn’t.

She left the morning after the verdict.
Packed a suitcase.
Loaded her car.
Drove until familiar roads disappeared behind her.

She carried grief she could never properly define.
Part sorrow.
Part anger.
Part absence.

The kind of burden that changes shape but never quite leaves.

Two weeks after receiving the letter, she found him.
A small coastal town several hours north.

The air smelled of salt, rust, and diesel.
Fishing boats rocked against weathered piers.
The sea stretched outward under a pale sky.

He repaired boats for a living now.

She recognised him immediately.
Age had bent him slightly.
His hair had thinned.
His hands were stained from years of grease and paint and rope.

Yet something about him remained unchanged.

Perhaps guilt preserves certain expressions.
Perhaps regret becomes a permanent feature of the face.

When he saw her, neither of them moved.

No embrace.
No dramatic reunion.
Only recognition.

The simple shock of finding another witness to a vanished world.

They walked to a bench overlooking the harbour.
The letter rested between them.
A third presence.
Silent but undeniable.

For a long while they watched the water.

Finally he spoke.
“I never sent it.”

She looked at him.

“I didn’t know where to send it,” he continued.
“Every address I had came back.”

The wind stirred the edges of the paper.

“It found me anyway,” she said.

He nodded.
As though that possibility had occurred to him many times.

They sat quietly again.

Gulls drifted overhead.
A bell clanged somewhere among the boats.
The tide moved in slow; patient rhythms against the pilings below.

“I didn’t come for explanations,” she said eventually.

His eyes remained on the harbour.

“I know.”

“I came to see if it still mattered.”

The question settled between them.

Years.
Deaths.
Trials.
Careers.
Entire lives lived since then.
The temptation to believe the past had become irrelevant.

He watched a fishing vessel ease toward the open water.
Then he asked softly,

“Does it?”

She considered the men who never came home.
The wives who grew old alone.
The children who learned to live around an empty chair.
The years shaped by what was missing.
The decades spent carrying questions that never received answers.

And she thought about the letter.
Waiting somewhere all that time.

Patient.
Silent.
Refusing to disappear.

“Yes,” she said. “It does.”

Neither added anything more.

The light slowly drained from the sky.
The sea darkened.
The tide turned.

Nothing was repaired.
No life restored.
No suffering erased.

The dead remained dead.
The years remained lost.

Yet as darkness gathered across the harbour, she felt the smallest shift inside herself. A burden does not always become lighter when the truth arrives.
Sometimes it simply becomes visible.
And visibility has its own strange mercy.

They remained on the bench until the last colour faded from the horizon.

Two ageing people.
One old letter.
An ocean moving steadily in and out.
The world unchanged.

And yet, after all those years, something had finally been named.

Sometimes that is the closest thing to peace we receive.

A Brief Audience with Balaji

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 07:01:38 GMT

The bus was late.

In India, that statement barely qualifies as news. Yet on that particular morning it felt significant. My young son sat beside me clutching a small bag of snacks while pilgrims drifted around the depot in loose clusters, talking, laughing, checking tickets and luggage. Somewhere above us, hidden by distance and haze, stood the temple of Lord Venkatesvara, known to millions simply as Balaji.

The waiting area was already alive with movement.

Women in brightly coloured saris sat on low walls while children darted between groups of travellers. Elderly men leaned on walking sticks polished smooth from years of use. Vendors moved quietly through the crowd selling tea, coffee and small snacks. The air carried the mingled scents of diesel fumes, incense, dust and fried food.

Everyone seemed to be going in the same direction.
Everyone seemed to be carrying a purpose.

Many pilgrims never see the bus depot at all.
They choose the older path.

Thousands climb the sacred hill to Tirumala on foot, ascending hundreds upon hundreds of stone steps beneath the Andhra Pradesh sun. Families make the journey together. Old people lean on young shoulders. Mothers carry sleeping children. Students climb in groups, joking and singing as they go. Some make vows to complete the ascent barefoot. Others climb slowly over many hours, pausing to rest beneath shaded shelters along the route.

Every step is considered an offering.

As I watched the pilgrims gathering around me, I found myself wondering about those making the climb at that very moment. Somewhere beyond the trees and folds of the mountain were people steadily ascending, carrying prayers, hopes, griefs, gratitude and private promises upward with them.

Travelling with my son, I chose the bus.

When it finally arrived there was no dramatic announcement. A subtle ripple passed through the crowd and suddenly everyone was standing, collecting bags and children and water bottles.

