A tattooed hand reached Sid's shoulder, then clutching him by the nape. If a stranger had done by this, a chill would've trickle down through the boy's spine. But it was Ronit's hand, who was spitting some words of encouragement.

"If we play our cards right, kid, you'll be viral. You'll be big, also earn a heck of money," he said and manifested a pursed-lip smile.

Sid didn't respond quickly, not because he was out of words, but his mind was preoccupied. "You know," he voiced his real intention, arms folded across his chest. "It's not about the money, it's the message I want to get through."

The grin on Ronit's face made his teeth look like bright diamonds (maybe because of his constant habit of having chewing gum). "Hey, hey, hey. Some big words are coming outta ya mouth." The spin doctor winked at Sid and made a thumb and forefinger circle.

Sid set foot ahead and walked up to the participants' corner. He grabbed a seat behind the first row and heaved a sigh of relief to know nobody eyeballed him. The boy shot a glimpse at fellow participants and a sweep of embarrassment plastered on his face. He was the only teenager among these bunch of middle-aged, dowdy, debaters!

A fellow debater pointed his finger at the representation booth. Sid's eyes travelled from the finger to the booth. "You have to register your faith first," he said.

The boy went to the booth to get this thing done. A faint smile curled corner of his lips, how do you register your faith? Although what he follows was not just a simple act of worship for him but the journey of a lifetime, something that he didn't believe blindly, and moved heaven and earth to realize its truth. Maybe this is what he'll try to ingrain in everyone's psyche. If we play our cards right, kid. Ronit's words replayed in his mind.

"Name?" The spiky hair executive at the representation booth asked.

Sid sucked in cold air before speaking. "Siddhant Kothari."

"Religion?"

The question landed him on the horns of a dilemma. He wasn't fond of calling himself a religious person, was he? But at this point, he was representing religion in public's eyes. A lump formed in his throat and it retracted the words to come out. "Hindu, no! Krishna, I mean. Krishna—uh—ism."

The executive, who didn't take an interest in making eye contact with Sid at first, darted a narrowed eyes look at the boy. "A what?" he placed his hands over his mouth, perplexed.

Sid's cheek went pink, he recoiled his torso as if chilled to the bone. "I mean, it's Lord Krishna who I follow."

"Oh!" The executive's eyes widened in realization. "So you're a Hindu, eh? I should've known it better, you know what I mean, I'm registering down hundreds of faiths. Hehe, stupid me." And his fingers went to type it down.

"No, don't!" Sid's raised voiced paused him to go further. "I don't want to affiliate myself with any religion. What I'm going to speak will be..." And he ran out of words. Oh boy! Don't be like this when you debate a scholar.

"My, my." The executive presented Sid with a smile and rocked back in his chair to loosen up. His eyes scanned the boy from top to bottom. "What am I dealing with here? A new religion? So are you a prophet or something?" His eyebrows leaped up in a questioning look, smile expanding into a grin.

Shit, shit. So freaking embarrassing!

"Ah," Sid quickly brushed his sweaty, tumbled hair aside from his brow. "I'd say note down whatever you want." And he walked away before drowning himself in the ocean of awkwardness.

******

Half an hour passed, and finally, the host ambled toward the podium. He was a handsome fella, his face glowed like a diamond when he became the center of attention. The Armani suit distinguished him as an elite personality (which later turned out he was one of the sponsors).

His eyes studied everyone presented in Manor Hall, the most lavish and prestigious hall in the city. He flashed a smile at debaters, their managers, and nodded lazily when they smiled back.

"Dumm Dumm," he tapped on the mic, the piercing sound of a mic made everyone clamped their ears. The host felt a spasm of embarrassment hit him. "You see," he said to shun the relevance of awkward that just happened. "I'm not going to trifle away a minute more. Let me call upon the defending champions from last battle."—He threw up his hands at the entrance arena sided by the long downward row of public sitting—"The unbeatable, infallible, undisputed champions. Theeeeee invincible threeeee, Stan, Dr Nayak, and Prakash."

