Aarti rolled her eyes. She pulled out a box from her pouch, from which emerged a stick. ‘The last one.’ She shook her head. Using a small device, she lit the stick and started spitting out halos of smoke. ‘Forgive Payal. And listen. We’ve already tried to find a way out of this place, but there’s a wall above these hills, in case you’re wondering. We’re all stuck here for now. And to play their game, we need a leader—what they called an “Eka”. So, I’m stepping up by virtue of my caste, and I need your support in—’

‘If I may,’ Prithvi said. ‘There’s talk of an eleventh Soul being recruited, because, as you said, the Adwaita has failed to produce an Eka. What’s to say that person doesn’t—’

‘It’s crazy, this place,’ Aarti said, holding up the burning tip of her cigarette. It had a blue glow. ‘Fire isn’t red here—whether it’s in a lantern or in this.’

Payal kicked up dust. ‘I’m going to see if I can find a phone signal on the other hill today. I don’t have too many tries left.’

‘That can wait,’ Prithvi said. ‘I know a way past the wall over the hill.’

Unlike most Souls of Samsara, Fayza had been allowed to say goodbye to her parents. They couldn’t fathom what was happening when they found out their daughter would be taken away. Many plans were made to run away and hide her. But a friend of Fayza’s grandfather, a sage from Rishikesh, had convinced her parents to let fate have a say. He had heard of Vanyasa. ‘It’s an honour she must not dismiss,’ he said. ‘And you don’t really have a choice; you’re lucky they’re informing you at all. They’re being polite, I don’t know why. She’ll be kidnapped if you resist.’ The sage was a trusted friend of the family, so he convinced the parents of Fayza’s destiny and offered to help her prepare. In the month leading up to her arrival in Vanyasa, the sage lived with the family and taught Fayza the legends of the valley and ways to survive its trials.

On her first day in Vanyasa, Fayza was shown to her hut at the base of the mountain Kalanag, at the eastern edge. It was to be her home for the next year. ‘You’ll have to furnish it yourself,’ she had been told. ‘Based on what you earn in the bazaar.’

The hut’s windows were uneven holes in the side plaster. The insides smelt of dead animals. The floor was littered with feathers, and a rug gathered dust in the far corner. The residents of Vanyasa clearly did not enjoy the luxury of beds. Fayza got to work scrubbing the mud walls of her hut and sweeping the clay floors. She used a fibre broom to dust the roof, which was made of dried dung and hay. And only after a week, when her monkish room was clean, did she stop.