We Have Always Lived in the Temple: Himal Fiction Fest 2025

This story is part of the Himal Fiction Fest 2025, a showcase of original Southasian speculative fiction..Himal Fiction Fest 2025: Southasian speculative fiction.EVERYONE WORKS in the Temple..They all have jobs like Alm Taker, Sandal Picker, Low Cleaner, Cleaner, High Cleaner, Bellringer, Chanter, Holy Chanter, High Chanter, Flower Picker, Milk Giver, Holy Drink Maker, Prasad Maker, Priest, Sub Priest, High Priest, Head Priest, God. .Even being a God is a full-time job in the Temple..The stairs of the Temple are lined with saffron beads, marigold petals and stray drops of blood. Matted clumps of hair fall down the stairs collecting in crannies, wounding up with motes of dust. Those who enter the Temple take the first step in hesitation, the second in devotion, the third in fear..Below, only the remnants of grime. Above, chants and chants, vain and blissful..Munna’s jMann sears him, sending thin tendrils of pain across his forehead as he clambers up the stairs. He is barefoot, his soles already chafed from making the trip back and forth, from the Priest’s quarters in the Ninth Holy Quadrant back to the Temple Compound. Today, the priest won’t be happy, he thinks. So he mumbles to the God of the Temple, in whose name it is built. He prays to Him to save him from the lashes he’ll get tonight..His mistake is that, for a split moment, between trips to the Priest’s quarters to get marigold, incense, holy water, camphor, Munna had thought about a world beyond the Temple, the possibility of working in the Baahar, the outside. Munna couldn’t keep his thoughts from straying, and so the jMann he was marked with, right above his ear, had lit up, and told everything to the Priest..As a Low Cleaner, who has just been elevated from an Alm Taker, Munna is only meant to think of Cleaning. Munna can only become a High Cleaner. Munna looks with expectant eyes at the Bellringer, who casts a glance of pity at him. Maybe one day, in pity, the Bellringer would allow Munna to ring the bells of the Temple..Oh, a glorious day that would be..The Priest is dousing the small idol of God in milk when Munna approaches him with the necessary pooja ingredients..“You’ve been praying,” says the Priest, without giving Munna so much as a glance. “Something you never do. What could be the reason?”.Munna’s jMann tingles again, sending a brief needle of pain to his temple. He ignores it, and makes a small arc on the cold floor of the Temple with his toe, his eyes downcast. His heart picks up a pace he didn’t know it could. His cheeks already sting with a phantom pain of the slap that is coming..“You know what Lallan did today?”.“No Punditji,” says Munna..“He touched a Milk Giver,” says the Priest. A shiver courses through Munna’s spine. Lallan is an Alm Taker, who crouches daily near the stairs, collecting whatever little is thrown his way as an offering. Sometimes, if he’s lucky, he gets a jCrown. Other days, he gets bananas. An Alm Taker is, of course, not allowed to even breathe in the vicinity of a Milk Giver. Munna has also heard that if an Alm Taker touches a Milk Giver, they get incinerated..“How did it happen, Punditji?”.“The same way you prayed,” says the Priest. “Morbid curiosity. Normally, I’d want you to appear behind my cottage, in the lashing ground, to join the other Corruptors. But today, apart from Lallan, Kothiya and Jeevan are also lined up for lashings, and I don’t have time, so I am letting you off with a warning, okay?”.“I won’t repeat it, Punditji.”.The Priest resumes his daily chore of removing the last day’s ornaments from the deity’s neck and adorning it with new ones. Munna’s jMann stays dormant the entire time. When the Priest is finished sprinkling the holy water around the deity’s marble station, he also sprinkles a few drops on Munna..That evening, while washing himself clean of grime in the local pond, Munna looks at his reflection in the water. The bronze marking of the jMann on the side of his temple gleams in the rays of the setting sun. Munna’s fingers itch, and he feels an almost electric urge to scratch the jMann away. But he knows he was born with it. It is as much a part of him as his heart is..“jMann is like Jeevan. It means life,” his mother says that night while rolling out a roti. “It tells us exactly what we are meant to do, day in, day out. Isn’t that convenient?”.Munna knows his mother is quoting verbatim what he had often heard from other Munnas, Bholas, Rangas, who were born and perished inside the Temple Compound, always being Low Cleaners, Alm Takers, Sandal Pickers, serving their Priests, never setting foot outside the Temple..