The Monsoon Returns
It was the third evening of the monsoon in Edakunny. The rain fell in long, slanted lines, silver against the green canopy that stretched across the ancient courtyard of Warriam. The tiled roofs gurgled with rushing water. Priya had just lit the nilavilakku in the thulasithara when she and Sudhir heard the knock.
Three precise raps. Not loud. Not soft either. Just… intentional.
No one was expected at that time at Edakunny. Especially not at dusk. Especially not at Warriam. Sudhir’s breath caught. He turned from the flickering lamp and walked to the front padippura. The stone was still warm under his feet, the scent of sandal and turmeric still lingering from the morning’s puja, a good 12 hours ago….
The man standing outside wore a mundu soaked dark with rain. His upper body was bare, save for a faded angavastram. He looked like he had walked a hundred miles and had not eaten in two days. But his eyes—his eyes were burning coals. Familiar. Unsettling. There was something vaguely off about the man……. like he has stepped in from an ancient world….
“I’ve come for the scroll,” he said.
Sudhir’s spine stiffened. “What scroll?”
He smiled faintly. “The one your ancestors hid. The ones they died for.”
A Strange Reminiscence
Sudhir Warrier was not new to riddles wrapped in family secrets. He had inherited not just a home but a legacy—one that whispered of scrolls encoded with planetary alignments, of tunnels that ran from Vadakkunnathan to Padmanabhaswamy, of the vanished temple worker who saw a vision beneath the sanctum, and of his ancestor, Ikanda Warrier, who was the first from his family to partially decode the celestial cipher!!!!
He had spent the last two years sifting through brittle palm-leaf manuscripts, half-burned family ledgers, and ambiguous horoscopes. But the scroll—the scroll everyone spoke of in hushed tones—remained missing.
“You must have the wrong house,” he said cautiously, his hands still behind the half-door.
“No,” the man said. “Your father was Satyadev Warrier. He died looking for the Krittika alignment scroll. You’re the last one in the bloodline who can read it.”
His lips parted. Only one person knew about the Krittika scroll. And he had died in a ‘motorcycle accident’ in Trivandrum eight years ago. He had been told the story countless times from his childhood, but he had not given it a second thought, dismissing it as another anecdote …
Sudhir opened the door wide.
The Forgotten Room
They sat by the agnihotra pit in the back courtyard, sipping black kavuni rice kanji. The stranger’s name was Vinayakan. He claimed he belonged to a line of celestial cartographers—guardians of an astral codex buried across Kerala’s temples. Warriam, he said, was built atop one such crossing point—where lunar and solar energies converged every 3200 years.
“The scroll isn’t just text. It’s a map. A map of resonance patterns. Where to stand. When to chant. How to open the… passage.”
Sudhir laughed bitterly. “What passage?”
He looked up. “To what your ancestor called the Akasha Srotas. The River of Space.”
He stared at him for a moment before saying, “Follow me.”
Vinayakan walked with Sudhir to the Ara, the granary chamber at the far end of the household. Few went there now. But the place had always unnerved him with its fore boding look, stone flooring, colder than anywhere else, even in the heat.
“My grandmother called this the ‘burial room of silence’,” he whispered. Sudhir had been into the room, several times but had not felt the need to verify the authenticity of its secrets!!!!
He pulled away a small brass uruli, by instinct (as he recollected, from the numerous times that he has heard the story from his senior family members) and knelt, pressing into the stone grooves beneath. A faint outline of the Saptarishi constellation glimmered under his fingers.
Vinayakan knelt too and placed his palm on the grooves. The stone glowed faintly. Blue veins ran across the pattern. Something unlocked.
The Tunnel Breaths
A part of the floor slid open, revealing a narrow spiral staircase. Cold air rushed up, tinged with salt and camphor. They descended in silence, Vinayakan holding a palm-light. The walls were etched with symbols that shimmered as they passed.
They came upon a chamber shaped like a yoni. In the center stood a pedestal. Upon it, wrapped in silk and copper mesh, was the scroll.
Sudhir’s hand trembled as she unwrapped it. He half expected to wake up and realize that he had a great dream! Unlike palm-leaf texts, this one was etched on something resembling mica—translucent, yet solid. Glyphs moved on its surface, like fireflies trapped in glass.
“It’s written in Akshara-Bindu script,” Vinayakan said softly. “Your blood can decode it.”
Sudhir looked up sharply. “What?”
“It needs your voice. Your pulse. Your memory.”
Something inside him stirred. As if a hundred stories told by grandmothers now clicked into place. The time he dreamed of a tunnel under the Padmanabhaswamy sanctum. The way the Vadakkunnathan bell rang three times at midnight the day his grandmother passed into the ages. The vision he once saw in a trance—of a cosmic serpent encircling the Earth.
He began to chant……..
The Alignment
The chamber responded. The scroll lit up in phases. A beam shot upward, cutting through rock, rising to the sky.
Far away, in Padmanabhaswamy Temple, the same beam emerged through the sanctum’s dome. The stars above shimmered. The Krittika alignment had begun.
Vinayakan turned to him. “We have only one hour.”
They followed the new path revealed beneath the pedestal—into a tunnel that led beneath rivers, roads, and ridges. The path curved toward Thiruvananthapuram. As Sudhir recalled it was nearly 300 kms from his family house in Thrissur to Padmanabha Swamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram. He was unable to comprehend how he could be at the temple in 60 minutes, even if he took a jet……
To his astonishment he felt a strong pull and of his body levitating through the tunnels….
What Lies Beneath
They emerged in a small unused shrine within Padmanabhaswamy Temple. Vinayakan handed him the scroll again. “Now you must place it beneath Ananta—the cosmic serpent.”
They crawled through a tight passage that led under the sanctum’s central antechamber. Below the reclining Vishnu idol was a hollow cavity, and within it, an altar made of black stone.
As Sudhir placed the scroll there, the stone glowed red, then golden. The serpent seemed to shift slightly. And then—a hum, so deep it shook their bones.
Suddenly, the air shifted. Time... stalled. For a few seconds, they weren’t under a temple. They were above stars. Floating.
Vinayakan spoke slowly. “This is the original temple. Not built by men. But placed here—like a seed. The scroll only activates the gateway.”
“Gateway to what?” Sudhir asked.
“To memory. To what Earth once knew, before forgetting. And what your bloodline was sworn to protect.”
Epilogue
The hum faded. The light dimmed. Time caught up.
They emerged from the temple’s old passage into the present again. Morning light bathed the eastern gopuram.
Vinayakan turned to Sudhir. “You’ve done what Ikanda Warrier began. The scroll is safe. But now, you must forget it.”
Sudhir looked at him. “Will you forget?”
“I was never meant to remember,” he smiled. “I am a messenger. The Warrier is the keeper.”
With that, he stepped back… and disappeared into the morning mist.
Back in Edakunny, Sudhir sat beside the lamp Priya had lit the previous evening. The house was silent, but somehow… listening.
He picked up her diary and wrote:
“A stranger came to my door.
He spoke in riddles and memories.
He brought nothing… and returned everything.”
Outside, the rain began again.
React