We climbed aboard and found seats near a window.
The journey upward was beautiful.

The city of Tirupati stretches across the plain below while the winding road climbs steadily toward Tirumala, home of the famous Balaji Temple. Many pilgrims make the ascent on foot, climbing thousands of steps as an act of devotion. Travelling with my young son, we boarded a bus at the foot of the hill and followed this scenic route through the forests and bends of the Seshachalam Hills to the sacred temple town above. Image: Urvasi Devi Dasi

The road twisted through forested hills, climbing steadily toward the summit. At every bend new vistas opened before us. Deep valleys appeared and disappeared. Clusters of trees clung to steep slopes. Occasionally we caught glimpses of distant pilgrims on the walking path; tiny figures progressing patiently upward.

Monkeys seemed to appear from nowhere.

They sat beside the road with the casual confidence of permanent residents, observing the passing vehicles as though evaluating each new arrival. Some perched on railings. Others scampered across rocks or gathered near resting areas hoping for an unattended snack.

My son watched them with fascination.

As the bus climbed higher, the ordinary world below began to feel increasingly remote. Then, almost unexpectedly, we arrived. At the summit lay not merely a temple but an entire township devoted to pilgrimage.

Roads, accommodation blocks, dining halls, security checkpoints, administration buildings, shops and endless streams of devotees stretched across the hilltop. Everything seemed organised around a single purpose: receiving and directing the countless people who arrived each day seeking darshan of Balaji.

The scale of it surprised me.

Photographs had not prepared me.
Descriptions had not prepared me.

The place felt less like a destination and more like a living organism, continuously absorbing, processing and releasing pilgrims.

People arrived.
People waited.
People prayed.
People departed.

The flow never ceased.

Our accommodation was sparse and modest. A simple room. Basic beds. Functional furnishings. Little decoration. At first glance it appeared almost austere. Yet after observing the steady influx of pilgrims, I realised luxury would have felt strangely out of place. These rooms existed to provide shelter rather than comfort. They were temporary resting places within a much larger journey.

That first evening we wandered through the surrounding streets.
Everywhere there were pilgrims.

Families carrying bundles.
Groups of friends laughing together.
Elderly couples moving slowly but determinedly.
Children eating sweets while parents negotiated directions.

The atmosphere reminded me of a festival, yet there was also something quieter beneath the activity. Many faces carried an inward focus. People were chatting and shopping and eating, but they were also waiting for something.

The temple stood at the centre of all those expectations.

Dinner was simple and memorable.
South Indian meals have a way of satisfying both hunger and spirit. Stainless steel plates appeared loaded with rice, vegetables, sambar, chutneys and other accompaniments. Food arrived quickly. People ate efficiently. New diners immediately filled vacant seats.

The aromas drifting through the dining areas were irresistible.

Fresh curry leaves.
Ghee.
Coconut.
Cardamom.
Roasted spices.
Strong sweet chai.

Everywhere, food seemed woven naturally into the pilgrimage experience. No one remained hungry for long.

That night we returned to our room hoping for sleep. Sleep, however, proved elusive. Throughout the night families continued arriving.

Doors opened and closed.
Voices echoed along corridors.
Children chattered excitedly.
Relatives called to one another from room to room.
Metal trunks scratched across floors.
Someone laughed loudly at midnight.
A group arrived at one o’clock.
Another at two.

The sounds drifted through the building like an ongoing conversation.
It never felt rude.
It felt communal.

Many had spent the entire day climbing the hill. Some arrived after midnight exhausted but exhilarated. They had reached the summit. Their journey was complete. Their excitement naturally spilled into the hallways.

I remember lying awake and listening. At home such interruptions might have irritated me. Here they felt strangely appropriate.

This was not a hotel.
It was a way-station for pilgrims. The building itself seemed to pulse with arrivals.

By dawn the pilgrimage had already begun again.

Finding the correct place to purchase tickets turned out to be an adventure in itself.

Questions led to directions.
Directions led to another building.
That building led to another queue.
Someone pointed left.
Someone else pointed right.

Every instruction seemed delivered with complete confidence and partial accuracy.
More than once I thought we had finally arrived only to discover we were standing in the wrong place entirely.

Fortunately, confusion is one of the universal languages of pilgrimage.

We were never alone. Around us were dozens of equally bewildered visitors consulting signs, comparing information and seeking guidance from anyone who appeared knowledgeable. Eventually the mystery was solved.

Tickets were obtained.
Celebration seemed appropriate.