“Why don’t the High Priests have one?” he asks. His mother’s answer is in her quiet motions. Flattening the dough, placing it on the choolha, waiting for the roti to puff up..“They have one, it just isn’t visible,” she says. “It’s completely hidden because it blends with their skin. Everyone except the deities sitting inside the Temple has a jMann. Because, of course, Gods can’t have one.”.Munna isn’t convinced, but he doesn’t prod her further, because her answers would be hollow placations. He eats his dinner in silence..MUNNA’S FATHER, a timid man with thin limbs made muscular by cleaning the Head Priest’s quarters, walks in one day, grumbling to himself. He tears apart a roti, smears it with achaar, not even bothering with the daal, and swallows the morsel after two chews, trying to mouth his concerns..“They’re giving my job to someone else,” he says..Silence follows. Munna’s mother quietly prepares another roti and serves it to him..“What will you do now?” asks Munna..“Chant in the latrines outside, because now I can’t become a Chanter in the Temple, can I? I was meticulous in my cleaning. I did whatever the Head Priest asked of me. But you know what he told me today? That I have a bronze jMann on me, and a High Cleaner like me can’t go any further. It’s the new upgrade which went live last week. The Head Priest wants only a blue jMann holder to clean his quarters. They’re better equipped, with stronger limbs. More open to suggestion, they say.”.“I think you are always open-minded,” says Munna’s mother..“But Father, look at the bright side,” chimes in Munna. “By cleaning the exteriors you’ll be able to see the Baahar.”.Munna’s father stops chewing his food and stares at him. Then, he slaps him with a daal-stained hand..“Who’s putting these ideas inside your head? I work this hard so that one day you can replace me. Don’t you dream of working in the Head Priest’s quarters? Don’t you ever dream of making this damn kutiya more than what it is? Don’t you ever dream of looking after your mother and father in old age, rather than filling your head with useless notions of what lies outside? There’s nothing outside. The world is the Temple.”.Munna would much rather receive a slap from the Priest than his own father. The Priest’s lashings never feel personal. Munna knows he’s out of line whenever those happen. But he wishes his father would understand what he wants to talk about..But maybe tonight isn’t the night. He had chosen the wrong moment..“I know Shikha was talking about getting our jManns updated,” says Munna’s mother, wrapping up the cooking. “Maybe she can arrange for our upgrade.”.“It’s all nonsense. Even if we change from bronze to yellow to blue, what’s the point? They know our name, they know what we do. For them, we’ll always be bronze. They have refused us once, they would refuse us once again.”.This sentence comes like the falling of a huge stone, final. Munna’s father goes to sleep, leaving only the chatter of crickets in his wake, and Munna’s heartbeat..MUNNA FINDS RANGA crouching by the pond. Ranga is washing himself. Even from a distance, the red lesions on Ranga’s back are visible, almost gleaming. Munna approaches his friend, trying not to make a sound as he bathes. But Ranga notices him. There’s a faint smile on Ranga’s face. Like he’s hiding a secret..“News has traveled of your exploits,” says Munna. “Why would you do such a thing?”.“You should see Kothiya,” says Ranga. “He was sniveling at the feet of the Priest. I didn’t get burned to a crisp. That should count for something.”.“Maybe you touched just the fabric of the Milk Giver’s kurta.”.“I held his wrist. It wasn’t merely a touch. I gripped his wrist. The Quarter Four Milk Giver was going to attack a dog. The only way to stop it was by holding his wrist.”.“How did it feel?” asks Munna. Incineration was merely a tale, then. But how would that explain the story of the ashes that were scattered in the Fifth Compound backyard? The ashes of Apoorv, who dared touch a High Priest?.“Like nothing,” says Ranga, then clasps Munna’s wrists firmly. Water trickles from Ranga’s palms, coiling around Munna’s wrist and dropping on the stones below. “It felt like this.”.“What about your jMann?”.“It sent out a faint surge of pain during the night, but it has been dormant ever since. Trust me, the pain was worth saving the poor dog from being beaten.”