My veins run deep beneath the sacred earth where the spring of Ksheer Bhawani breathes—a spring not of water alone, but of memory, of silence that sings, of longing that never dies
I have seen centuries bend like reeds in the wind.
I have stood tall through suns that blistered the earth, through snows that fell like the quiet sorrow of unspoken partings. My limbs have embraced the changing winds of time. I am the chinar of Tulmulla. My veins run deep beneath the sacred earth where the spring of Ksheer Bhawani breathes—a spring not of water alone, but of memory, of silence that sings, of longing that never dies.
Here, under this sky that never forgets, the goddess lives in the hush between thoughts. She is not in stone, not confined by sculpted sanctum, not trapped in the folds of a ritual alone. She is a pulse in the very ether, a fragrance upon the breeze that cannot be named. And yet, those who have once stood here—barefoot upon these ancient flagstones—carry her in the hollows of their bones. They may not speak her name aloud, but in their dreams, her anklets echo still.
I, the chinar, remember each one of them.
Their shadows once danced beneath my branches. Mothers with silver platters of rice and milk, fathers with incense and trembling resolve, children casting petals upon the surface of the spring, watching them circle, as if the goddess herself breathed through the ripples. I remember the girl who plucked wild jasmine and tied them in her braid, whispering a secret into the wind. I remember the widow who lit a thousand lamps in the hope of reunion beyond the veil of death. And I remember the exile who stood afar, tears biting into his cheeks like winter, not daring to cross the threshold, only bowing from a distance, fearing he was no longer worthy.
Now they are gone.
Some scattered to lands with no chinars, where rivers run dry with forgetfulness. Some buried their language in borrowed alphabets. Some lit lamps in balconies that faced no sanctum but the grey walls of apartments. And some have returned—not with fanfare, but quietly, as one returns to a lost home in a dream—only to touch the soil, to drink from the spring, to say, “Ma, do you still know me?”
The spring flows still, eternal and unsullied, though its banks grow lonely. It shimmers pale in moonlight and glows milk-white at dawn, as if stirred by invisible fingers. No matter how many seasons pass, it does not forget. It is not water alone; it is remembrance, ancient and alive.
Tonight, a slow wind creeps through the valley, like a ghost seeking its name. The moon floats over the temple, its light turning the white marble to translucent blue. The deodars sway as if in prayer, and I—rooted in centuries—call out, not with a voice, but with a trembling of bark and breath and belief.
“Are you still here, Mother?”
The spring answers first, with a ripple. A slow spiral of colour. Sometimes it turns crimson, as if touched by old wounds. Sometimes it glows green, as if longing to become earth again. Then, from its heart, something stirs—not sound, not light, but presence. She arrives not with thunder, but as a hush. A hush that bends trees, that stirs the soul into stillness.
Yes, she is here.
“I have always been,” she says, and her voice is neither outside nor within—it is a fragrance, a vibration, a warmth in the belly of the night.
I shudder, and the rustle of my leaves becomes chant.
“Why, then, does the silence grow deeper?” I ask her. “Where are your children? Where are the songs they once sang at dawn? Where are the lamps, the laughter, the chants that once rose like incense into your sky?”
A soft sigh passes over the courtyard, like the breath of a sleeping temple.
“They were broken,” she says. “Like clay pots dropped mid-ritual. Their roots pulled from the soil, their tongues scorched by strange lands. But they carry me still—in fragments, in the ache between syllables, in the prayers they dare not speak.”
Even now, the stones beneath the temple steps hum with names lost to the pages of exile. Shanta, whose sari brushed the spring’s edge each Jyeshtha Ashtami. Ramesh, who carved a flute from deodar wood and played raga Bhairavi at dawn. Zoon, who swept the courtyard every Thursday for forty years. They are no longer here, but the earth remembers. And memory, like water, seeps deeper with time.
I lean forward, as if the weight of remembering bends even the oldest tree.
“Do they still belong?” I whisper. “After all this forgetting, do they still have a place in your grace?”
She does not speak for a moment. The spring stills. A sudden hush falls over even the wind. And then, like the fragrance of a flower opening at midnight, her answer flows through everything.
“Belonging is not broken by distance. It is broken only by disbelief. Even the silence of a heart that still trembles for me is enough. I am not bound to temples or rites. I am the ache of return. I am the salt in the tear that falls without reason when they hear my name.”
A fox calls from the nearby grove. The moon slips behind a cloud, as if moved to mourning.
They say now that gods are symbols. That faith is nostalgia. That sanctity is a tool of power. But those who have walked barefoot on the dew-kissed courtyard of this temple, those who have lowered their eyes before the spring and seen their own face tremble in its reflection—they know that she is more than belief.
She is a river beneath the skin. She is a memory that remembers you.
“Once,” I say, “this place breathed with the footsteps of a thousand pilgrims. Now the wind comes alone.”
And she replies, “The wind carries them. Every whisper of their longing reaches me. Even when they do not name me, even when they no longer remember the mantras, the soul knows the path.”
The wind rustles fiercely now, as if her words ignite its wings. It travels far, beyond the mountains of Pir Panjal, across the highways of Delhi, beyond seas and continents to lands where Tulmulla is a word uttered like a lost hymn. It finds the man lighting incense in a Boston apartment. The woman in Pune humming a childhood bhajan before sleep. The girl in Bangalore painting the spring from a faded photograph.
The wind returns, heavy with dreams.
I sway under its touch, and for a moment, I feel young again. The courtyard seems to pulse with unseen presence. The temple bell, rusted with disuse, gives off a faint chime—as if moved by an invisible hand.
The goddess speaks again.
“I am not alone. The deodars stand beside me. The pigeons nest in the rafters of my shrine. The chinar guards my breath. Even the cracks in the walls carry echoes of my name.”
And I, humbled, say, “They need you now more than ever.”
Her presence deepens. A hush descends that is not silence but fullness.
“They will return,” she says. “Not all at once. Not with banners or noise. But quietly, like prayers returning to lips. Like exiles walking backwards into memory.”
And then, as if to seal her promise, a lotus rises unbidden from the spring—luminous and trembling. No hand placed it. No season demanded it. It is the blossom of longing itself.
The dawn begins to bleed into the sky.
The first bird calls.
A shadow enters the courtyard—a man, middle-aged, his beard flecked with silver. He carries a steel container of milk. He bows, not with ceremony, but with the weariness of one returning home. He pours the milk into the spring and murmurs something only he and the goddess understand.
The spring accepts.
A marigold drifts from nowhere.
The wind, the stones, the deodar—all stand still in reverence.
I, the chinar, close my eyes for a moment and remember every footfall that ever echoed through this sacred place. And then, I whisper her name into the world.
Ksheer Bhawani.
Let it reach the ears that need to remember.
Let it slip into dreams as a fragrance, as a note of music, as a tear that finally knows its source.
Let the scattered find their way not through maps but through memory.
Let the spring never stop flowing.
Let the goddess never be alone.
Let this valley learn to love again.
And let me, old and waiting, stand forever beneath her gaze—whispering, listening, remembering.
(The Author is RK columnist and can be reached at: [email protected])
