Lore Of Jivavarta: The Song Of Prahuti

This is the tale of an ancient fright,

Before the dawn gave birth to the light.

Jivavarta was a broken place,

Where men woke only to join the chase.

They woke with hunger and slept with fear,

With no mercy or comfort near.

To live was violence, to breathe was dread,

The living envied even the dead.

The rivers did not judge their creed,

The sky showed neither wrath nor heed.

Their hearts beat on as before their deed,

Survival mattered more than guilt could breed.

The god of gods, Sarvabhu, looked down,

With bored indifference and without a frown,

Since all eternity, this was a bore,

A repetitive task, and nothing more.

He had seen the deaths of a million stars,

The drifting dust of distant wars,

Where men killed men and had them flayed,

Ages after ages, they had never strayed.

Then came that fateful Rongcha morning,

With an act that had no warning.

A man climbed up the mountain to atone,

He did not tremble, he did not groan.

He brought no hope and he brought no greed,

Just the two companions to follow his lead.

And one small boy who was far too young,

To know the song that was about to be sung.

The four ascended the mountain high,

To give their lives to the empty sky.

They did not seek a martyr's name,

Nor heaven's gate, nor future fame.

They had simply found that being alive,

Was less appealing than to die.

One by one, they yielded their breath,

And offered their bodies to a silent death.

They did not bargain, they did not cry,

They chose the nothing, said no goodbye.

Sarvabhu gasped, and in his infinite might,

Made the heavens stir at this unusual sight.

The god of gods was surprised at long last,

As he watched mortals fleeing their brutal past.

They had chosen the void over selfish breath,

And found their freedom in sacrifice and death.

Boredom gone, Sarvabhu left the sky,

And down he came with a curious eye.

He breathed upon where the bodies lay,

And pulled the four from death away.

The wounds vanished, the eyes flashed a gleam,

The four were awake, trapped in a god-made dream.

"You rejected the world, but I give you its reign,"

The god declared as he cured the mortals' pain.

The land was sundered, the titles given,

By one lonely god who had watched from heaven.

As centuries pass, kingdoms rise and they fall,

Yet Rongcha remembers the ancient call.

On Prahuti, at dawn, as the air grows chill,

Four shadows walk up the silent hill.

Three men, one child, with no chains in sight,

They climb unforced to the altar height.

A blade is raised, and as it comes down,

Heavy silence consumes the town.

People do not weep and they do not mourn,

For through this horror, their peace was born.

Children cheer, and actors play,

Festive masks hiding the sad decay.

Revellers drink, and they dance as one,

As though the morning's dread was now gone.

Every smile conceals the heavy cost,

Of pretending that nothing was lost.

People stare in shame down the valley deep,

While the rest of Jivavarta is fast asleep.

They bear the weight of an ancient scar,

Recalling a horror that had reached too far.

For they were not saved for their noble deeds,

Nor for their prayers, or righteous creeds.

Their world was spared a brutal end,

Because of four souls who refused to bend.

Not for glory, and not for grace,

But to bear the burden of the human race.

Sarvabhu still watches the world below,

With eyes that shine with a hungry glow.

For he starves in boredom of his infinite might,

And hungers forever for another surprising sight.

This is song about the Rongcha Festival of Prahuti, based on their lore. It is sung as a ballad at dawn on the day of the festival.

Rongcha was first introduced in The Timingila.

——-

Shon Mehta is an author and philosopher, creator of the Jivavarta Universe—a grounded sociopolitical world exploring human resilience, social dynamics, and moral philosophy through systems thinking.