A Time for Worship

Part of a collaborative challenge by Bangalore Substack Writers Group

Image credits: Utsav Mamoria (Tumse Na Ho Paayega)

This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. Each of us examined the concept of TIME through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 400 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

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“Revere, O Feithful. She befalls on every land. Revere, O Steadfast. Her mercy comes in time. R-revere, O Feithful…”

I hear my mother repeat those words endlessly through blue lips, nursing a dying fire in the damp hearth. The broken slats of the windows presented little resistance to the battering cold winds. We’d pulled out every blanket we had, and those who didn’t get one shared freely with another. Every inch of the chapel floor is occupied, as three dozen people huddle together trying to survive the night with no food and no warmth.

My younger brother and I find some tarps in the storage closet, and we nail them to the windows to keep the wind out. They hold for a few minutes, but get ripped down by the wind. We put them up a second and a third time, but they offer little comfort. My brother resigns, but I get him to help as we cover some pews instead, so people may crawl underneath. We place some of the sick there.

My brother goes and hugs mother, bent over the fire as she was. She pats his face, but doesn’t stop praying. I help her tend the little fire and keep it alive.

“Mumma, get some rest. The Winterbringer hears no prayers. She only brings death,” I say, unable to help the bitterness that spits out of me. Only then does she stop chanting. She pulls me by the scruff of my coat and holds my head in her embrace.

“And what is so wrong with that?” she says, which surprises me.

“With… death?”

“Yes, death. It is not wrong for things to die, but the natural order. And The Desolate Storm reminds us of that every year. She commands us to let in the cold that it may chase away the false security of warmth.”

As I hear the sick people coughing around me, I hold her tighter. “At least we don’t suffer in the warmth, mumma...”

“There will always be suffering, my child, but only for a time. But that too is an important time, because the goddess teaches us that the only way past suffering is through it.”

As she holds us both, I keep my eyes fixated on the sputtering fire. “Only for a time,” I think, as I feel myself slip into sleep. The last thing I hear is her whispering.

“Revere, O Feithful. She befalls on every land. Revere, O Steadfast. Her mercy comes...”

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Thank you for reading. See other fiction here.

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Stories of “Time” from Bangalore Substack Writers Group

• “So… When will shit actually hit the fan?” by Sailee, sunny climate stormy climate

• Time: I Just Want to See It, Watch It Move by Abhishek Singh, The Comic Dreamer

• Timekeepers - Retracing the Universe’s Deep-Time Signatures by Devayani Khare, Geosophy

• Keeping Time by Reshma Apte, Fanciful Senorita

• Locating Myself In The Map of Time by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home For Homeless Thoughts

• The Thing We Pretend To Understand by Avinash Shenoy, OfftheWalls

• The lost intimacy with time by Siddharth Batra, Siddharth’s substack

• Lessons Time Taught Me by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

• A Time for Worship by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt

• “Tata Mummy Tata” by Rakhi Anil, Rakhi’s Substack

• The vicious cycle of sixteen - A dancer’s take on keeping time by Eshna Benegal, The Deep Cut

• How long is twenty years? by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think

• How mystery writers play with the clock by Gowri N Kishore, About Murder, She Wrote

• TIME INFLATED, JUSTICE DEFLATED. by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain

• What keeps the fool in me delighted by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

• The endless ebb and flow of Time by Siddarth RG, Siddarth’s Newsletter

• Time, please! by Shaili Desai - Litcurry