Unfortunately obtaining tickets was merely the opening chapter. The next challenge involved locating the correct queue. The queue system at Tirupati is less a line than an ecosystem.

Corridors become waiting halls.
Waiting halls become passageways.
Passageways feed into larger holding areas.
Holding areas divide into further channels.

At times it felt as though we were navigating the circulatory system of a giant living creature.

Hours passed.
Then more hours.

People settled into the experience with remarkable patience.

Families unpacked food.
Children fell asleep on parents’ laps.
Grandmothers quietly fingered prayer beads.
Students shared stories.
Elderly men stretched their legs and exchanged observations about previous visits.
Strangers became temporary neighbours.

The waiting itself became part of the pilgrimage. The sounds were unforgettable. Thousands of conversations merged into a continuous murmur.

Temple announcements echoed overhead.
Occasional devotional songs drifted through the halls.
Babies cried.
Teenagers laughed.
Someone somewhere was always calling out to a missing family member.

The smell of humanity mingled with incense, food and warm stone.
At intervals vendors appeared selling tea, coffee and snacks.
Their arrival was greeted with enthusiasm. A cup of hot tea after several hours in a queue felt surprisingly close to bliss.

Time behaved differently there. Normally waiting feels like an obstacle. At Tirumala it felt more like a condition of entry. Nobody seemed particularly surprised by it. Nobody appeared shocked that seeing Balaji might require most of a day.

This was simply the price of joining millions of others who wished to do exactly the same thing.

Gradually the queue began to move with greater purpose. The corridors narrowed. Security increased.

The atmosphere changed.

After so many hours of waiting, everyone sensed the moment approaching.
Conversations became quieter.
People stood more attentively.
Children were gathered closer.

The energy shifted from patience to anticipation as we entered the final labyrinth leading toward the sanctum.

The pace quickened.

Temple staff directed the flow with practiced efficiency. They had a monumental task. Tens of thousands of pilgrims pass through these spaces. Without organisation the entire system would collapse.

Suddenly the crowd accelerated.
Then, almost before I was prepared, there He was.

Balaji.

This is Lord Venkatesvara, affectionately known as Balaji, the presiding deity of Tirumala and one of the most revered forms of Vishnu in India. The deity is adorned with layers of gold ornaments, flower garlands and precious jewels, while much of the sacred form remains partially covered by decoration and ritual markings. Millions of pilgrims travel to Tirumala each year for a brief darshan of Balaji, often waiting many hours for just a few precious seconds in His presence. Image: TTD

Far ahead.
Framed by lamps.
Adorned with gold.
Partially obscured by movement.
Completely commanding attention.

For years I had heard descriptions.
For years I had seen photographs.
Yet the actual experience felt entirely different.

The sight lasted only seconds.

A long-distance view.
A brief opening in the river of humanity.
A glimpse.

People raised folded hands.
Eyes widened.
Prayers accumulated over months or years were offered silently in an instant.

Then the crowd moved.
Or rather, the crowd was moved.

Security guards encouraged everyone forward with firm determination. Thousands still waited behind us. Every second mattered.

Yet somehow we lingered. Instead of immediately being swept onward, we edged slightly to the side.

Perhaps thirty seconds.
Maybe less.
Maybe more.

Time felt strangely elastic. For those brief moments we simply stood and looked.

Thirty seconds is nothing.
Thirty seconds is everything.

The guards became increasingly enthusiastic in their encouragement.

Move along.
Move along.
Move along.

I cannot remember exactly when we finally surrendered and rejoined the flow. I only remember realising that the moment was ending.

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, Balaji disappeared behind us.

We were carried onward through corridors, stairways and passageways. The sanctum receded into memory while the current of pilgrims continued relentlessly toward it.

The audience had been brief.
The journey had not.

Outside, daylight felt almost startling. The emotional intensity within the temple gradually gave way to ordinary concerns.

Where are we now?
Which way is the exit?
What happens next?
And then another quest began.

Balaji’s Laddu: This divine prasad was first offered to Lord Venkatesh on August 2, 1715. Since then, its form has been changed 6 times and the current form of laddu that we see today was determined in 1940 during the Madras government. However, this sweet has also been mentioned in the ancient inscriptions of Tirupati in 1480 by the name ‘Manoharam’. More than 600 cooks work in the Potu kitchen to make this special laddu. These laddus are made with a special method. Various types of dry fruits like cashews, almonds, raisins, cardamom, sugar candy, gram flour, pure ghee, milk etc. are added to it. According to reports, 700 kg of cashew nuts, 10 tones of gram flour, 3 to 4 hundred litres of ghee, 10 tonnes of sugar, about 540 kg of raisins etc. are required every day to make laddus. Image: TTD

The laddhus.
No pilgrimage to Tirupati is complete without them.