.Munna wonders if thinking of ringing the Temple bells would send a pain-flare through his temples. He imagines himself ringing, and ringing and ringing them, heralding the arrival of devotees..He closes his eyes, and winces..MUNNA ARRANGES THE Prayer Material neatly inside a basket, hoping to impress the Priest. He has seen other Low Cleaners doing the same, getting into the good books of the Priests they’d been assigned. Munna learns to tie the marigold flowers together into a garland with a thread, so the Priest doesn’t have to do it himself. He arranges the ingredients of the Holy Drink in a queue, in order, so the Holy Drink Maker can pick them up without thinking twice. He rubs the small statue of the deity twice, thrice, four times, until it shines..When he’s satisfied, he carries the basket to the First Quarter. He sees the familiar face of Ranga near the steps, arranging the sandals, receiving alms to feed himself from eager devotees arriving for the Morning Prayer. The Bellringer is nowhere to be seen, and Munna almost entertains the possibility of putting down the basket and doing it all himself. But he decides against yielding to his desires. His father had been assigned to cleaning the latrines of the other Priests, and Munna had to do better. If he could impress his Priest, maybe he could do something about his father’s situation..But when he climbs the stairs, he sees his Priest tying a holy thread around the wrist of a new Holy Drink Maker. It is Kothiya, the Sandal Picker, who used to work with Ranga, the one who was lined up for a lashing two weeks ago..The basket falls from Munna’s hands, undoing all his hard work..Kothiya stares at Munna, first with pity, then with disgust..“What happened to Maker Bhuvan?” asks Munna..“That would be High Priest Bhuvan for you, Munna,” says the Priest. “Now touch the feet of Maker Kothiya.”.This was just Kothiya, hardly older than Munna. They’d swum in the ponds and caught fish together. They’d played corners, pitthoo, checkers together, during hot summer evenings after their Sandal Picking and Cleaning duties were over..Munna does as he’s told. Then, he opens the basket, revealing the scattered contents of the Prayer Material. This invites a scornful gaze from Kothiya. The Priest shakes his head in mild annoyance, like he’d much rather not be in Munna’s presence..This is when Munna notices Kothiya’s jMann, green as the moss in the pond and not bronze like those of the other Cleaners..“KOTHIYA CONVINCED the Priest that the jMann assigned to him at birth was faulty,” says Ranga. “That’s the only explanation.”.“His parents have the bronze ones, just like our parents. It doesn’t make any sense.” Munna tries to reason. For the past week, he has seen his father enter their home smelling of shit and piss, a smell that refuses to go away till morning. Even then, Munna has to resort to plunging his face into the basket of marigolds, whose pungent smell he hates, but not as much as the smell of shit..“Every High Priest has a locker full of unburnt jManns. When the body dies and is burnt atop the pyre, everything turns to ashes. Only the jMann survives. I’ve heard then it doesn’t even look like it does on our temples. Like a vein. It has a different shape altogether.”.Munna feels Ranga is making this all up. It’s denial, all denial. Discarded jManns, the incinerations, other Temples in the Baahar, these have always been fairytales. Munna just has to bow his head, keep doing his work, and hope that someday his Priest would be kind to him..“The aagman ceremony is coming up in two weeks. I can show you then, if you don’t believe me,” says Ranga, after a while..“What would it accomplish? What you’re saying just implies the existence of a pile of corroded, rusted metal. It doesn’t prove how Kothiya became the Holy Drink Maker. You know what? I think I’ll do double duty around the stairs today. Make sure they’re shiny white for the feet of my Priest. It’s hard work that gets rewarded, not clinging to a myth. You have always shied away from hard work, Ranga. You mispaired sandals all the time, refused to take alms when respectfully given. What were you hoping to achieve?”.Munna’s words don’t quite have the desired effect on Ranga, who continues washing the grime from his toenails..DURING AAGMAN, everyone is equal inside the Temple. The aagman is a painless day, when all the jManns are dormant..Every four months, the Temple opens to “travelers” from the outside in an elaborate ceremony. The Temple becomes a shining beacon in the night, its ornate pillars painted jade and saffron. A week before the aagman, the High Priests do the work of the Cleaners, the Holy Drink Maker interchanges duties with the Milk Giver and the Sandal Picker. Yet the Low Cleaners, Cleaners and High Cleaners continue like any other day, not allowed to exchange their duties with someone higher..Munna is tying the marigold garlands when he sees his Priest struggling to clean a particularly tough spot near the feet of the deity inside the Temple. This might just be Munna’s chance. He quickly finishes tying the garlands and hops over to his Priest..