Write ✍️ by Parmod Kumar Prajapati...
In the royal stables of what was once Hastinapura, now simply the capital, there were two kinds of quiet. The first was the gentle, drowsy quiet of mid-afternoon, filled with the sounds of contented chewing, the swish of tails, and the soft snorts of dreaming horses. The second was the quiet of Stall Eight.
Stall Eight stood apart, at the end of the main colonnade. It was always swept clean, the stone floor worn smooth, the wooden manger filled with fresh hay that was never eaten. No horse had occupied it for over a generation. Yet, it was the most meticulously maintained space in the entire complex. The responsibility for this fell to an old stableman named Siddhartha.
Siddhartha was a man of few words and precise movements. His back was bent from a lifetime of hauling sacks of grain and bales of hay, but his hands were steady. He had served in the stables since he was a boy, tending to the horses of princes and kings. He had seen the great white steeds of Krishna come and go, had witnessed the parade of magnificent chargers for the Kuru and Pandava heroes. But his life, his unspoken purpose, was bound to the emptiness of Stall Eight.
Every morning, before first light, Siddhartha would go to the stall. He would not enter immediately. He would stand at the half-door, his gnarled hands resting on the worn wood, and bow his head. Then, with a ritualistic care, he would enter. He would remove yesterday's untouched hay, grain, and water, replacing them with fresh portions. He would brush down the wooden walls, polish the iron fittings on the door, and sweep the floor until it shone. Last, from a small leather pouch tied to his waist, he would take a pinch of fine, golden sandalwood dust and sprinkle it in the four corners of the stall. Only then would he step back, nod once, and close the door.
The younger grooms thought him touched by the sun. "Old Siddhartha tends a ghost," they'd whisper, laughing gently. But their laughter held no malice, for Siddhartha's dedication was a fact of the stables, as constant as the rising sun. Even the Head Stablemaster, a practical man, never questioned it. The upkeep of one empty stall was a small price for the old man's otherwise unparalleled skill and loyalty.
No one knew why he did it. Siddhartha never spoke of it. If asked, he would simply say, "A space must be kept for what it was meant to hold," and return to his work.
The truth was a memory etched in fire and grief on Siddhartha's soul.
He had been a young groom, newly promoted to the royal wing, on the day the stranger arrived. It was not long after the terrible war. The city was a place of muted voices and haunted eyes. The stranger came at dusk, leading a horse. But what a horse! Siddhartha, who knew horseflesh as others know their own children, had never seen its like. It was not overly large, but it was built of pure, distilled power—deep chest, legs like tempered iron, a coat the colour of a stormy twilight, and eyes that held an ancient, intelligent sorrow. It was, Siddhartha knew instantly, a warhorse. Not just any warhorse, but one that had seen the heart of the abyss.
And the man leading it… He was tall, his body a map of terrible scars barely hidden by a simple traveller's cloak. His face was worn, but his eyes… they were the same as the horse's. Sorrowful, intelligent, and carrying a weight that seemed to bend the very air around him. He spoke with the Stablemaster, his voice a low, rusty rumble.
"I seek shelter for my friend, for one night. He is tired. We both are."
The Stablemaster, wary but recognising a kind of nobility in the man's bearing, agreed. "Siddhartha," he called. "See to the traveller's horse. Put him in… in Stall Eight."
Siddhartha approached with reverence. As he took the reins from the stranger, their hands brushed. A jolt went through the young groom—a flash of searing heat, the deafening twang of a bowstring, the smell of sun-baked earth and blood. He stumbled back, wide-eyed.
The stranger gave him a look of deep, weary understanding. "He is called Ashva. He does not like to be stalled. But he will behave for you. Be gentle. He has lost much."
That night, Siddhartha performed his duties with a new kind of attention. He brushed Ashva's coat, feeling the ridges of old scars beneath the fur. He cleaned the hooves, packed with the dust of long, hard roads. He offered water and the best grain. The horse ate and drank sparingly, but he watched Siddhartha with a calm, assessing gaze. When Siddhartha was done, he didn't leave. Something held him there.
He sat on a bale of hay outside the stall. In the quiet, he began to talk. He spoke of his own small griefs—his father, a groom before him, lost to a fever; his mother's failing eyesight. He spoke of the oppressive sadness that had settled over the stables since the great horses of the war had left or died. He spoke of missing the sound of laughter, the bustle of preparation for tournaments that were now just bitter memories.
Ashva listened. He lowered his great head and rested his chin on the stall door, his warm breath fogging the wood. Siddhartha, emboldened, reached out and gently scratched the horse's forehead. A deep, resonant sigh shuddered through the animal, a sound of such profound relief and shared sadness that it brought tears to Siddhartha's eyes.
In that moment of connection, the memories came, not as flashes, but as a shared, silent knowing. He saw through Ashva's eyes.
He saw a king, radiant and lonely, choosing him from a line of proud steeds. Not for his size, but for the steadiness in his eye. He felt the king's hand, strong and sure, on his neck. "We are both outsiders, you and I," the king murmured. "We will trust each other."
