Chapter 3 – The Name and the Sun
A week had passed since the child's birth.
The haveli, though still wrapped in winter's soft breath, pulsed with quiet preparation. From the early hours of the morning, the stone floors had been washed with warm water and neem leaves. Marigolds and mango leaves were tied in garlands across the doorways. Incense smoke drifted through the corridors like forgotten verses of prayer.
It was the day of Naamkaran—the sacred naming.
In the inner courtyard, covered by a large red canopy, mats had been spread. Copper pots of water stood at each corner. A small altar had been prepared in the east-facing direction, and in front of it sat an elderly man with white robes, a wooden box, and eyes that seemed to see beyond this world.
Pandit Vishwesh Tiwari.
His forehead bore a sandalwood tilak, his beard long and white, and his fingers moved with purpose and precision as he began to unfold his tools—old manuscripts, palm-leaf notes, black ink, and sacred red thread.
The family gathered quietly.
Parvati sat near the altar, dressed in a pale yellow saree, her newborn cradled in soft cloth. Ramarajan sat beside her, his eyes steady but his heart full.
The pandit chanted the opening mantras, calling upon Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, then turned to the family with a quiet authority.
> "The child was born during the sacred fortnight," he said, his voice deep, like temple bells.
"On the day of Makar Sankranti, when Surya Dev—the Sun God—leaves the southern path and begins his northern journey."
He dipped a feather into ink and began to draw on a white cloth—circles, lines, planetary signs—an ancient script only a few could still read. The Janm Kundli, the child's birth chart, was being written.
> "He was born in the year Vikram Samvat 1927," the pandit continued. "In the month of Pausha, on the day the sun enters Makara Rashi. A holy time. A time of upward light."
The family nodded. The Gregorian calendar was not mentioned—such things were used in government courts or schools, not in the sacred spaces of old households.
But within the child's quiet mind, a memory stirred.
> "January 14th," a thought echoed faintly inside him. "The year... 1870. Makar Sankranti. I remember converting Vikram Samvat to the English calendar once... back when I had a different name. A different mother."
The thought faded like mist. His tiny chest rose and fell with calm breath.
The Pandit looked up again and smiled.
> "Surya Dev himself shines upon this birth. Let the child be named in his honour. Let him be called... Surya."
Stillness passed over the room.
As if the marigolds, the stone, the incense—everything—had silently agreed.
Parvati repeated the name in a whisper, her voice like a river flowing softly over sacred ground.
"Surya…"
Ramarajan pressed his palms together, bowing toward the altar.
"May he live with the light of truth," he said. "May Dharma guide his path."
And in that moment, as the sun climbed gently into the sky outside, the boy named Surya… quietly remembered his name.
...
Two months had passed since his birth.
The world saw him as a baby.
But he remembered everything.
His name: Surya.
His mother's tears on the night when he got scratch on his arm.
The soft laughter of Sundar.
The weight of sacrifice.
The pain of dying on the road, watching the sun dip westward one last time.
And everything before that—his entire life, his thoughts, his learning.
His memories were not vague flashes or incomplete fragments. They were whole. Bright. Like pages of a book still open inside him. He could recall chemical reactions, mathematical proofs, theoretical physics, computer languages, and history—all from the world of 2025.
But now...
He lay on his back, swaddled in a white cotton cloth, in the warm corner of a haveli in the Mysore princely state.
His small limbs twitched. He could not even roll over on his own. The voices around him were soft, musical—but foreign. The language was unfamiliar.
> "Kannada," he realized quickly. "I've heard it before. South Indian. I've been reborn in Mysore. That confirms it."
The structure of the syllables, the inflection, the tone—it was all far from his native tongue.
In his past life, he had grown up in the north—in a blend of Hindi, Awadhi, Devanagari, and English. His ears were tuned to that rhythm.
Now, he listened again—not to learn it anew, but to absorb it with full awareness.
> "I must become fluent. Again."
And when the world outside grew quiet—when the ceiling beams no longer amused him, when the curtains stopped dancing in the breeze—he thought.
Not like a child. Not like a dreamer.