Pilgrims emerged from distribution counters carrying precious boxes of the famous sweets. Families carefully counted their allocations. Additional boxes were purchased for relatives, neighbours and friends waiting at home.

Everyone seemed to know exactly where to go.
We joined the flow.

Soon we too were carrying our treasure. The fragrance alone explained their reputation.

Warm ghee.
Sugar.
Cardamom.
Roasted ingredients blended into a scent that somehow felt inseparable from the pilgrimage itself.

We bought extra for our devotee friends. The boxes would travel hundreds of kilometres before finally reaching their recipients.

Part souvenir.
Part blessing.
Part proof that we had been there.

The remainder of our stay unfolded in a series of discoveries.

Temple buildings.
Markets.
Pilgrim facilities.
Hidden corners where people rested beneath trees.
Vendors selling flowers.
Children feeding monkeys despite repeated warnings not to.
Small moments of devotion appearing unexpectedly amid the bustle.

Everywhere there was movement.
Everywhere there was purpose.

For two days we seemed to be the only Westerners among the thousands around us. At first I noticed it constantly. Later I scarcely thought about it.

Inside those queues, distinctions dissolved surprisingly quickly.

Everyone was waiting.
Everyone was tired.
Everyone was hungry.
Everyone was searching for directions.
Everyone was moving toward the same brief encounter.

The grandfather patiently waiting in line.
The young couple carrying a sleeping child.
The students taking photographs.
The elderly woman quietly chanting beneath her breath.

Each person carried a story invisible to everyone else. Yet for a few hours our stories travelled together.

Looking back, I understand why millions return despite the crowds, the waiting, the basic accommodation and the fleeting nature of the darshan.

People do not come seeking comfort.

The rooms are simple.
The queues are long.
The sleep is uncertain.
The glimpse is brief.

Yet something draws them upward year after year.

Perhaps it is devotion.
Perhaps it is tradition.
Perhaps it is the feeling of joining a river that has been flowing for centuries and will continue flowing long after one’s own journey has ended.

What remains strongest in my memory is not the grandeur of the temple,
though it is grand.
It is not the laddhus, though they were delicious.
It is not even those few precious seconds before Balaji.

It is the humanity of the pilgrimage itself.

The tired faces.
The hopeful faces.
The patient faces.
The joyful faces.

The countless ordinary people undertaking an extraordinary journey.

And when Balaji finally appeared, even for only a few seconds, every one of those faces turned in exactly the same direction.

The Coromandel Express

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 23:21:07 GMT

The Coromandel Express is a fast, long-distance passenger train running along India’s east coast between Puratchi Thalaivar Dr. M.G. Ramachandran Central Railway Station (Chennai) and Howrah Junction Railway Station (Kolkata), known for serving major cities in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal. It is popular for its relatively quick travel time and daytime service, offering both AC and non-AC reserved classes and onboard catering. Image: Urvasi Devi Dasi

After a while, the journey ceases to be a journey.

That sounds strange, considering the distance. Kolkata to Chennai is more than a thousand miles of track, two nights and most of three days depending on the mood of the railway gods, the season, the condition of the signals, the unseen mathematics of freight trains as well as priorities and delays. Yet after making the trip enough times, the route becomes familiar in the way a river becomes familiar. One stops measuring progress. One simply enters it.

The journey begins long before departure.

It begins beneath the vast iron ribs of Howrah Station, where thousands of lives appear to be moving in every direction at once. Porters weave through the crowd with impossible towers of luggage balanced on their heads. Families occupy entire sections of platform as if preparing for a small migration. Tea sellers circulate endlessly. The station clock hangs above it all, unmoved by anyone’s urgency.

Then, eventually, there is that subtle change in atmosphere. The train is no longer something awaited. It is standing there. Real. Breathing quietly through its vents. People begin finding their coaches. Checking reservation charts. Lifting bags through narrow doorways.

And then, almost without ceremony, Kolkata begins to slide away.

For many Indian travellers, the most cherished meal on the train is not bought from a vendor but packed at home, prepared with care by mothers and wives whose love accompanies the journey in the simplest of ways. Meals are enjoyed while the world passes by their windows. Images: Urvasi Devi Dasi

For the first hour I always watch the window.

