Author: Samrat Sarkar
CHAPTER A
How Everything Began with a Question
The village did not have a name worth remembering.
Things happened there the way they always had. The church bell rang on time. Sundays arrived on time. Faith, too, arrived on time—whenever it was called for.
The village was neither beautiful nor ugly. Stone houses leaned gently against one another, as if they were tired of standing alone. Old rain stains marked the ceilings, quiet witnesses to years that had passed without asking for permission.
In one of those houses lived a boy.
He had a strange habit for his age—he listened.
Not only to words, but to the spaces between them.
He listened to his mother humming hymns while cooking.
He listened to his father reading from the Bible, his voice steady and certain.
And he listened to his younger sister's laughter—the kind that needed no reason, only life.
One afternoon, his sister suddenly asked,
"Do you think God sleeps like we do?"
The boy laughed before he could stop himself.
His mother smiled, but quickly said, "Don't ask such questions."
That was the moment he learned something important.
In that house, questions had boundaries.
They were an ordinary family. Not rich. Not poor. Food appeared on the table every day. Coats hung by the door in winter. And faith lived in the house like an old inheritance—handled carefully, rarely examined.
Faith was not discussed.
Faith was practiced.
Every evening, the Bible rested on the same wooden table. At first, the boy listened to its stories like fairy tales—Jesus walking, healing, forgiving. He liked those stories. They felt gentle. Human.
Until one sentence refused to stay quiet.
The priest read it one Sunday without emphasis, as if it carried no weight at all:
"Do not worship me. Worship my Father."
No one reacted.
His father nodded.
His mother closed her eyes in prayer.
But inside the boy's mind, something cracked open.
Father?
Who is this Father?
That night, sleep did not come easily. He lay staring at the ceiling, tracing the old rain marks with his eyes. For the first time, those stains felt like unanswered questions.
If Jesus is God, he wondered,
why does He ask us not to worship Him?
And if He is the Son,
then where is the Father?
He asked his mother the next day, carefully.
"Who is the Father Jesus talks about?"
She paused, just for a moment, then smiled.
"God is our Father," she said.
It was a beautiful answer.
And somehow, incomplete.
A few days later, he asked his father.
His father closed the Bible gently and replied,
"Not everything needs an answer. Faith means trust."
The word stayed with him. Trust.
He tried. Truly, he tried.
He stood in church. He sang the hymns. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. He followed every rule faith demanded of him. Still, something felt missing—like a door left slightly open.
Sometimes he laughed at himself.
Maybe I think too much.
But the questions did not laugh back.
One Sunday, in the middle of prayer, his eyes drifted toward the wooden cross above the altar. For a brief moment, a thought passed through him—quiet but unsettling.
Is there someone beyond this?
He never said it aloud.
The village did not welcome such thoughts. Questions made people uncomfortable. Silence was safer.
So the boy learned another skill—how to carry his questions quietly.
Years passed. He grew older. His voice deepened. His thoughts stretched farther than the church walls. The village remained the same. The bell still rang. People still believed.
On the morning he left for college, his mother cried.
His sister said, "You've grown up."
He smiled.
But inside, he knew the truth.
He was not only leaving the village.
He was leaving with a question.
And that question would follow him—
no matter how far he went.