Sita Devi

Set in India, Sita Devi is the sequel to The Evolution and will be the final instalment of this two-part story.

While the story continues where The Evolution ends, Sita Devi stands on its own as an independent adventure and it will not be necessary to read The Evolution beforehand.  The third draft of Sita Devi has now been completed, and the book should be released sometime during 2020.

After meeting Anjali on a flight to Mexico and swapping contact details with her, at the end of The Evolution story our protagonist heads to India to meet with this intriguing Indian beauty. Thinking this may be some kind of love affair, he is shocked to find Anjali isn’t quite the person he had met previously. Almost immediately they are both on the road… and on the run!

Before being allowed to meet a gentleman known as the guru, our protagonist goes through an initiation where his powers of spiritual perception are tested fully by Anjali. She refuses to give him any information about what is going to happen, but once he sees the strange talents of the elderly guru they are then forced to escape from a spiritual retreat and are embroiled in a cat-and-mouse game. Anjali tries desperately to protect the elderly guru from military agents who are trying to catch both her and the guru, with the purpose of either murdering them or, at the very least, capturing the guru to utilise his powers. Anjali, however, appears to have a darker side as she soon reveals she has stolen an ancient artefact that once belonged to the goddess Sita.

Ending up in a vast area called Hampi – once the home of a 16th century Hindu empire and previously the location of the ancient Hindu epic The Ramayana – and hiding in a small village, they realise that their enemies won’t set foot in the village but instead have surrounded it and are waiting it out. Trying to figure out why their enemies won’t attempt to enter the territory, it soon becomes clear there is not only more to the guru than was first apparent, but there is something about the area itself – a deep secret that lies within the walls of the temples. Somehow they have been led to the area by greater forces, something that is unseen but powerful. Clearly it has something to do with the guru… and then things take a sinister turn.

Setting foot outside the village centre one day and visiting an empty, disused temple, our protagonist is captured by the agents and forced through psychological torture. The agents tell him that Anjali and the guru are not what he perceives them to be, that they are dangerous people who must be captured before they succeed in their plans, and he is shown graphic images of murders that they had supposedly carried out. By the time he is released he no longer knows where his loyalties lie, whose side he should be on, and who to trust.

Were the agents telling the truth about Anjali and the guru? Is our protagonist being used by them to fulfill a dark prophecy? What is the real truth about the guru? What is Anjali intending to do with the stolen artefact? As things head towards a dramatic climax, his powers of loyalty will be fully tested, but which side must he take? Is Anjali the sweet woman he had met on the flight to Mexico, or is she a dangerous, murdering psychopath? Is the guru the gentle man he appears to be, or is there a powerful and dark entity hiding inside his weakening and dying body?

While The Evolution is about how we perceive the world around us, Sita Devi is about how we perceive the people around us. It is an adventure story with a difference. It tests our powers of people perception and forces us to question who is really good and who is evil? Are good and evil opposing forces or sides of the same coin? Do these traits even exist in us at all or are they just the product of nurture or religious indoctrination? How much of our expectation and learning determines what is real and what is not? Are there even any answers to the above questions?

Picture: Sitting Buddha
Picture credit: Satit Srihin (Thailand), courtesy of 123rf