The First Flame
Before light took its proper shape, before the sky loosened its grip on night, the air still carried a sharpness that settled into bone and breath alike. Dew clung to grass and stone. The earth waited. Within a low enclosure of packed soil and stacked brick, a small hollow had been prepared with care long before the hour arrived. Ash from the previous fire lay cool and pale at its center, swept clean, ready to receive what must always begin again.
Pratiṣṭha knelt without
haste. His movements were exact, practiced, shaped by repetition rather than
display. He had risen while darkness still held, washed in silence, wrapped
himself in cloth that smelled faintly of smoke and clarified butter. This was
not the work of a famed speaker or wandering visionary. It was the work of a
householder entrusted with continuity—one who kept the line unbroken through
ordinary fidelity.
Beside him stood
Vasu, his grandson, barefoot on cold ground, alert despite the hour. The boy’s
eyes followed every motion, every pause. This was the morning he had been
waiting for, though he could not yet have named why. He had been told only that
today he would witness the beginning—the first calling, the first opening that
made all others possible.
Pratiṣṭha placed the
fire-sticks together, aligning them with care. Dry fibers were set beneath,
arranged so that breath and friction would meet them easily. He began the slow
turning, palms moving in steady rhythm. At first there was only sound, the soft
rasp of wood against wood, the faint tightening of air around effort. Then came
warmth, barely perceptible. Smoke followed—a thin thread rising, wavering,
almost doubtful.
Vasu leaned
forward instinctively, then caught himself, remembering to stay still.
Pratiṣṭha breathed
gently, not upon the smoke but into the space around it, as one might coax
wakefulness without startling it. The ember appeared, no larger than a seed. He
shielded it with his hand, murmuring words older than his memory, syllables
shaped not for explanation but for alignment. The ember brightened. Flame took
hold.
It was small,
fragile, unmistakably alive.
“Look,” Pratiṣṭha said quietly.
“He, Agni, has
come.”
The fire
steadied itself, standing upright, drawing air into its body. It gave light
before it gave heat. Vasu felt something settle in his chest—not fear, not joy
exactly, but recognition. This was not merely flame. This was presence.
Pratiṣṭha arranged the
first offering. As he did so, Vasu spoke the words he had practiced, his voice
careful, almost reverent, as though afraid of disturbing what had just been
born. He praised the fire as priest and as god, as the one chosen before all
others to stand at the threshold between human breath and unseen return.
The boy
hesitated, then asked the question that had been forming since the lessons
began. “How could one be both servant and divine? How could what burned before
them also stand among those who received it?”
Pratiṣṭha did not
answer at once. He placed the offering into the flame and watched the response.
The fire accepted it without struggle. Only then did he speak.
“Agni, the
flame, stands in front,” he said. “Always in front. Before us when we call.
Before the others when they receive. He carries our words because he is made to
carry. He carries their presence because he is shaped to receive. What we
cannot cross, he crosses. What we cannot hold, he holds briefly and passes on.”
Vasu considered
this. The flame crackled softly, as though affirming the exchange.
Sarā, Vasu’s
mother, arrived then, soundless in her approach. She carried the vessel of
clarified butter close to her body, keeping it warm. She did not speak at
first. She placed the vessel where it belonged and stepped back, her eyes
resting on the fire with familiarity rather than awe. This, too, was part of
her knowing.
Pratiṣṭha took the
ladle and poured. The fire rose eagerly, color deepening, movement quickening.
Light spilled outward, catching on faces, on the curve of the altar, on the
faint smoke lifting toward the paling sky.
“This is not
new,” Pratiṣṭha said, more to the moment than to either of them. “What we do here
was done before breath had names. Those who first spoke these words trusted
this one. We trust because they trusted us. Not because we remember them
clearly, but because the path holds.”
Vasu listened.
He had been taught that memory could be carried in sound as much as in thought.
The words spoken now had passed through many mouths. Each had shaped them
slightly, yet the core remained, intact as the fire itself.
Sarā added
grains to the flame, one measured handful at a time. As she did, she asked what
had long rested in her heart, “What came back to them from this work? What did
the fire return, beyond smoke and ash?”
Pratiṣṭha answered
without lifting his gaze. “What holds,” he said. “What grows
without breaking its shape. Food that returns year after year. Strength that
does not devour itself. Children who stand upright. Companions who do not
scatter at the first sign of fear. The kind of wealth that arrives slowly and
stays.”
The fire consumed
the offering steadily. Nothing was wasted. Even what vanished did so with
purpose.
Pratiṣṭha prepared the
next act with particular care. His hands slowed. This was the point at which
human error most easily entered. A thought misplaced. A movement rushed. He
breathed, steadying himself, and let the fire do what only the fire could do.
“What leaves us
imperfect,” he said, “does not remain so. Agni encloses it. He completes it.
What rises from here does not carry our wandering. He carries only what is fit
to be received.”
Smoke thickened
briefly, then thinned as it climbed. Vasu followed it with his eyes until it
disappeared into brightness.
The sky was
changing now. The edge of night withdrew. Color returned gradually, not as a
sudden arrival but as a patient unfolding. The fire’s glow remained distinct,
holding its place even as the greater light approached.
Pratiṣṭha lowered
himself again and spoke words of invitation, not command, not demand. He called
upon the fire as one who knew, one who spoke truth not because he named it but
because he could not do otherwise. He asked the fire to come fully into itself,
to arrive not alone but bearing what always followed when the fire was honored
correctly.
Sarā watched the
flame closely. She had learned to read its movements as others read faces.
There was steadiness now, no wavering. She felt the familiar easing in her
chest. This was acceptance.
“When he gives,”
Pratiṣṭha said, “he does not withdraw it later. What he brings, he brings whole. What he
promises, he keeps by being what he is.”
The fire
answered with a sudden, clean flare, then settled again.
Morning had
fully arrived. Birds called beyond the enclosure. The chill lifted. Heat from
the altar reached skin and breath. Pratiṣṭha stood, stretching joints that had
learned this posture over decades.
“We come like
this each day,” he said to Vasu. “Not because he forgets us, but because we
forget ourselves. He clears the way. He is the Purohit and also the Hotar. He
keeps the measure. He guards what must not be broken.”
He gestured
toward the fire’s steady presence. “What moves as it should, moves because this
order is held. When this fails, all else follows.”
Vasu nodded,
though he did not yet grasp the weight of what had been said. He felt only the
rightness of the moment, the sense that something vast had been touched without
being disturbed.
Pratiṣṭha’s voice softened
for the final words. He no longer spoke as instructor or priest, but as one who
asked simply because asking was permitted.
“Stay close,” he
said. “Not distant. Not hidden. Be as one who can be approached without fear.
As one who answers when called, not with judgment, but with shelter.”
The fire burned
evenly, neither roaring nor dimming.
Vasu and Sarā
lowered themselves beside Pratiṣṭha. No words followed. None were needed.
Smoke rose in a thin, unwavering line. The first calling had been completed,
not as an ending, but as an opening.
The fire
remained. And with it, the quiet assurance that what had been set in motion
would hold, for the day, for the household, for the world that turned because
such things were done, again and again, without spectacle, without doubt.
(c) Bharat Bhushan
16 December 2025
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