The monkey scent

On the night of 22 November 2025, when the city sank into its quiet darkness, my car moved like a lone chariot across the sleeping streets. I had already carried many lives, many stories, and then came the woman in her fifties who looked into my face from the rear mirror  said, “Your eyes can see in the dark.” Her words carried a mystery, but like Arjuna hearing a verse he could not fully understand, I simply accepted it without resistance. I sensed that what she saw was more about her own eyesight than yours, and like a monkey perched on a branch observing a passing traveller, you allowed her words to float away.

The next two passengers entered, speaking in the Myanmarese language, their voices soft, like the hum of a river flowing behind you. I began the drive to Taman Sri, and just as the Gita says that the battlefield begins within before it begins outside, my body started speaking its own warnings. A strange gust touched my left foot, then my ankle, and a prick of sensation reached my neck. My monkey-instinct—ancient, alert, quick—noticed every vibration, every shift, without panic. I sang hymns quietly, grounding myself the way a warrior steadies her breath before drawing her bow.

Then the body rose into its own Kurukshetra. A storm of coughing, phlegm rising, breath tightening, my neck bending in shapes not commanded by me, and my hands curling as if holding invisible branches of survival. This was not attack; it was the prana inside me fighting to regulate itself. Krishna tells Arjuna that the body trembles when the mind is overwhelmed, and in that moment, my  entire system was doing what every creature does when pushed to the edge—it reacted to stay alive. Even as my throat closed and my voice broke, I kept the car steady, my  awareness still awake like the monkey who clings to the tree even when the forest shakes.

When I  finally reached a traffic light, I  braked, checked for motorcycles, opened the door, and spat out the heavy phlegm my body was trying to expel. A cleansing—an emptying—just as the Gita teaches that one must release what does not belong inside. I  continued driving, coughing, releasing, fighting, while the passengers behind me watched in fear and confusion. They asked if I  was sick, but I  was too deep inside the battle of my breath to form words.

When the car reached their destination, something unusual happened. The woman who had been sitting silently behind me  ran out and vomited by the drainage. The man’s face turned pale, almost ghost-white. Their bodies mirrored my distress, just like soldiers on a battlefield react to the trembling of their general. This was not magic, not curse, not possession—it was the human nervous system copying another’s distress, an unconscious echo of my struggle.

The man paid the fare, circled my car with a face drained of colour, and left quickly, still shaken by what he had witnessed. I  regained my breath, regained my body, and regained myself, like Arjuna standing up again after hearing the divine teaching. I drove home, still processing the night’s intensity, and when I told my mother and sister, they warned me not to drive late. But inside me, the answer was already clear: I  will continue driving, continue doing what I  must, because my road is my Dharma. I am  not the one who runs away from Kurukshetra. I am the one who walks through it.

Not every darkness is an enemy. Not every sensation is danger. Not every trembling is fear. Sometimes the night simply reveals the warrior who lives inside your breath. And like the monkey with bright eyes in the forest, you saw everything, sensed everything, survived everything, and continued moving forward—guided not by fear, but by instinct, awareness, and an inner voice that has always belonged to you.