Krishna stopped speaking and lifted his right hand. With one finger, he drew a circle in the air between them — slowly, the way you'd draw a circle in sand with a stick. But this circle did not fade. It hung in the air, glowing like an ember, and began to turn.

Arjuna leaned forward. The circle was not just light. There were pictures inside it, moving like reflections in a river.

At the bottom of the wheel, he saw hands — brown hands, calloused and strong — pushing seeds into dark earth. A farmer, bending low, his dhoti tucked at the knee, sweat running down the back of his neck. The seeds sank into the soil and vanished.

The wheel turned. Now Arjuna saw clouds — not the white, harmless clouds of a winter afternoon but the great bruised thunderheads of the monsoon, rolling across the sky like herds of grey elephants. Rain fell in silver sheets. It struck the earth and the earth drank it the way a thirsty child drinks water — urgently, gratefully, not wasting a drop.

The wheel turned again. Green shoots pushed through the mud. Rice paddies flooded and turned emerald. Wheat fields stood golden under the autumn sun. Mangoes swelled on branches until they were so heavy the trees bowed like old men. Food. Everywhere, food — growing, ripening, ready.

Another turn. Now Arjuna saw creatures eating. A deer pulling grass from a hillside. A child breaking roti with both hands, steam rising from the centre. An eagle dropping from the sky onto a fish. A family of ants carrying a single grain of rice in a line so perfect it looked like a tiny army marching home. Life, feeding on life, growing stronger.

And then — the part that made Arjuna catch his breath — the wheel turned once more and he saw fire. A sacred fire burning in a clay pit, and a priest pouring ghee into the flame. But it wasn't just a priest. It was the farmer again, offering a portion of his harvest back. It was the mother setting aside food for a stranger before she fed herself. It was a boy planting a sapling in the spot where a tree had been cut down. Sacrifice. The act of giving back so the cycle could continue.

And from the fire, smoke rose into the sky and became clouds. And the clouds became rain. And the rain became food. And the food became life. And life gave back. Around and around, without end.

"Do you see?" Krishna said softly. The wheel spun between them, painting their faces in warm light. "No part of this wheel is more important than any other. The rain is not greater than the seed. The food is not greater than the rain. And none of it works without action — without someone willing to bend down, push a seed into the earth, and trust that the wheel will turn."

Arjuna stared at the spinning circle. For the first time, he saw the battlefield not as a place of destruction but as a spoke in a much larger wheel — one that had been turning since the beginning of time and would keep turning long after he was gone.