Amina was a criminal. Or rather, she would be one if the legal code were extended to cover her activities. By day, she was an obscure Sanskrit scholar at a red brick English university, specialising in the Vedic period of ancient India. By night, she was a trafficker. Short, dumpy and anonymous looking, with cropped hair and clad in shapeless clothes, her one concession to femininity was applying blue eye shadow. Yet she had a secret life that few could have imagined.As Amina saw it, she was simply exercising her profession to the fullest extent. Her proudest achievement was completing a novel translation, substantially different from the accepted one, of a text dating from 1121 BC, the black Yajurveda. The translation had to be totally accurate, which the standard one was not. Like a computer program, a magic spell only works if it is exactly correct in every detail. Nor was there any point in just reciting the spell in Sanskrit - the would-be practitioner of magic had to fully understand at a visceral level what they were intoning. For this, the spell had to be in the maternal language of the person reciting it. Hence the importance of exact translation.
Amazingly, her translation worked. She was probably the only person in the world in the 21st century who could cast a magic spell. What is the point of being able to work magic if you don't do so? She rationalised her weekly ritual as being the practical application of her scholarship, and it gave her satisfaction to know that she was proving false the general belief that studying an extinct language was of no real value. It reminded her of the people who, before Hiroshima, thought atomic physics was just an intellectual sideline of no relevance to the real world.
On a stormy Monday, just before midnight, she sat down in a half lotus pose on an embroidered cushion in her dimly lit bedroom. The full lotus pose was recommended by the text, but she knew that half was enough. This was just as well, because her knees were not designed for sitting in full lotus. It had taken her months of sporadically painful practice to achieve even the half lotus pose. Who said magic was easy?
Amina hoped that today would be the culmination of all her nighttime efforts. First, she generated an intense mental focus before executing the preparatory chant in Sanskrit. Then she invoked the Vedic deities one by one, before reciting the spell itself in modern English, with what she hoped was an Indian accent. The incense wafted around her as she repeated the invocation. It had to be repeated three times in order to be effective.
Then there was a loud crack, the lights dimmed and she was no longer alone. She was now in the presence of a refugee from Tamisra, one of the nine hells of Hinduism. Amina's intervention saved this individual from enduring years of being thrashed for his misdemeanours.
They conversed amicably and without difficulty in Sanskrit. Daivik was overjoyed to be released from hell and elaborately grateful for her help. He was also eager to do something for her in return.
Amina realised she had a scoop of the first magnitude, made possible by the specific request she had inserted into the spell. The man, a stocky, dark-skinned Brahmin in his early forties, wore a simple brown robe and appeared comfortable sitting in the full lotus pose. His robe partly revealed his back, which was covered in bright red welts that would take weeks to heal. This Indian was articulate and learned, much like her. More to the point, he could give her first-hand knowledge of what life had been like in Bodh Gaya in 520 BC. Best of all, he had met Siddhartha Gautama in person and had conversed with him on many occasions.
Though Amina had zero interest in being famous or recognised, her thirst for knowledge was intense. The true story of the individual who came to be known as the Buddha was shrouded in mystery and had been distorted repeatedly throughout the centuries. It would be the culmination of all her dreams to write the only definitive and authentic account of his life.