The city BikanerShishya
Shishya is nineteen years old, unremarkable in almost every way. He is neither tall nor short, neither handsome in the way that heroes are handsome nor ugly enough to be memorable for his plainness. He is the kind of person one might pass on the street and forget before reaching the next corner.
His life is a carefully balanced equation of survival.
In the early mornings, before the sun rises, Shishya walks to a small restaurant on the outskirts of Bikaner’s old city. There, he works from 5 AM until 9 AM, washing dishes in exchange for a simple breakfast—usually and , sometimes with a small portion of
(vegetables). The restaurant is called “Mama’s”—no one remembers why, as the proprietor is a man of perhaps fifty years named Rajesh.
Despite the tedium of the work, despite the burns on his hands from hot water and the exhaustion that comes from standing in humidity, Shishya finds a strange peace in it. There is clarity in a task that requires no thought, no strategy, no emotional investment. The dishes go dirty; he makes them clean. It is a form of meditation.
From 2 PM until 8 PM, Shishya works in an electronics shop called “Arjun Electronics” (the owner, an elderly man named Arjun, named it after himself, which amused Shishya to no end). Here, he organizes inventory, assists customers, and sometimes repairs minor electronic devices. The work is more intellectually engaging than the restaurant, and Shishya finds himself enjoying the logical systems of circuitry and problem-solving.
The compensation—7,000 rupees per month from the combined work—is barely adequate to survive. Shishya spends 2,000 rupees on rent for a modest room on the second floor of a three-story building owned by a widow named Dadi (which means “grandmother”). Another 2,500 goes to food purchases and occasional necessary expenses. The remaining 2,500 rupees is hoarded as emergency savings, though Shishya knows that a single medical emergency would obliterate this carefully constructed buffer.
But he survives. This is a form of victory, in his mind.
‘Dadi’(term used to refer to very old women) is a woman of perhaps seventy years, living alone since her children migrated to foreign nations for better opportunities. She gave Shishya a room not out of mercy—though there is kindness in her nature—but because he reminds her of her grandson, whom she sees only once every five years if she is fortunate.
In exchange for reduced rent, Shishya does her errands. He purchases vegetables for her cooking. He repairs her electrical devices. He listens when she wishes to tell stories about her life. He is the grandchild that circumstance has provided her, and she is the elder that Shishya never had.
There is love here, though neither of them would use such a grand word to describe it.
The restaurant owner, Rajesh, is the closest thing Shishya has to a genuine friend. Rajesh treats him with warmth that extends beyond mere professional courtesy. On festival nights, when other shops close so that families can celebrate together, Rajesh sends Shishya home with extra food—samosas, sweets, rice preparations—so that he will not spend Diwali or Holi alone in his modest room.
It is this, perhaps more than anything, that keeps Shishya’s despair from becoming total.
Shishya’s true escape, however, comes through a book—a phenomenon that appears in the literary world like a meteor impact and then slowly recedes into obscurity.
The book is titled “Seven Doors of Transcendence”
When it first appeared, it was a sensation. Readers across multiple continents became obsessed with its narrative, with its cosmology, with the implications of its world building. The story was epic in scope—a tale of cosmic warfare, of spiritual development, of human struggle against corruption and entropy.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The protagonist—a being who awakens with immense power in a resource world and gradually ascends through the hierarchies of existence—captured the imagination of millions. The concepts of transcendence, the concept of gods and souls as bondable spirits , of the separation between physical planes and divine planes, all woven together in a narrative that was simultaneously philosophical and action-driven.
But then something happened.
As the author released subsequent volumes, the story’s trajectory became increasingly dark. The corruption that the protagonist fought against proved more pervasive than anticipated. Allies fell. Powers that seemed insurmountable revealed themselves to be insufficient. The energy of the universe itself became weaponized against those fighting to preserve it.
And then came the revelation that broke many readers’ hearts: the protagonist discovered that the very cultivation he had undertaken, the very techniques he had used to ascend toward transcendence, were themselves part of the corruption. By drawing power from the universal energy, he was hastening the entropy that would eventually consume the universe.
The darkest revelation came when the strongest human master in existence—Grandmaster Kusanagi, who had reached the Supramental planes—was revealed to have been transformed by the enemy. He became a Rakshasa himself, a Nightmare of Humanity, a weapon pointed directly at the cause he had fought to preserve.
Without Kusanagi, humanity had no chance.
The end of the series was not an end but a fade into darkness. The final volume concluded with the understanding that the universe would fall, that humanity would be devoured, that transcendence was not escape but a faster path to annihilation.
The readers rejected this conclusion.
Book sales plummeted. Reviews became scathing. Readers felt betrayed by the author’s insistence on a tragic ending when happy endings, triumphant endings, were clearly within narrative possibility.
And yet, despite its unpopularity, Shishya read the series repeatedly.
He had acquired a battered copy of the first volume through a used bookshop—a book so worn that the spine was nearly broken. But as he read, the story captured something in him. It spoke to his experience. It spoke to a universe that did not care about human desire for happy outcomes, that ground on indifferently toward its own conclusion regardless of moral desert or heroic effort.
The protagonist’s struggle was futile—and yet the protagonist struggled anyway.
This resonated with Shishya in ways that he could not fully articulate.
He has read the entire series eight or nine times now, each reading revealing new layers of meaning. He memorized passages. He contemplated the cosmology. He found himself wishing that the story was real, that there was some mechanism by which he could ascend to the higher planes, that there was some purpose to his tedious struggles beyond mere survival.
On the night of Diwali—the festival of lights, the celebration of the triumph of good over evil (a thematic irony that Shishya has not failed to notice, given the pessimism of his favorite book)—Shishya has prepared for what he expects to be a quiet evening.
He bathes with careful attention, as is proper for festival nights. He performs a (ritual prayer) to his —the family deity that his ancestors designated. He eats a simple dinner of rice and yogurt. He prepares to spend the evening with a book, perhaps reading a favorite passage for the hundredth time.
But the night is not to be peaceful.
Shishya steps outside for a walk, drawn by the distant sounds of celebration and the lights that some wealthier families have suspended from their homes. He walks slowly, without destination, simply enjoying the sensation of being alive on a festival night.
The street is not crowded, but it is not empty. A few families gather in front of houses, watching children light fireworks. An old man sits on a bench, listening to a transistor radio that plays classical music. A young couple walks hand in hand, indifferent to the world around them.
Shishya observes this tableau with the perspective of one permanently on the outside, looking in.
He does not see the boy until it is nearly too late.
A child—perhaps ten years old—runs suddenly into the middle of the street. He appears to be chasing something, perhaps a toy that has blown away. His attention is entirely focused on his objective.
The truck emerges from around a corner, traveling at significant speed. The driver, whose reflexes are well-honed by decades of driving, swerves immediately. The truck’s tires squeal. The vehicle lurches toward the opposite side of the street.
Toward Shishya.
He has perhaps one second to process this reality. One second to understand that he is about to be struck by several tons of metal and momentum. One second to think:
“Oh shi—”
The words barely emerge before impact.
There is no pain. Pain would be superfluous at this moment. There is only the sensation of tremendous force, of his body being rearranged by physics, of the world rotating in ways that the human body was not designed to experience.
His vision blacks.
And then—
Silence.
