Samaya Chakra

Dr. Rajesh Patel pressed his reading glasses against the bridge of his nose and stared at the medical journal lying open on his lap. The words blurred together like monsoon rain on glass. For the third consecutive afternoon, his "nap" had yielded nothing but ordinary sleep—no shimmering dissolution of the present, no familiar sensation of consciousness sliding backward through time to inhabit his younger self.

Just an old man dozing while his grandson's birthday party preparations echoed from upstairs like a Bollywood film festival organized by caffeinated six-year-olds.

Areyaar, he muttered, using his mother's favorite expression of frustration. She'd said it often during their final months in Kampala, when Idi Amin's expulsion decree had reduced their family's three-generation textile business to whatever could fit in two suitcases per person. "Even the dictator gives us more luggage allowance than Air Canada," his father had joked bitterly, because what else could you do when your entire dharma was being rewritten by a madman?

The wall clock ticked past 2:47 PM—prime time for what had been, until three weeks ago, his most productive hours. Not that anyone upstairs suspected their afternoon naps were actually temporal reconnaissance missions. His daughter Kavya, now a successful cardiothoracic surgeon in Toronto, had always rolled her eyes at Papa's "old man sleeping habits." His son Vikram, pulling fourteen-hour days as a corporate lawyer in London, hadn't been home for an afternoon since 2019.

They'd done exactly what he'd trained them to do: work harder than everyone else, achieve more, leave less to chance. The karma of it all tasted bitter as karela.

Through his study window, November wind stripped the last leaves from the maple tree he'd planted thirty-two years ago. Back then, he'd been Dr. Patel, the refugee consultant who'd discovered that if you pushed your mind hard enough during afternoon fatigue, you could slip back through time and offer your younger self the gift of foresight.

Had discovered. Past tense. The ability had simply vanished three weeks ago, like morning mist under harsh sunlight.

The house phone rang—an actual landline, because some habits from 1947 died harder than Bollywood villains.

"Papa?" Kavya's voice carried that particular tension he'd learned to recognize over decades. The same tone she'd used when announcing her engagement to Rohit—a perfectly nice second-generation Canadian whose main cultural reference point for India was his grandmother's masala chai recipe.

"How was your surgery this morning, beta?"

"Don't change the subject. Are you still planning to miss Arjun's party?"

"That depends. Is Rohit still planning to sing 'Happy Birthday' in what he believes is Sanskrit?"

"He's been practicing. Also not the point."

"Sanskrit? Bhagwan help us all."

"Papa. Arjun keeps asking why Nana is more interested in sleeping than balloons."

Rajesh closed his eyes, remembering his last successful temporal jump three weeks ago—suggesting his thirty-five-year-old self invest in a medical equipment company. The stock tip had added £50,000 to his pension fund, but the return journey had felt different. Heavier. Like swimming upstream through increasingly thick honey.

"Good news though," Kavya continued. "Meera's here, and she's been having contractions for the past hour."

Rajesh sat up straighter. Meera was Kavya's best friend from medical school, eight months pregnant. "How far apart?"

"Started at ten minutes, now they're six. She insists it's Braxton Hicks, but..." Kavya's voice carried the particular worry of a cardiac surgeon confronting obstetric territory. "I know hearts, Papa, not babies."

"Like everything else worth doing. And her husband?"

"Stuck in traffic from Brampton. The 401 is moving slower than government healthcare reform."

Rajesh felt muscle memory stirring—the weight of a newborn, the precise pressure needed for fundal massage. He'd delivered over three thousand babies during his forty-year career. Each delivery had been an act of seva, service to the cosmic process of futures becoming present.

"Call an ambulance."

"Already did. Twenty-minute wait. Apparently everyone in the GTA decided to have emergencies simultaneously today."

Through the ceiling, voices rose in pitch. Children's excitement mixing with adult concern. A woman's sharp intake of breath.

"I'll be right up."

"Really? You're not going to insist on your afternoon rest?"

The question carried forty years of accumulated resentment—all the school plays missed due to emergency surgeries, birthday dinners cut short by pager calls. The sacrifices that had built their family's success while hollowing it from within.

"Beta," Rajesh said quietly, "some forms of seva don't wait for convenient timing."

The living room had transformed into organized chaos. Balloons hung half-inflated from chair backs, while birthday cake sat forgotten on the kitchen counter. Six-year-old Arjun had constructed an elaborate fort from couch cushions, apparently preparing for siege warfare.

