| Vijayalakshmi Sridhar | January 2026 | Flash Fiction |
The third eye is an inward-focused eye. It cannot be physically opened or closed.
Under the larger-than-life Adiyogi statue, I sidle closer to you, clasping hands, my head on your shoulder, my blue cotton-silk crushed against your flaming-orange kurta, my heart bubbling with all the unspent libido. When was the last time we made love? Hmm… Was it in Chennai? A year back? More than a year? Just a quick act that only left me in a fire of yearning. You are aware of the incompleteness, yet you can’t bring yourself to touch me again. Asking will only lock your lips tighter—I know. Seduction is the way out, but lately, you are like a thread unspooling from the bundle, drifting, drifting away from me.
The third eye opens when the external or internal build-up becomes too much to contain.
I say a good tart amla pachadi can open my third eye. Or Meenu’s shrill, high-pitched ‘sa’ can do it. “It is not funny,” you reply, eyes splashing in annoyance.
Our fifteenth anniversary is round the corner. Even though you don’t say it, I take this ashram retreat as an anniversary trip. I am armed with separate outfits for day and night, along with homemade theplas, Til Gajak, disc-like and crisp, suji halwa-with-jaggery-and-without-ghee and individual medicine kits. A limited phone hour in the evening is our only connection with Meenu and life back in Chennai.
“The eye refers to the blue pearl- situated right here,” you say, pointing to the middle of your forehead. “It is the pearl of wisdom.”
I shudder inward as you speak. A sanyasi’s prediction from the past floats: You will become a karmayogi- one without any familial attachment and spend the last fifteen years of your life away from the family. And you will die, without a rebirth.
After fifteen years of marital life, between the two of us, only you seem to have the power to walk away, even though we are proud parents—you and I, jubilant and in disbelief for having our perfectly-normal daughter.
Shiva lived in the cold; played with snakes. His third-eye is significant, because he perceived what most beings couldn’t perceive.
That night in our room, my effort fails again. I curl away from you, fists clenched in frustration. You slip into the washroom.
Later, when I startle awake in the wee hours, you are not beside me. I run out in a faded nightdress, hair undone, searching the discourse and prayer halls and vinyasa gallery, the Linga Bhairavi nook, finally finding you on the ground under the statue, body dry and stiff like a coir mat, and stone-cold. I shake you—I will be forty in a few months, and this jarring string of actions confuses me. Your eyes pop open, then your lips too. “Save me, please, Mathu,” you whisper.
I tend to judge my complicated emotions and never-ending wants, but that night I witnessed nothing yogic or karmic in you. You, a layered soul, have many concealed layers to your personality. Now, on the ground, you appear vulnerable and small and helpless.
“Save me, Mathu,” you repeat. “I will be back,” I say.
When I get back, I cradle your head in my lap, make you sip the lukewarm chai from the ashram cafeteria and slowly, your seized senses start flowing back. By the time the ashram doctor arrives, you feel fine.
To gain deeper access to yourself, listen to the reverberations, not the lilt.
After that incident, you switch—instead of the early-morning Kriya sessions, you take rejuvenation classes. You never leave my side. Yet, you are more withdrawn. I haven’t heard a “Sorry,” or “Thank You,” yet.
You are still comfortable on the middle path to do your thing.
Enduring a week of your silence drains me. After the weekly dhyana-hour, I break into a song- Sabapathiku Veru Deivam- one of Meenu’s, to your shock and embarrassment. The song isn’t tuneful or sweet; only words recited in continuity—like a poem. Yet it warms me, the pin-prick emotions lifting me up and putting me down gently. After the song, I feel better, but when you take my hand, my senses don’t jump.
After we return, Meenu, our daughter, calls and says she needs us back.
Seven nights and six days have passed in a blur. It is time to pack, before we’ve fully unpacked.
I sit on the floor, quiet, distracted. My shoulders are heavy with all the sessions of kriya, but my emotions are raw. Turbulent, I take deep breaths deliberately to slow down.
“Go, pack.” I hear your prompting. I look at the dull-white walls and single, grill window. The bed, fruit basket, plastic dustbin. I imagine standing at the window, sleeping on the bed, and filling the bin with trash every day. I am floating in a watery calmness. My hair is gathered in a top knot. My flowing robe is wrapped around my shoulders. No jewels on me. No thali in my neck. The solitude is comforting. The no-strings-attached state is inviting. I close my eyes to retain the image. The turbulence melts, there is a windmill slowdown in my heart, the blades rasp against my ribs, blood slows from tidal to tiny waves. The blocking doorway is sucked in, and I feel vacuumed out.
There is no substitute for knowing. To know is to be.
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From a young age, Vijayalakshmi Sridhar has grown up with stories- both telling and listening to them. Her fiction explores the angst in human relationships.
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Photo by Jonathan Castañeda on Unsplash
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