“The Four Keys”: Chapter One

Sheily Shah

Prologue:

Atam shakes his leg nervously as he reaches into his pocket to find his keys, but all he feels is the cloth of his jeans. Puzzled, he reaches into his second pocket, which also turns up empty. He looks around his room for the keys anxiously — how could he have lost them? Each key is so distinct, and he’s had them for as long as he could remember.

The first key has an eye-shaped hole in the middle. It represents perception and clarity. The second key is heavy, its rusty gold covering wearing off and showing a brighter gold within. It represents energy and life. The third key has a stem that looks like a thin pen, representing knowledge and learning. The fourth key shimmers gently, almost like it has a faint trace of glitter. It is engraved with a smile in the middle, representing contentment and bliss.

As Atam paces around the room, he feels his heart rate getting faster. Thoughts in his brain are moving at a rapid pace, and all of them lead to one question: What happens if he can’t find the keys?

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in an effort to calm down, and suddenly sees a vision. There is a large, lit up wall that says “2022 YJA Convention.” People are wearing nametags and chatting away. He hears a deep voice in the back of is brain: “The keys are here, but you cannot find them on your own.”

Confused, he opens his eyes and finds himself transported to a hotel room. On the desk in front of him, there are three sheets of paper. He opens up the first one, and it says: “Clue 1 for Scavenger Hunt: ”

Desperate to find his four keys, he decides to play.

Chapter 1:

The large ballroom seems to grow exponentially smaller as people make their way around the event space. If you were a fly on the ceiling, you would see people forming distinct circles around each other. If you moved closer in, you see people moving around the room in clusters of three.

Atam watches carefully. The paper with the first clue is wrinkled in his pocket. As he walks around, he is drawn to one particular trio sitting at the edge of the room. The first event is an icebreaker, and he sees his name assigned as a “Scavenger Hunt Lead” on a table by them.

Ah, that’s who the clues are for, he thinks. The voice in his head agrees.

In the group, there is a 14-year-old boy — his glasses framing a look of curiosity in his eyes. He is clearly the youngest one in the group. Next to him is a tall, young woman sporting a Georgia Tech University hoodie. The last member of the group is a young man in his mid-twenties, excitedly waving to people in other groups — this is not his first convention.

The youngest of the group introduces himself. “Hey! I’m Neel.”

“Is this your first Convention?” The girl in the ponytail asks with a smile. She has a soft voice, with a slight Indian accent. Neel nods.

“It’s my first convention too, I’m not sure what to expect. I’m Arushi, by the way!”

“Oh, trust me, you’re in for a treat,” the last member says. “Funny, I went to Georgia Tech too! I graduated a couple years ago, but I was a part of their Jain Students Association. You might have seen my name, Saiyam, or Sam, on the roster!”

The team is approached by a teenager, walking slowly with his hands in his pocket.

He takes out a piece of paper from his pocket and reads it to the team.

“Hey, I’m Atam!” He introduces himself joyfully. “Your group is a team for our first icebreaker, the scavenger hunt! Your team will be looking for four keys. Each key will give you a clue to find the next. Remember, you have to find all four keys by the end of the weekend to unlock the puzzle!”

Atam wishes them luck and walks away. As Neel lifts his gaze off the clue to say goodbye to Atam, he scours the room and takes it all in. He can’t help but feel giddy about this weekend. He remembers when he watched his older brother fly out to Chicago during the July 4th weekend four years ago. When his brother came back, he rambled excitedly about the Convention, recounting everything, from the Garba with light-up dandiyas to the all-nighter where him and his friends had played Codenames for hours.

Now that Neel was finally 14, it was his time to create his own YJA Convention experience. Though he was excited, he felt somewhat guilty to be having fun after such a difficult year.

Two years ago, Neel was in a hospital room, double-masked, standing six feet apart from the rest of his family. His grandmother was on the hospital bed, and the room was silent aside from the quiet purr of the oxygen tank breathing for her. Her mask covered her mouth, but Neel imagined she was smiling through the pain. COVID-19 had brought his grandmother from jovially cooking in the kitchen to coughing to wheezing and to slowly being unable to speak or breathe. On July 4th, 2020, she passed away in her sleep.

It was Neel’s first time experiencing loss, and he found himself overcome with confusion and anger. His grandmother was always kind and in service of others, so what possible karma in her life could have caused such pain? Why did she have to go? It didn’t seem fair.

Neel was trying his best to enjoy Convention and be present, but grief from his grandmother’s loss kept creeping into his thoughts

The group enters the first main session of the night — the Keynote Speech. A woman in her late forties comes onto the stage. Neel looks at her long hair and green eyes and can’t help but think she looks just like his grandmother.

He is mesmerized as he listens to her speak about healing with purpose. She talks about how moving on from negative situations is not a linear process and how purpose is essential to understanding other people and their stories.

Suddenly, Neel feels as though the speaker is looking directly at him, her green eyes sparkling. “When a meal is complete, you remember the first taste, not the empty dish at the end,” she says. “The first taste is equivalent to ‘purpose’ and ‘intention.’ That’s what remains, even beyond the length of a person’s life.”

A sense of deja-vu washes over Neel. He closes his eyes and thinks deeply about his grandmother. The kitchen was her favorite place. She would teach him how to make roti with the perfect amount of char. She presented each dish with perfection, making sure to serve it hot, even if that meant she ate last. When she served her dishes, she always said, “When a meal is complete, you remember the first taste, not the empty dish at the end.” It was word-for-word what the speaker had said today.

The pain she felt was temporary. Her purpose was to live with kindness, and that’s what she lived by. It’s like the first “taste” of a meal. That’s what Neel remembers.

The speaker walks down the aisle as she exits and accidentally drops her nametag on the floor near Neel’s chair. As she picks it up, she hands Neel a key.

Neel shows it to Sam and Arushi, who are sitting next to him. The key has an eyehole in the middle of it.

“Oh my god,” Sam says. “‘When the key talks to you, you’ll find the key.’”

Neel smiles. The KEYnote speaker was talking to him, he knew it.