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- Published on: 2025-09-30 04:15 pm
Sri Ram’s Akal Bodhan: From Earthly Rituals to Martian Adaptation
The plot is set in the year 2137 on Mars. In it, the story explores how atheists repeatedly challenge religions with questions such as: If holy centers like Mecca or Jerusalem no longer exist in their earthly form, in which direction should one pray? How will ritual timings be calculated in a new planetary environment? Against this backdrop, it narrates how the ancient concept of Akal Bodhan: the untimely invocation guides humanity’s survival after a devastating solar flare strikes a Martian colony. Above all, the story depicts how human beings may once again turn to ancestral rituals, adapting and reinterpreting them, to rebuild and sustain their civilization on Mars.
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Sri Ram’s Akal Bodhan: From Earthly Rituals to Martian Adaptation
The year will be..is.. sorry… was 2137: what I will be talking about now today…
Mars Colony Ananta glowed faintly against the red dust plains by now and its bio-domes breathing like fragile lungs under the thin sky. For thirty years, settlers from India, Afganistan, Pakistan, Nepal,Bhutan, Tibet, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had nurtured this outpost of the new Earth… doing many things like planting crops, raising children and carrying their festivals across the stars and many more.
Now, you will find here that by Mars Year 30, the colony cafeterias had become the debating halls of humanity. Between recycled-air coffee and hydroponic spinach pakoras, the old arguments between science and religion resurfaced… only now they echoed under a pale Martian sky.
Until one day…
“Tell me this,” joked one atheist between a discussion, sipping his algae latte. “Did God also create Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris? Or are they just by-products of physics and volcanic outgassing?”
The local priest, flown in years ago to tend to the spiritual needs of the settlers, cleared his throat and frowned. “Everything is in God’s plan.”
That only encouraged the others. “Right,” said another colonist with mock seriousness, “but if we find microbes in that briny crater, are they also in the plan? Or just cosmic freeloaders riding on evolution?”
What to say… the priest humbly folded his hands. “Look young boy… let me tell the simple thing in simple words: Life is sacred everywhere,” he replied, though his voice lacked conviction.
From the other side, a third colonist tapped equations into a holo-pad and smirked. “Our scriptures talk about Earth, Jerusalem, Mecca. Any footnotes for Mars? Prayer direction gets tricky when your orbit keeps shifting.How will you prayer now? Our brothers claims Mecca to be the center of the Earth… Do we point to Earth? Or just the nearest comm satellite?”
Hearing this, our priest now starting to sweating slightly, somehow managed to offer the safest answer he knew: “Our God’s power is everywhere, only those Hindus God (pointing to the other) is everywhere”. That only made the first atheist lean in closer with one eyebrow up.
-“And Judgment Day? Is that scheduled for Earth only, or does Mars get its own apocalypse? What about messiahs or avatars? Do they arrive on Earth first, then catch the next shuttle here?”
The priest somehow muttered something about omnipresence, hoping the subject would change. But alas! this time it didn’t.
In the meantime, another colonist in the side chuckled. “Here’s a fun one: a Martian year is 687 Earth days. Does Ramadan run for two Martian years straight? Does Durga Puja happen every fourteen months? Or do we just stream the Kolkata feed on delay?... Ha ha..”
At that, the another priest exhaled sharply and muttered a Sanskrit verse under his breath. “Faith is timeless,” he insisted, but the words felt heavy, Earth-bound, full of rivers and soils that Mars did not have. The colonists knew it. The metaphors were thin here, thinner than the air itself.
Then he spoke softly at first, however with a weight that silenced the scattered laughter.
“Hindu dharma was never about clocks or calendars,” he said. “It is not a system bound by parliaments or lunar apps. Vivekananda...yes, called it a religion of experience, not of movements. It is personal, intimate, grounded in spirituality. Within it lives countless philosophies, countless debates, countless forms… and yet, it rests on something simple: the Upanishadic truth that all is one. The Gita, the Upanishads you know...these are not codes of ritual scheduling, but revelations of unity. He paused for some time, his voice carrying further in the charged silence. “Kapila taught his mother in the BhagavataPuraṇa that duality is illusion: there is no true ‘two.’ Prahlada said dharma is reverence for Narayaṇa in every being. That is the faith we bring here. Not the faith of thrones and decrees, of saffron robbed of compassion. If religion is reduced to command, to power, to division… then it is no longer dharma, but its shadow. Dharma is meditation, surrender, peace, sacrifice, divine joy… things not measured by the orbit of Earth or Mars.””