As a child, I felt other people's pain physically in my body. Their thoughts, their grief, the pulse of strangers passing me on the street. I saw symbols above people, soul codes I couldn't yet name. At five, I told a woman in our village she was carrying a child. She didn't know yet. A few days later she came back to confirm it.

Six hours a day, every day. Mantra. Mudra. Yantra. The four elements, the seven chakras, the planetary forces. Vedic technologies that have only ever been transmitted orally, from teacher to disciple. My grandfather was one of five disciples trained by the Gurukul grandmaster. The school closed when the grandmaster died, eighty years ago. Each disciple held a different domain. My grandfather held energy channelling and physiotherapy.

By nine, I was working alongside him. By twelve, I was working with clients alone. He used to call me his x-ray machine; I could see straight through to the root.

When I was fourteen, my grandfather passed. The same year my father lost his business. Five of us in a single room smaller than a kitchen. I left school so my siblings could stay. At fifteen I went to another city looking for work, thirty hours without food, about to take any labour job I could find. Then I heard my grandfather as clearly as if he were beside me: trust yourself. The power is inside you. You are magical.

I rebuilt my life from 500 rupees my father gave me. Posters, then weddings, then a crystal shop of my own. By seventeen I had bought land for my family. I built. I worked. And I drifted from the lineage.

A few years later, in Goa, a woman walked into the shop where I was working. She looked at me and asked which crystal I was wearing. I said none. She told me stories from my childhood she had no way of knowing. She told me I was wasting my life. I never saw her again.

I returned to the work that day. I haven't left it since.