He felt the thunder of Kurukshetra beneath his hooves, the weight of the chariot, the deadly harmony of movement between horse, charioteer, and warrior. He felt the king's focus, his fearlessness, his moments of whispered encouragement. "Steady, Ashva. Through the gap. Good. Good boy."
He felt the cataclysmic moment the wheel sank. The king's leap, the sudden lightness of the chariot. The terrible, empty feeling as the psychic tether to his master stretched, thinned, and then… snapped. The final, silent command that echoed back through the broken bond: "Live."
Then, the long, aimless wandering. The search for a scent on the wind that was gone. The finding of the scarred stranger, who had also loved the king, who also carried the emptiness. Their mutual, wordless pact of pilgrimage.
Siddhartha jerked back, gasping. The horse looked at him, and in its liquid eye, he saw an acknowledgment. You see.
"He was your master," Siddhartha whispered.
Ashva nodded, a slow, deliberate dip of his head.
The scarred stranger came at dawn to collect his horse. He saw Siddhartha's red-rimmed eyes, the new, reverent way he handled Ashva. The stranger placed a hand on Siddhartha's shoulder. "You have a gentle heart, groom. It is a rare thing. This place… it was his home, once. For a little while. He was happy here, in these stables, before the call of war."
"Who are you?" Siddhartha dared to ask.
The stranger smiled, a sad, fleeting thing. "A man who loved a brother too late. I come to see the places he knew, to try and understand the weight of the crown he wore." He mounted Ashva with an easy grace that spoke of a lifetime in the saddle. "Thank you for your kindness to my friend."
"Will you come back?" Siddhartha asked, a desperate hope in his voice.
The stranger looked at the stable, at the city beyond, at the dawn sky. "The road is long, and understanding is a slow harvest. But perhaps. For him."
They left, horse and rider, melting into the morning mist.
Siddhartha went into the now-empty Stall Eight. The scent of the horse, of sweat and leather and road dust, still lingered. He picked up a single, dark twilight-coloured hair from the manger. He knew, with a certainty that settled in his bones, that they would not return. The pilgrimage was endless. But the space that had held them, even for one night, was now sacred.
From that day, he became the Keeper. The hay was for Ashva, should he ever need rest. The water was for the stranger, should he ever know thirst. The sandalwood was an offering to the memory of the king who connected them all. The sweeping, the polishing—it was a prayer of maintenance, a refusal to let the space of that brief, profound connection be forgotten or cluttered with the mundane.
Years turned into decades. Kings changed. Stables were renovated. New generations of horses and grooms came and went. Siddhartha grew old. His ritual never varied. It was the axis around which his life turned.
One winter evening, when Siddhartha was very old and his hands shook too much to braid a mane, a new Head Stablemaster, a young man who saw only inefficiency, confronted him.
"Old man, this is foolishness. Stall Eight is prime space. We need it for the new chariot team from Kashi. This ends tomorrow."
Siddhartha looked at him, his old eyes clear. "You may use the stall," he said, his voice firmer than it had been in years. "But you will first help me perform the keeping, one last time."
Perhaps it was the unwavering certainty in the old man's gaze, or a superstition he didn't understand, but the young Stablemaster agreed.
At dawn, Siddhartha led him to Stall Eight. He made the young man remove the old hay and grain. He had him scrub the walls until they gleamed. He guided his hands to polish the ironwork. Finally, he gave him the leather pouch. "The sandalwood. In the four corners."
As the young man sprinkled the last pinch of fragrant dust, a strange thing happened. The first ray of the rising sun pierced the high stable window and fell directly into the centre of the swept-clean stall. In that pool of gold, for a fleeting second, both men saw not an empty space, but the impression of a powerful, twilight-coloured horse standing at rest, and the shadow of a tall man leaning against the wall, his face in profile, looking out at a remembered dawn. A scent, not of hay or dung, but of sun-warmed earth, distant rain, and sandalwood, filled the air.
Then it was gone.
The young Stablemaster stumbled back, his face pale. Siddhartha simply nodded, a peaceful smile on his wrinkled face. "You see? The space is kept. It is ready. You may put your horses in now. They will be calm here. They will be… understood."
He turned and walked slowly out of the stable, into the morning sun. His work was done. The memory was no longer his alone to hold; it had been witnessed.
The young Stablemaster never put the Kashi team in Stall Eight. He left it empty. He didn't perform the full ritual, but he ensured it was always clean. He found, on difficult days, that standing in its quiet centre brought him a sense of perspective.
And so, the legend continued, whispered among the grooms. Not of a ghost, but of a keeping. Of a loyalty that transcended a master's death, a brother's regret, and a groom's simple duty. It was said that on certain still mornings, if you stood very quietly at the door of Stall Eight, you might feel a warmth like a hand on your shoulder, or hear the distant, comforting echo of a contented sigh. It was the space where three solitudes—of a horse, a prince, and a king—had once met, and in meeting, made the emptiness holy. Siddhartha, the Keeper, had passed on, but the stall remained: a testament not to what was lost, but to the enduring shape of the love that had once filled it.