Dhumavati. A Voice in the Smoke

Dmitry is forty. An ordinary job, a flat of sixty-four square metres, evenings spent over Sanskrit dictionaries — and a voice. A womans voice: calm, wry, unhurried. He has heard it for years, and he calls her simply Ma. One evening Ma says, Get ready. — For what? — You will find out. So begins a path he never chose and would not now leave for anything: nights in a cemetery, cycles of practice, a broken mala and seven stranger beads, sixty-four sister yoginis — each with her own voice and her own temper — students who come to him and leave for themselves, mistakes paid for with oneself, and a silence in which the essential can at last be heard. Dhumavati: A Voice in the Sm…