Factories, warehouses, tangled suburbs, ponds bright with water hyacinth, clusters of houses crowded close to the tracks. The city loosens its grip slowly. Even after all these journeys I find myself looking out with the same attention, as though something important might reveal itself before the last buildings disappear.

Inside the carriage, another landscape is forming.

A sadhu settles near the doorway, wrapping his shawl around his shoulders despite the heat. Across from him a young engineer spends twenty minutes arranging chargers, cables and devices before falling asleep. A grandmother opens a steel tiffin carrier and immediately begins feeding anyone within reach. Children negotiate ownership of window seats with a seriousness usually reserved for international diplomacy.

By evening the compartment feels less like public transport and more like a temporary village.

The vendors arrive in waves.

Tea.
Coffee.
Jhal muri.
Samosas.
Bottled water.

Then come the sellers of things nobody intended to buy.

Watches.
Padlocks.
Handkerchiefs.
Pens.
Playing cards.
Tiny torches.
Plastic toys.
Mobile phone chargers of uncertain origin.

One man carries enough books beneath his arm to supply a small library. Spiritual texts rest beside detective novels. Film magazines lean against engineering exam guides. Every few compartments he stops, announces his presence, and waits to see who among us wishes to become someone slightly different before reaching Chennai.

Wanna buy a watch …? Image: Urvasi Devi Dasi

The train itself develops a rhythm.

The wheels strike the rail joints with a steady metallic pulse that slowly enters the body. Conversations drift in and out of awareness. People read. Sleep. Stare through windows. Share food. Repeat stories they have told many times before.

Hours pass almost unnoticed.

The countryside changes.

The green flatness of Bengal yields to different colours and textures. Rivers appear and vanish. Rice fields stretch towards distant horizons. Villages gather around temples, around ponds, alongside roads that seem to lead nowhere. Somewhere during the second day the signs begin changing language. The earth itself appears different. Yet the train continues forward with the same patient determination.

What I remember most, though, are the unscheduled stops.

Not stations.
Not destinations.
Simply pauses.

The train slows, shudders, and comes to rest in the middle of nowhere.
No explanation follows.

Outside there may be fields. A cluster of trees. A distant water tower. Occasionally a small settlement whose existence would remain unknown were it not for this interruption. The minutes lengthen. Passengers glance up from their books. Someone asks a neighbour what has happened. Many different answers circulate immediately.

Signal failure.
Track maintenance.
An accident further ahead.
A minister’s special train.
A herd of cattle.
An elephant.

Every possibility sounds equally plausible.
After enough journeys, curiosity fades. The train will move when it moves.
People adapt.

Image: Urvasi Devi Dasi

A few climb down to stretch their legs. Tea appears from somewhere. Conversations begin between strangers who might otherwise never have spoken. Children press their faces against the glass. The countryside, unnoticed while rushing past at speed, suddenly becomes visible.

I have often thought that these pauses reveal something essential about India.
Nobody planned them.
Nobody wants them.
Yet life unfolds around them anyway.

A card game begins.
Someone shares mango pickle.
A travelling salesman explains his philosophy of business.
An elderly man recalls a journey made forty years earlier.

For an hour, or two, or sometimes longer, an entire trainload of people occupies a strange territory between departure and arrival.

Then comes the signal.

A distant horn.
A vibration beneath the floor.
The wheels turn.
Conversation pauses.
The landscape begins moving once more.

Hunger rarely has a chance to settle in on an Indian train journey. From station to station, an endless procession of vendors climbs aboard, filling the aisles with calls, aromas, and an astonishing variety of food and wares. Images: Urvasi Devi Dasi

By the second night the compartment has settled into an intimacy impossible to imagine on departure. People who exchanged only polite nods in Kolkata now know one another’s occupations, families, disappointments and ambitions. Children sleep across berths. Snores emerge from unexpected directions. The blue night lamps cast everyone in the same gentle light.

Morning arrives somewhere in Andhra Pradesh.

Coffee vendors replace tea vendors.
Coconut palms become more frequent.
The air feels different through the open doorway.

The train sweeper moves through the carriage collecting the evidence of two days’ habitation: crushed paper cups, biscuit wrappers, fruit peels, newspapers, forgotten receipts. His work passes largely unnoticed. Yet without him the temporary village would quickly become uninhabitable.

And then, inevitably, Chennai begins announcing itself.

Industrial estates.
Flyovers.
Apartment blocks.
Temple towers glimpsed between buildings.
Laundry hanging from balconies.

The train slows.
People reach for luggage.
Blankets disappear into bags.