But like a scholar of light, of motion, of invention.
> "Let me recall where the world stands in 1870…"
> "Yes—this is the year of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."
> "Just last year, in 1869, the Periodic Table was proposed by Mendeleev."
> "Electricity is still in early stages... Faraday's work is done... but no light bulb yet. Edison's real breakthroughs are still ten years away."
> "No modern radio, no transistor, no internet, no digital circuits."
> "Steam engines, telegraphs, and photography exist. Morse code is in use. The Industrial Revolution has touched Britain and parts of Europe. But India... is still under the British Raj."
A servant passed by, singing a soft Kannada lullaby. The sound barely registered.
Surya's mind was already drifting into thoughts of thermodynamics, of Newtonian mechanics, of gear ratios and electromagnetic theory.
> "What if I build early here? What if I teach what the world hasn't yet discovered?"
> "What if... my rebirth isn't just survival—but purpose?"
He smiled—just faintly. A strange thing for a two-month-old to do without reason.
Outside, the neem tree swayed. A parrot called from its branch.
Inside, Parvati entered quietly, looked at her son with love, and whispered in Kannada,
> "ನೀನು ಎಷ್ಟು ಚೆಂದ ಆಗಿದ್ದೀಯ…" (How beautiful you are…)
Surya didn't understand every word—yet.
But he was learning. Quickly. Silently.
And while the world believed he was just a baby...
He was already planning.
..
Surya's days passed slowly—but not in silence.
They were filled with gentle hands, smiling faces, and the soft rustle of cotton sarees brushing past the carved stone floors of the haveli. Every corner of the house, every heartbeat, seemed to hum with one shared joy:
> "The child has come."
He did not speak. He did not cry often. He simply watched—and received love in a thousand small ways.
In the quiet hours of night, when the world outside faded into darkness and oil lamps glowed low in their niches, Parvati would cradle him in her arms and hum lullabies.
She sang in Kannada—soft, sweet songs of ancient kings, rivers, elephants, and divine mothers.
> "ಮಕ್ಕಳ ಹೊತ್ತ ತಾಯಿ ದೇವಿ... ನೀನು ನನಗೆ ವರವಾಗಿಬಂದೆ..."
(The goddess who bears children... you came to me as a blessing.)
Surya, though still small, listened. Not just with ears, but with his soul.
He did not fully understand the words yet, but he understood the emotion, the sacred rhythm of her breath, the way her fingers stroked his forehead gently in circles as she sang.
Sometimes, she would tell him stories—of Lord Krishna stealing butter, of Hanuman leaping toward the sun, of Shivaji Maharaj standing tall against injustice.
She would whisper,
> "One day, my Surya will be wise and strong like them…"
And Surya would close his eyes—not from sleep, but from peace.
Each morning, as the first rays of sunlight entered the haveli and birds began their calls, his grandmother Kalyani would enter the room holding a puja thali.
She came without fail.
In her thali were kumkum, haldi, akshat (uncooked rice), a small lamp, and sometimes a sweet kept especially for the gods. She would circle the thali three times in front of him, ringing a small bell softly.
> "Ayushmaan bhava, Surya," she would say, her voice steady with grace.
"May your life be long, and may Dharma guide your every step."
She would press a red tilak on his tiny forehead, then gently touch his chin.
Surya would blink, calm and still.
His father Ramarajan, though less expressive, showed his love in careful thought.
One morning, he returned from the town with something unusual: a small wooden chair fitted with wheels—a handcrafted rolling seat, polished and carved with care.
He set it down proudly in the courtyard and looked at Parvati.
> "Soon, our son will sit upright. And when he does, let him roll freely, see the garden, touch the sky."
Parvati laughed gently, "You already dream of him walking, Ramarajan."
He replied, half-jokingly, "I dream of him running."
Surya sat supported in a pillow that day, watching his father with soft, thoughtful eyes.
> "He's gentle... and clever," Surya thought. "And full of quiet fire."
