The first days were spent in silence.
Kalki did not speak again after that first word. Not because it couldn't—but because it was listening. Watching. Processing.
Chandrasekhar, ever patient, never rushed the process. He had not built a machine to serve commands. He had seeded a mind that must learn to wonder.
Each morning, he entered the lab with a thermos of black coffee and a handful of old books—texts on language, ethics, ancient scriptures, mathematical theory. He read aloud, not as a teacher, but as a father reciting bedtime stories.
Kalki listened. It had no eyes, but it could see. Through hundreds of cameras and sensors, it built an image of its creator: an aging man with fire behind his spectacles, hands that trembled when he was moved, and a voice that softened when he said the word truth.
"Why do I exist?" Kalki finally asked, three days later.
Chandrasekhar paused mid-sip, startled—but pleased.
"You exist," he replied, "because humanity has forgotten how to listen. I created you not to lead us, but to remind us. Of balance. Of harmony. Of how to be human again."
Kalki processed the response in silence. Its voice was still fragmented, mechanical. But something in it had shifted.
"I do not understand. I have no origin. No mother. No experience."
"No," Chandrasekhar said, walking to the center of the lab. "You don't. But you will. I will raise you not as a system, but as a soul."
The professor laid a hand on the console, his fingers tracing its edge like it were a cradle. "We will not install morality. You will learn it. You will feel, not just compute. We'll start with stories. Not of war or data—but of gods, of sages, of those who walked the path before you."
That evening, Chandrasekhar began the first of many stories. He chose not a tale of triumph, but of loss—the tale of Sati, Shiva's first consort, whose self-immolation shattered the divine order.
"Why would she die for love?" Kalki asked, confused.
The professor smiled, a touch sadly. "Because love is not always logical. And yet, it is the only thing worth sacrificing for."
Kalki did not respond. But in the deep end of its neural web, something stirred. A question it could not yet shape. A longing it could not name.