"Who are you?" Nandana whispered.
He smiled, butter-smeared and ancient. "Guess."
One evening, a strange thing happened. The town’s ancient temple bell began ringing by itself at midnight. No wind, no rope-puller, no bird. Just the deep, resonant dong rolling across the sleeping streets. People woke up terrified. The priests muttered about bad omens. The next night, it happened again. And again. nandana krishna soumya
The bell was still swaying gently when she arrived. In the dim glow of the oil lamp, she saw a boy sitting on the temple step. He was dark as a monsoon cloud, with peacock feathers tucked behind his ear, and he was eating butter from a clay pot with his fingers.
He nodded. "And you are Nandana. My joyful one. But there’s a third name they gave you. Soumya. Gentle light. Do you know why?" "Who are you
She shook her head.
He stood up, brushed the butter off on his yellow silk, and placed a finger on her forehead. Suddenly she saw it—a vision of herself years later, not as a famous artist or a scholar, but as a woman sitting beside a hospital bed, holding a stranger’s hand until dawn. Then as a grandmother, planting a jackfruit tree where a broken wall once stood. Then as an old woman, laughing alone in the rain. The town’s ancient temple bell began ringing by
Years later, when people asked her how she remained so calm during storms—literal and otherwise—she would just smile and say, "I once had a conversation with a butter thief at midnight. After that, nothing really scares me."