“Let me help,” he says. The Priest looks at him and immediately quits trying. Munna takes the scrubber from the Priest’s neat, prim hands and starts scrubbing the floor. Within seconds, the obstinate spot comes off. The floor is so clean that Munna can see his reflection in it..“You see why we don’t do it everyday? Because this is something only you’ll be good at. Now that I remember, even Maker Kothiya wasn’t as good at cleaning as you are.”.“I can be good at other things too, Punditji,” says Munna..“Like what?”.“Like ringing the bells of the Temple,” says Munna, knowing that, because of the aagman, his jMann won’t give him pain, and so he can say anything freely to his Priest..“You want to be a Bellringer?”.“I can be the best Bellringer this Temple has seen,” says Munna. For a moment, he imagines the rest of his life in front of him..Each day, he wakes up not inside his kutiya at the edge of the Temple Compound, far beyond the pond, but in the Centre Quarters, where the Prasad Makers and the Milk Givers and the Holy Drink Makers live. He imagines bathing with the Temple water, the cleanest from the nearby river, and not in the murk of the pond that leaves him with an eternal smell of algae. He imagines taking the steps of the Temple empty-handed, because now his hands are meant not to carry a basket full of marigolds but to ring the bell for the deity, the God..He imagines more things too, but for now he’s satisfied with the image of him ringing the bell..The Priest gives Munna a wry smile..“We will talk after the Transference,” says the Priest..When Munna goes home in the evening, he goes with a smile on his face. That night, he isn’t even bothered by the smell his father brings home, or the cruel words exchanged between his parents because his mother threw up on the stone floor of the kutiya, or the dinner left unserved, uneaten..Munna’s stomach is filled with hope..THE TRAVELERS ARRIVE at the first inkling of dawn. Their skin is bright, almost radiant, just like the deities inside the Temple. They gaze upon the Temple in awe and stand in a queue, eager to get a glimpse of the deities within. The interchange of duties has concluded. Every Priest is a Priest now, and every Milk Giver is a Milk Giver again. The Cleaners, who have always been Cleaners, are just more of themselves. Yet everyone who works inside the Temple stands with folded hands to welcome the travelers, gazing at them with reverence..The celebrations begin. The Temple has temporarily employed Singers, Divine Chanters, Dancers to entertain the travelers. Some High Chanters of the Temple have been asked to Dance, their duties redistributed accordingly. They will not be required to carry out their normal Chanting for three days because of the effort of Dance..None of the travelers have jMann on their temples..“Oh Munna, it’s because they are the Gods,” Munna’s father had told him when Munna first asked about this during an afternoon meal..“I don’t understand,” said Munna. “If they’re Gods, why do they look at the deities in wonder?”.“It’s not wonder,” said his father, laughing. “It’s pride, a sense of satisfaction.”.Munna had gotten all his answers when he’d first witnessed the Transference. Then, he had gasped in horror. But today, Munna is happy just to be a silent spectator of the process..The stone-like deity Munna’s Priest serves each day detaches itself from the elevated golden throne and walks outside the Quarters. There is an ease to the movement of this God, despite sitting in one place for a year. Ten heartbeats later, another deity does the same, from another Quarter, walking down the steps and joining the travelers. Soon the ten Thrones inside the Temple are empty, their respective Gods having mingled with their brethren..A traveler steps forward, a High Priest kneels, the traveler touches the High Priest’s head with his feet, and the High Priest becomes stone, then shatters, then reforms again into stone, then flesh again. Another traveler, another High Priest. Another, another, until all ten High Priests have reformed. Then, the travelers ascend the Temple stairs and take their respective gilded thrones, becoming Gods for the span of a year..Inside the Temple, this cycle continues, year after year, eon after