Phone numbers are exchanged with promises to stay in touch. Promises that sometimes survive the journey and sometimes do not.

What always surprises me is how quickly the little community dissolves.

The family that occupied the next berth for two days vanishes into the crowd.
The student disappears.
The sadhu disappears.
The bookseller, the singer, the tea vendor, the sweeper, the old man with endless stories—all return to the wider flow of the country.

Within minutes they are gone.
Only the memory remains.

After making the journey many times, I no longer think of it as travel between two cities. The train becomes a narrow corridor through India itself. For two days and two nights, every carriage contains a small version of the country: noisy, crowded, generous, frustrating, unpredictable, endlessly alive.

The destination matters.
Yet what lingers longest is the movement between destinations.

The sound of wheels beneath the floor.
The smell of railway tea.
The cry of a vendor approaching from the next carriage.
The sight of strangers becoming neighbours.

And somewhere beyond the window, fields sliding slowly south beneath an enormous sky.

Image: Urvasi Devi Dasi

Reflections on the Battlefield - Part 15

Urvasi Devi Dasi — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 06:51:45 GMT

Krishna describes the material world as an inverted tree whose roots lie in the Divine and whose branches spread downward into the realm of human experience. This image reveals how life in the material world grows from higher reality yet becomes entangled in desire, memory, and habit. The soul wanders among these branches, identifying with temporary roles and forms. Krishna teaches that the way beyond this entanglement is detachment guided by devotion—cutting through illusion and returning to the Supreme Person, who is the true source and shelter of all existence.

Chapter Fifteen

The Yoga of the Supreme Person

Krishna begins
with a vision.

“Imagine,” He says,
a great tree.

Its roots stretch upward,
its branches spread downward,
and its leaves shimmer
with the knowledge of sacred wisdom.

This is the tree
of material existence.

From the Divine root
the world unfolds:
lives branching into lives,
actions leading to consequences,
desires growing like new shoots.

The branches reach everywhere.

Into families and kingdoms.
Into hopes, fears, ambitions.
Into the quiet longing
of every human heart.

The leaves of this tree
carry the teachings
that remind the soul
of its origin.

Yet most wanderers
do not notice them.

They move along the branches,
climbing, falling, grasping,
believing the tree itself
to be their permanent home.

But the branches are restless.

They grow and wither.
Worlds appear and fade.
Bodies form and dissolve.

The soul moves through them
life after life;
taking on new forms
as the wind carries fragrance
from flower to flower.

Krishna speaks softly now.

“This world,” He says,
is not the final resting place.

The tree must be understood
for what it is:
beautiful perhaps,
vast certainly,
but temporary.

To remain entangled
is to forget
the root from which it grows.

And so Krishna gives the remedy.

“With the axe of detachment,”
He says,
cut through this tree.

Not with bitterness.
Not with rejection of life.

But with clarity:
seeing the temporary
as temporary.

Seeing the eternal
as the true home.

Then, Krishna says,
seek that place
from which none return.

Not a void.
Not an empty silence.

A realm beyond the changing branches,
where the soul lives
in its natural relationship
with the Supreme.

Krishna reveals something profound.

Every living being
is His eternal fragment:
a spark of consciousness
moving through the world,
seeking fulfillment.

But when the soul forgets Him,
it becomes entangled
in mind and senses,
pulled through the branches
of the great tree.

Still, Krishna accompanies each soul.

He sits within the heart—
guiding memory,
knowledge,
and even forgetfulness.

He is the light in the sun.
The taste in food.
The fire that digests life itself.

The world breathes
because He sustains it.

And yet, Krishna says,
beyond both the changing world
and the individual soul
stands the Supreme Person:
the Purushottama.

Higher than all.
Source of all.

The one who nourishes
both the eternal souls
and the worlds they wander through.

To know Him
is to understand everything.

Not as theory,
but as relationship restored.

Arjuna listens
as the image settles in his heart.

The tree of the world
still spreads its branches.

But now he knows
its root.

And devotion:
steady, luminous,
quietly resolute,
becomes the path
by which the soul
leaves the tangled branches
and walks home
toward the One
from whom all life began.

For further bhakti readings click here.

These Reflections from the Battlefield are inspired by the teachings of
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

om ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-salakaya
cakshur unmilitam yena tasmai sri-gurave namah

nama om vishnu-padaya krishna-preshthaya bhu-tale
srimate bhaktivedanta-svamin iti namine

namas te sarasvate deve gaura-vani-pracarine
nirvisesha-sunyavadi-pascatya-desa-tarine