I don't remember the color of the car that killed my parents. Just the sound—like something tearing through the sky.

  I was six. Maybe seven. My uncle told me I screamed, but I don’t remember that either.

  What I remember is her voice.

  Not the police. Not the funeral. Not the hospital chapin who told me God had a pn.

  No. I remember her hand on my chest while I cried. The way she tucked my feet into the bnket, even in May.

  And then, the words.

  “Once there was a prince named Bhishma, who gave up a throne and a kingdom, so his father could love again…”

  I didn’t understand the story. I didn’t understand why someone would throw away everything.But her voice slowed the panic in my bones.And night after night, as the world got colder and my retives more distant, she told me more.

  I didn’t know it then, but that’s when the Mahabharata started saving my life.

  She wasn’t a schor.She didn’t read from a book.She’d close her eyes and speak like the stories lived behind them. Like she wasn’t reciting—just remembering.

  I never knew how she remembered it all. Thousands of verses. Hundreds of names. But she never faltered.And when she forgot a word, she’d smile and say:

  “Some stories change every time you tell them. That’s how they stay alive.”

  I grew up between those stories.Not in temples.Not in battlefields.But in a ft that smelled like turmeric and sandalwood, with paint peeling off the ceiling and a photo of my parents that no one dusted anymore.

  By the time I was ten, I knew what a dharma was before I knew what a mortgage was.I could list the Pandavas in order before I could spell my own st name.And I thought Bhishma was the saddest man who ever lived.

  When kids at school talked about Superman, I thought of Karna.When they talked about sacrifice, I thought of Ekavya.When they talked about justice, I remembered Draupadi’s question: “Who did you lose first—your kingdom, or yourself?”

  But then I grew up.

  And stories became just stories.

  Bills needed paying. Deadlines didn’t care about dharma. And the gods, if they were real, were far too busy to listen to anyone not born royal.

  I became a teacher. History, of course. Ancient India. Comparative mythology.My students rolled their eyes when I mentioned epics.They wanted revolutions, scandals, fast facts.I gave them Arjuna.

  They gave me silence.

  I stopped talking about the Mahabharata after a while.Even my grandmother’s voice faded from memory.

  Until the day I died.

  —

  It was raining. I was texting while driving—something about a paper extension—and I didn’t see the truck coming.

  They say you don’t feel anything. That you just... float out.

  They’re wrong.

  You feel everything.

  The impact. The confusion. The weightlessness. And then—nothing.

  —

  When I opened my eyes again, I wasn’t in a hospital.

  I was in firelight.

  There were no sirens. No nurses.

  Just the sound of a woman sobbing.And the cold sp of air against skin that didn’t feel like mine.

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak.But I could hear.

  “Avyakta,” she whispered. “He will be called Avyakta.”

  The Unmanifested. The Unseen.

  I had been named again.

  —

  It took me weeks to accept that I wasn’t dreaming.That I hadn’t nded in some strange delusion or coma.

  I was a child again. But not in any century I knew.

  There were no fans. No phones. No gss. No names I recognized.

  Except the ones I’d heard in stories.

  Bhishma. Drona. Hastinapur.

  When I heard those names spoken casually—by soldiers, servants, street vendors—I stopped pretending.

  This was no fantasy. This was no metaphor.

  I had been born into the Mahabharata.

  The story she told me... was now the life I was inside.

  And almost immediately, I saw the cracks.

  Bhishma wasn’t a saint. He was tired. Too old, too sharp, too still.Drona wasn’t a teacher. He was a weapon in priest’s robes.The princes were not gods. They were boys with bruised pride and too many expectations.

  And I—I was not a chosen hero. I was the son of a low-ranked warrior. A footnote. A background blur.

  She had told me the Mahabharata to protect me.

  But now I lived it.

  And it was nothing like the story she told me.

  —

  So I began to write. Not with pen and paper, but with memory. With bark, ash, stolen charcoal.

  Because someone had to tell the truth.

  Not the truth of dharma. Not of fate.

  But of fear.

  Of mud.

  Of silence.

  Of standing in the shadow of gods and asking, quietly, “Do you even see us?”

  This is not the Mahabharata.

  This is what it looked like from below.

  This is the story she told me—rewritten by the boy who lived it.

  This is the Unseen Gita.The war beneath the war.

  And I, Avyakta, will remember it for all of us.