Meera sat on the sofa, breathing through contractions with the focused intensity of someone trying to meditate while riding a roller coaster.

"Uncle Rajesh!" She attempted a smile. "I'm so sorry for ruining Arjun's party."

Rajesh knelt beside the sofa, his hands finding her wrist, fingers automatically locating the pulse while his internal chronometer began timing contractions.

"Nothing is ruined, beta. Sometimes the most important guests arrive without invitations." He glanced at Kavya. "Clean towels. Boiling water. Send the children to the kitchen—tell them we're conducting a very important scientific experiment."

"Papa, maybe we should wait for the ambulance—"

"Kavya." His voice carried forty years of delivery room authority. "This baby has clearly inherited her mother's punctuality. She's not waiting for Toronto traffic."

As Kavya gathered supplies, Rajesh felt something shift inside his chest. Not the familiar dissolution that preceded temporal jumps, but something else. A settling. Like a tabla finding its proper rhythm.

"Uncle," Meera gasped, "I'm scared."

Rajesh took her hand, his weathered fingers surprisingly steady. "Fear is natural, beta. But you know what's stronger than fear?"

"Pain medication?"

Rajesh laughed. "Well, yes, but also dharma. The righteous order demanding to be fulfilled. This baby has chosen her moment and her helpers. Our job is simply to trust the process."

From the kitchen came Arjun's voice explaining to his confused friends why his grandfather was suddenly practicing medicine on the sofa. "It's like time travel," the boy announced with six-year-old authority, "but instead of going backward, we're helping someone come forward from the future!"

The next hour passed in humanity's oldest rhythm. Rajesh guided Meera through breathing techniques while fielding questions from the kitchen delegation.

"Nana!" Arjun called. "Tommy wants to know if babies come with instruction manuals!"

"Tell Tommy that babies are instruction manuals—they teach us everything about love, patience, and functioning on no sleep!"

When the final contraction peaked and Meera's daughter slipped into the world—tiny, perfect, indignant at her eviction—Rajesh felt tears on his cheeks. Not from birth's beauty, though that never got old, but from recognition that had taken him seventy-eight years to achieve.

This was moksha in its purest form. Not liberation from time's cycle, but liberation into it. The moment when future crystallized into present.

Rajesh cleared the baby's airway, then wrapped her in one of Kavya's good kitchen towels. The ambulance sirens wailed in the distance, but the crisis had passed.

"What will you call her?" he asked.

"Samaya," Meera whispered. "It means 'time' in Sanskrit, but also 'the right moment.' She chose her timing perfectly."

Rajesh felt something click into place. "Perfect for someone who traveled from the future to arrive exactly when needed."

As paramedics took over, Rajesh found himself sitting beside Arjun on the stairs. His grandson had watched everything with the serious attention of someone processing a major life lesson.

"Nana," Arjun said eventually, "was that like your time travel?"

The question caught Rajesh off-guard. "What do you mean, beta?"

"You made someone who wasn't here become here. That's like traveling from the future to now, right? Except instead of going backward to fix things, you helped someone come forward to start things."

Rajesh looked at his grandson—really looked at him. Six years old, already asking questions that had taken his grandfather decades to grasp.

"That's very wise, beta. Every birth is someone traveling from the future into the present."

"That's so cool! Can you teach me?"

For forty years, he'd been obsessed with traveling backward, trying to optimize choices already made. But Arjun was asking about traveling forward—about participating in creating futures not yet imagined.

"It takes many years of studying, beta."

"That's okay. I like studying. Tommy says it's boring, but I think studying is like collecting superpowers."

"What kind of superpowers?"

Arjun considered this seriously. "Like knowing how to help people when they're scared. Or knowing what to do when babies decide to show up at birthday parties. Or knowing how to make time travel work without machines."

"Without machines?"

"Yeah! Like what you did today. You used your knowledge to help baby Samaya travel from the future into right now. That's way cooler than going backward to fix old mistakes."

His six-year-old grandson had articulated what had taken him seventy-eight years to understand: the most powerful temporal manipulation wasn't changing the past, but shaping the future through investment in others. Not karma yoga—action for personal benefit—but seva yoga—action as service to the cosmic order.

"Very good, beta. You're thinking like a doctor already."

"Or like a time traveler. The good kind."

That evening, after birthday cake had finally been served amid stories of Baby Samaya's arrival, Rajesh sat in his study with chai, watching sunset through his maple tree. Instead of medical journals, he found himself thinking about Samaya—how she'd emerged from the future into the present with perfect timing, requiring nothing more than steady hands and accumulated wisdom.

