The Mask Eventually Falls 

I woke up from a nap and it had been three days since the book was released and for three days I had been worrying without pause, checking sales, refreshing the Amazon page again and again, waiting for reviews, waiting for something outside of me to confirm that what I had written mattered, that it had reached someone who was barely surviving the trauma life had handed them, because that was the only reason the book existed at all.

On the third day I saw the ranking, number seven in the Hinduism category on Amazon, and for a few minutes my chest felt light, the happiness was real, and then the voice arrived without asking, quiet and sharp, asking why not number one, why not more, why not now, why not better.

I had asked people to read it, everyone said yes, everyone always says yes, but only two or three stayed long enough to actually read and leave a review, and I felt something ugly rise in me as I thought do they not see it, do they not feel it, will I really have to beg for someone to witness my pain.

And then something broke and in that breaking it stopped mattering.

The book is hers, the words are hers, I am no one, and suddenly it was clear how strange it was that I had been trying so hard, because fame was never the hunger, recognition was never the prayer, and I understood without relief or disappointment that the book will reach exactly who it is meant to reach, no more, no less, and I am only a small instrument moving inside her vast and indifferent cosmic design.

With that understanding the identity collapsed, the identity of the author, of the survivor, of the one who wrote about Kali, and I watched it fall away without grief.

We run our entire lives, running toward careers and degrees and relationships, running toward becoming something, until we forget that all of this is her Māyā, that she is the Queen of Illusion, and when the illusion cracks there is nothing left, not the good husband, not the CEO, not the good daughter, not the successful author, nothing survives the breaking.

Everything is One, everything is her.

What we call auspicious, lighting a diya, prayer, meditation, and what we call inauspicious, dirt, blood, decay, faeces, all of it is her, because she is Aghora, beyond good and bad, beyond purity and impurity, beyond morality, only consciousness watching itself.

So why do we cling to identities that dissolve so easily? Because they feel safe. And safety is not truth.

These identities do not protect us, they contain us. Every trauma, every pain, every heartbreak, every laugh, every quiet moment of peace, every fleeting happiness, all of it is her.

So, you may ask-  who am I? You are her too.

There is no difference between me and you except the structures society insists on, the rules and definitions we cling to because they give shape to fear, even as they slowly imprison us. And if you imagined yourself with no labels, no roles, no right, no wrong, no identity to hold onto, not even the need to become something,

What would remain?