eon..The travelers trickle out of the Temple in a single file..RANGA ASKS MUNNA if he wants to accompany him to a High Priest’s empty quarters. He wants to show Munna the discarded jManns. But Munna declines the invitation, plunging himself instead into decorating the prayer basket like he had done earlier. This time, he includes a few rose petals for a better smell. He doesn’t mind arranging the five liquids for Maker Kothiya too..A Bellringer would report to the Holy Drink Maker, after all..Munna has a spring in his step today. He has imagined and reimagined his new living quarters so many times, it’s like a lived memory for him..He climbs the stairs to the Temple. As usual, Maker Kothiya is there, and the Priest is there. The Prasad Maker arrives in time, her saffron sari sweeping the floor. The Bellringer isn’t present. But he should be. It’s the first prayer after the Transference..Munna quietly presents the prayer material to the Priest. He quietly accepts it, making no comment..Munna watches Maker Kothiya mix the Holy Drink. There’s an ease to his movements, like he was born to do this. Perhaps his selection as Holy Drink Maker was right after all. Perhaps there was a change coming. On a silver platter, the Priest arranges the Prasad and the prepared Holy Drink..The Prasad Maker walks away, like a whisper. Maker Kothiya’s gaze lingers on her for a moment too long. There’s something in that gaze which Munna can’t quite place. Maybe it’s a yearning to be Prasad Maker?.It’s only two rungs further up the ladder to become Priest..The Bellringer hasn’t arrived, still..“On this auspicious day of the First Sun, post Transference Fifty Three, I present the first light to you,” says the Priest, and lights a diya. He places the diya at the feet of the deity. Maker Kothiya bows his head in reverence, and so does Munna. On a usual day, Munna wouldn’t be witness to the first prayer. He’d watch it from the stairs, his rightful place. But today the Priest doesn’t say anything..“On this auspicious day of the First Sun, post Transference Fifty Three, o’ Lord, accept this humble Prasad,” says the Priest, and puts the Prasad at the feet of the deity..The deity remains unmoving..The Priest takes a chunk of the Prasad, offers it first to Maker Kothiya, then eats it himself..“On this auspicious day of the First Sun, post Transference Fifty Three, o’ Lord, accept this Holy Drink,” says the Priest, and places the bowl of Holy Drink at the feet of the deity..The deity remains unmoving..The Priest picks up the bowl and pours a gulpful of the Holy Drink onto Maker Kothiya’s outstretched palm..Maker Kothiya makes an impression of drinking it, but the Priest drinks it actually. Maker Kothiya’s saffron kurta has stains of the Holy Drink he let drip deliberately..Munna watches everything from a distance, standing just below the bell..The Priest bends weakly to pick up the garland from the Prayer Basket. .“On this auspicious day of the First Sun, post Transference Fifty Three, I… I… uh… uh…”.The garland falls from the Priest’s shivering hands as he clutches his throat, choking, gasping, sputtering blood. His veins bulge, his eyes bulge, his skin first becomes pale, then becomes blue, then unbecomes altogether, as his heavy frame falls on the cold floor of the Temple. Maker Kothiya lunges at the Priest, grabs his neck, throttles it, digs his nails deep into the Priest’s skin, ending whatever morsel of life he still had in him..Munna watches everything. The deity remains unmoving..“What did you do, Maker Kothiya?” Munna’s voice comes out weakly..“Call me Kothiya, like you did earlier,” says Kothiya, shivering, his eyes welling up with tears. “He deserved it, for what he did to me that day.”.Then Kothiya rubs his temple with his thumb. He keeps rubbing until there’s skin grime on his hands and green paint peels off, revealing a bronze jMann..“What happens now?” says Munna, after a long pause..Kothiya doesn’t answer. But Munna gets his answer when Kothiya winces and screams in pain, grabbing his head, collapsing on the ground. He’s gasping for breath, the jMann wreaking havoc for what he did to the Priest..Munna can only watch as his friend writhes on the ground. Soon, his body goes limp..Inside the Temple, it’s only Munna and the deity..“Do you even have the power to stop this?” he says to the deity. “Is it all a show to you?”.The deity remains unmoving..For a brief moment, Munna’s life as it would have been flashes before his eyes. But then it fades away, echo of a dream. Munna looks up at the Temple bell. .He’s a foot too short to reach it..But he makes the jump.