Kavya knocked on his door frame. "Papa? Thank you. For being there today."

"Where else would I be? Besides, it was good practice. I hear I'm going to be needed in London come September."

"Vikram told you? About the baby?"

"He called an hour ago. Apparently Ananya specifically requested the grandfather who delivered a baby at a birthday party."

"What about your afternoon rests?"

Rajesh met her gaze. "I've been thinking about those naps, beta. I spent five years trying to travel backward through time, trying to perfect a past that was already complete. But today I realized something: the most important time travel happens when you're completely present for the moment when future becomes now."

"What do you think you'll dream about during your naps now?"

"I think I'll dream about all the ages Arjun is going to be. All the moments I get to witness for the first time, instead of trying to perfect for the second time."

Kavya nodded, understanding passing between them. "Arjun wants to be a doctor, you know. Like his Nana."

"He told me. But I think he's going to be better than his Nana."

"How do you know?"

Rajesh smiled, thinking of his grandson's serious face during the birth, his questions about time travel and helping people. "Because he's already asking better questions than I did at his age. And because he understands something that took me seventy-eight years to learn."

"What's that?"

"That the real moksha isn't escaping time's cycle—it's learning to serve it properly."

Over the following weeks, Rajesh established new afternoon routines. Instead of attempting temporal jumps that no longer came, he began teaching Arjun about anatomy using picture books. They built circulatory system models from colored clay, practiced bandaging on stuffed animals, discussed the miracle of hearts that beat without being told.

"Nana," Arjun asked one afternoon while examining a plastic skeleton, "do you miss being able to fix people?"

"There are different ways to fix things, beta. Sometimes we fix problems that have already happened. Sometimes we prevent problems that haven't happened yet."

"How do you prevent problems that haven't happened?"

"By teaching people how to avoid them. It's a form of seva—service to the future."

"That's like time travel too, isn't it? You're sending knowledge forward instead of going backward yourself."

"Very good, beta. The most powerful time travel machine is a well-educated mind."

That afternoon, instead of his usual rest, Rajesh found himself writing in a new journal—stories from his childhood in Kampala, memories of his parents, accounts of the terrifying August morning in 1972 when everything changed.

These weren't just personal memories, he realized. They were temporal artifacts—pieces of the past that could only travel forward through story, carried by voices across generations.

Three months later, Meera called with news that Baby Samaya was thriving. "Uncle, we're naming you as Samaya's honorary grandfather in her baby book. The man who helped her travel from the future into the present."

"It's not kindness, it's dharma. You were there when she needed you most. That makes you family, and family is the most important form of time travel there is."

Vikram called from London: "Ananya is pregnant. We're due in September. She wants to know if you'd consider coming for the birth."

"I would be honored," Rajesh said, thinking of his afternoon naps, the temporal journeys that had consumed five years of retirement, the fruitless attempts to perfect a complete past.

"Really? You'd leave your afternoon rests?"

"Beta, I've learned something important about time travel."

"What's that?"

"The most magical kind happens when you're completely present for the moment when future becomes now."

That evening, Rajesh settled into his recliner for his new afternoon ritual: reading family stories aloud to an empty room, practicing for when Arjun would understand them fully, when Samaya would sit still long enough, when the next grandchild would join their growing circle.

He opened his journal to a story about his own grandfather, who'd built a textile empire only to lose everything to political upheaval, but who'd invested his real wealth in the dharma of his children.

"Your great-great-grandfather used to say that the future is like a baby—it arrives exactly when it's ready, not when we think we're prepared. But if we pay attention, if we keep our hands steady and hearts open to seva, we can help it arrive safely into the world."

Outside, early spring light lingered minutes longer than the day before. Time moving forward, as it always had—not as linear progression but as spiral dance, each revolution carrying forward previous cycles' wisdom. For the first time in decades, Rajesh was content to move along with it, carrying stories and wisdom like seeds for futures yet to be born.

In the distance, he could hear Arjun explaining to Kavya how babies traveled from the future into the present, using language that mixed medical terminology with six-year-old philosophy.

Rajesh closed his journal and smiled. The house always wins, he thought, but sometimes—if you're very lucky—you discover you were never gambling against the house at all.

You were serving it. And the dividends were payable not in the past, but in all the beautiful, unpredictable tomorrows still waiting to be born into the light.