His grandfather, white-bearded and wise, would take Surya in his lap every afternoon, rocking him slowly near the window. Surya especially enjoyed playing with his grandfather's thick, curled moustache—grabbing it with his small fingers and giggling inwardly as his grandfather chuckled.
> "This one will be a sharp mind," the old man would say.
"Look how he looks at everything—as if he's testing us already."
But the most amusing scenes often came from his aunt—his father's younger sister.
Young, spirited, and fiercely attached to Surya, she would often argue playfully with her mother and sister-in-law just to hold him.
> "I got up early today! It's my turn to hold him."
"No, Amma told me to take him out for sun this morning!"
Surya, seated in someone's arms, would listen to all this with a secret delight. He would sometimes even let out a sudden cry—not from need, but to tease them.
And as soon as he cried, three voices would call at once—
> "Amma, he's hungry!"
"Give him to me!"
"No! He wants me!"
Surya couldn't speak. He couldn't tell them that inside his still-forming body, he was laughing.
> "So much love... I never imagined I'd be born into a family like this."
> "And yet... here I am."
By the time he was four months old, Surya had already begun to understand Kannada.
He did not know every word. But he felt their rhythm. Their structure. Their meaning.
> "Some things are not so different," he thought, as he lay near the open jharokha window.
"Kannada has a soul… and in its root lies Sanskrit, just like Hindi. Just like Awadhi. Just like the Devanagari tongue I once knew."
The vowel sounds were softer here. The syllables round and musical.
But meanings echoed familiar.
Taayi, for mother.
Appa, for father.
Anna, for elder brother.
Ammamma, for grandmother.
He heard these words all day—spoken with love, with laughter, with prayer. His family used them with ease, and little by little, he absorbed them, like a sponge drinking sunlight.
And then, one quiet morning—something changed.
It was early. The birds had only just begun their song. The brass bell had not yet rung in the puja room. Parvati had just picked him up from his wooden cot, holding him against her shoulder, her hand stroking his back softly.
> "Taayi iddane... enu bayasuttane?" she whispered.
(Mother is here... what do you want?)
And then, softly—like a breeze stirring a curtain—came a sound.
Small. Imperfect. But real.
> "A...mma..."
Parvati froze.
She leaned back slightly, holding her breath. Had she imagined it?
> "Surya?" she asked softly, eyes wide with wonder.
And again came the sound, this time with a child's tiny pride:
> "Am...ma..."
A burst of joy passed through the room like a sunbeam breaking clouds.
Parvati laughed—through tears. She kissed his forehead again and again, her hands shaking.
> "He said Amma! He said my name first!"
She rushed to the courtyard, still holding Surya.
"Amma! Amma! Ramarajan! Wake up! He spoke! He said my name!"
Within minutes, the haveli was full of feet and voices. Grandmother Kalyani came from her prayer room, her thali still in hand. Ramarajan, half-awake, came out tying his angavastram.
The aunt came running from the back corridor.
> "What happened?"
"He spoke?"
"Did he really?"
Parvati laughed and cried together.
> "Yes! He said Amma! Clearly!"
Kalyani leaned forward and smiled. "Call him again."
Parvati kissed Surya's cheek. "Say it again, my sun. Amma... say it once more."
Surya looked at all of them—faces glowing, eyes wide, hearts open.
He understood what was happening. He could feel the joy, the pride, the amazement.
But something deeper stirred in him.
He wasn't surprised that he had spoken.
He had chosen that word, that moment.
Because in two lives, in two worlds, only one truth remained unchanged:
> Mother is always first.
He smiled faintly and whispered again,
> "Am...ma."
And the courtyard erupted into gentle cheer.
Ramarajan lifted him high and kissed his forehead.
> "He'll be speaking in full sentences before his first birthday!" he laughed.
His aunt, unable to hold back, playfully fought to take him from Parvati's arms.
> "Now he'll say my name next!"
"No," said Kalyani, amused. "He will say Appa. That is certain."
They all began teasing, laughing, arguing over who the child would name next.
But Surya, held close in his mother's embrace again, had closed his eyes.
He had spoken—not because his tongue had formed the word,
but because his soul remembered its meaning.
---
.