By the age of three, I had learned the rhythms of this world. I rose before dawn to help my father fetch water from the village well. The wooden bucket felt familiar in my hands, even as the songs of birds in the trees around me were foreign in their timbre. At sunrise, elders burned incense to welcome the sun; I watched their ritual with quiet reverence, thinking of the computer lab where we once studied energy and light with cold instruments. Each scent and sound carried memories of my other life: lemon blossoms on warm nights, the buzz of a distant engine, the chill of midnight air in a city I could barely recall.
People in the village treated my silence as piety. I often sat with my mother to recite her morning prayers; I remembered the words even without understanding them. If a Brahmin priest came to bless a new home, I would be held on a parent's hip, watching with wide eyes as he spoke archaic Sanskrit. Once, out of curiosity, I repeated a verse I'd memorized long ago, and the priest's eyebrows shot up in surprise. He murmured that the gods indeed favored me. A crack of hope flashed through me — if even a priest thought I was special, maybe the truth of who I was mattered less here.
Yet whenever I saw a high-caste child approach, a swirl of confusion tightened in my chest. One such boy, Arun, rode past on a pony and sneered at me from across a dirt road. "Shudra's son," he jeered. I did not know the bullying ways of my old schoolyard; the hurt came out in tears. In that moment I remembered a meditation trick I had learned: I took a steady breath and slowly wiped my face. Arun hadn't expected me to stand up for myself. I simply looked at him calmly and said, "Maybe one day you will know." Then I turned away. He sputtered and kicked at the ground, unsure of why I had not crumbled.
My mother and father never punished me harshly for such misunderstandings. They were not cruel, but they had little patience for childish questions. Once, after I asked why I could not go to the Brahmin's school, my father just shook his head. "Our place is not there," he said softly. I understood then that some fences were invisible but unbreakable. That night, I lay awake trying to reconcile fairness with fate, but sleep claimed me before I found an answer.
Between my chores and the village gossip, I began to form plans, however childish. If I learned to read that holy script, perhaps one day I could read for these folks as a skill, not a crime. If I learned to sing, maybe even Brahmins would let me join their chorus. But for now, I was careful to hold my tongue and my ambitions close.
Late one afternoon, as I swept the courtyard, an idea sparked. The well was nearly dry. I remembered from my geography how rain is measured and predicted. Looking up at the clouds forming in the sky, I told my father quietly, "Rain soon." He laughed it off — after all, he was a farmer. But after nightfall, the skies opened in torrents. The next morning, my father treated me with wide eyes, murmuring a blessing about my wisdom. I said nothing about what I had heard earlier from migrating birds. Inside me something had changed. It felt as if I had touched a secret, though I did not dare admit it even to myself.
By dusk I was not merely a child among many, but a child who remembered. Each sunset brought sleep and each sunrise new resolve. "One day," I promised myself under the orange sky, "I will find my path." The young soul of the city within me was growing ever more entwined with the boy of the village. In quiet moments I practiced the silent analysis of my old life; in the marketplace I listened to bargains and prices and thought of algorithms. Each day I wove threads of memory into the fabric of this new life. I was learning to be patient, to observe where others did not. Each day I grew a little stronger in heart. Even if they did not realize it, I was weaving the first threads of my destiny from the fabric of these two worlds.
Nature became my silent teacher. I watched how a single seed would multiply into countless stalks of grain, feeding us through the year. Even a small idea in my mind felt capable of growing and helping others. I promised to nurture these thoughts quietly.
And so another day ended quietly: the boy was learning, growing, but still alone with his secret dreams. I lay down on my straw mat to sleep, whispering my vow to the stars. They alone seemed to know what I was becoming. Sleeping now, I dreamed.