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Kya Bhagwan Offline Gaye Hai? - Part 1

  • Writer: Aaditya Mehta
    Aaditya Mehta
  • Aug 6, 2025
  • 3 min read

Updated: Sep 3, 2025


Ved had stopped believing in God around the same time he stopped believing in Santa Claus. Except that Santa never asked him to fast on Mondays or chant shlokas, he didn’t understand.


As a child, he was devoted. Hands joined in evening aarti, a tilak on his forehead, and a little prayer diary tucked under his pillow. But somewhere between YouTube algorithms and heartbreaks, something shifted. Faith turned into formality. Prayer turned into a passcode, something he had forgotten.


Now at twenty-four, Ved lived in a cluttered flat in Mumbai, surrounded by tech, overthinking, and half-eaten packets of Maggi. His startup had just collapsed after eighteen months of hustle, pivoting, and jargon. His girlfriend had ghosted him with a final message that read, “I need to realign my energies. You feel... heavy.”

Whatever that meant.


On a Tuesday night, Ved sat in the dark, scrolling through reels of meditation, motivational monks, and weird ads that promised chakra cleansing with a lemon and a red thread. He scoffed, tossed his phone aside, and looked up at the ceiling like it owed him an explanation.


"Hey Bhagwan," he muttered with dry sarcasm, "if you’re still online, ping kar. Kuch toh sign bhej. Anything. A WhatsApp forward, a broken lightbulb, I’ll take anything."

At that exact moment, the tube light flickered and went off.


Ved blinked. He sat still for a moment, eyes fixed on the dark ceiling. Then he chuckled.

"Nice try, Electricity Department. Not falling for it."

He rolled over and went to sleep.

The next morning felt unusually quiet. No honking. No shouting neighbors. Just the hum of the fan and a strange kind of calm.


As Ved reached for his phone, something fell from the edge of the shelf. It landed softly on the floor.

It was his childhood prayer diary.

The same one with crayon doodles, poorly drawn diyas, and the words "Dear God" scribbled on every other page. He hadn’t seen it in years.

He picked it up, flipping through it slowly. Between the pages, a folded note slipped out.

It was written in his own handwriting.

“When you stop looking outside, I’ll meet you inside. — B”

He stared at it.

“B?” he said aloud. “What the hell is B?”

Bhagwan? Bapuji? Biscuit?

He shook his head. “Must be something I copied from a book. Kids write weird things.”

However, the strange thing was that he had no memory of writing it.


Shrugging, he shoved the diary into his drawer and got ready to leave for work.

That day, things got... weirder.

In the metro, he found himself standing next to an old man with kind eyes and a calm smile. Ved tried to avoid eye contact, but the man looked at him and said gently, “Don’t worry. He heard you.”

Ved froze.


He hadn’t said a word. Not a whisper. Nothing. “Sorry?” he asked, confused.

But the old man was already walking away, blending into the crowd like he was never there.

Back at the office, his old colleague, Shruti, who hadn’t spoken to him in months, messaged him out of the blue.

"Hey, Ved. I know you’re going through stuff. I saw this book on faith at a bookstore and felt like you should read it. Random, I know. But take care."

Attached was a picture of the book.

"God in Small Things."


Ved stared at the screen. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, unsure of what to type.

He didn’t believe in signs. He believed in logic, in patterns, in Wi-Fi speeds. But something was shifting.

Or maybe, something was returning.

He went home early that day. As he entered his room, the power came back. The tube light glowed steadily. No flickers.

He sat on his bed. Looked at the diary again. Read the note once more.

“When you stop looking outside, I’ll meet you inside. — B”


Ved smiled faintly, not because he understood, but because he didn’t. And somehow, that made it better.

Somewhere deep within him, a door creaked open. Not all the way. Just enough to let a little light in.

He didn’t pray that night. He just… listened.

And for the first time in years, it didn’t feel like silence.


To be continued...



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Luvv A Sanwal
Luvv A Sanwal
Aug 06, 2025
Rated 5 out of 5 stars.

Very beautifully written.

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