Once luminous with led lights, the ceiling transformed into a pitch-black color, the darkness embraced Manor Hall. The entire place looked like a gloomy night devoid of stars. A ray of white light cracked down from the spotlight and dropped on the entrance door. Many people rose from their seats to catch a glimpse of the trio who were no less than celebrities. Sid also reared his neck to cast his eyes upon them.

Right in the audience area, Ronit let out a scornful chuckle and murmured some words for the host. "Stupid guy, yells like a WWE host."

The invincible three trundled all the way from the entrance to the defending champion's thrones. Stan shot up a hand in the air to hush down the cheering noise of fans and admirers.

"Ahem,' he spoke through the wireless mic, his voice dripped with a commanding tone. "We have a change of plan. The first debater coming from our end is..." He turned to look at Dr Nayak. "Go get them all, doc."

A spasm of terror constricted everyone's heart. The word doc sent ripples through their body. So the invincible three decided to take head-start by throwing Dr Nayak on the stage, eh?

The doctor exchanged a grumpy look with Prakash and rose from his seat. He walked up to the center of the stage almost in slow-motion.

Once he set his foot on the stage, the first thing he did was looked daggers at the contenders, it was piercing enough that anyone would evade eye contact. The iconic smirk spread across his lips, and a pitiful "hmp" get past his throat.

What a drag, he thought, same old faces I defeated last year. And he wasn't joking around, Dr Nayak wasn't a person you'd dismiss as haughty, full of himself. His scintillating wit and unbeatable arguments always placed him one step ahead of others — a religious scholar who boast of remembering each and every verse of the holy books.

Some debaters tried to challenge him (a few even claimed to defeat him), but none was able to squash his arguments.

His fame rocketed with the technique of three questions, the labyrinth. Here's the brief what it's like, the formation of the first two questions is meant to trap a debater in challenging nature of the subject. And the third question is a no-way-out, where a debater can't reverse the answer which he gave in the first two. No one as yet has been able to smash this labyrinth of questions.

He looked down upon everyone with a lazy stare and adjusted wireless mic attached to his shirt. "Okay, I don't have time for losers like you all." There was a burst of rage among debater which plastered smirk on the doctor's lips. "I'm about to present my questions on Hindu theology. You Hindu, you lose."

A scornful chuckle erupted from admirers.

Now, after quite a time, his eyes caught a glimpse of Sid, who stared back at him. But Dr Nayak tore off his eyes at breakneck speed. "In Hindu theology," he said, "we have two division of scriptural canon: Shrutis and Smritis."—His forefinger went up commandingly—"Listen up carefully, my brothers. Shrutis are said to come directly from God, the pure and infallible one. Shrutis are Vedas and Upanishads. The other one, however, Smritis consist of eighteen Puranas and two epic sagas: Ramayana and Mahabharata. Unlike Shrutis, Smritis are said to be later rendition compiled by the sages." The doctor raised his hand in the air to grab everyone's full focus. "Does everyone agree with me on this, debaters and audience?"

There were hundreds of nod. Even Sid found himself nodding, his eyes fixated at Dr Nayak unblinkingly.

"Excellent," the doctor took a deep breath and spoke up, "so my argument is that billion of Indians in this country falsely practice their religion. They practice polytheism (many gods), idol worship, and pantheism, the worship of nature or creation. The cows, trees, snakes, and whatnot."

Then Dr Nayak went on to quote several verses from Vedas and Upanishads since the footing of his argument was based on that only Shrutis (Vedas and Upanishads) are pure and infallible.

Verses as follows:

"He is one only without a second." [Chandogya Upanishad 6:2:1]

"Of Him, there are neither parents nor lord." [Svetasvatara Upanishad 6:9]

"Na tasya pratima asti - There is no image of Him." [Svetasvatara Upanishad 4:19]

"There is no image of Him." [Yajurveda 32:3]

"They enter darkness those who worship the natural elements, they sink deeper in darkness those who worship created things." [Yajurveda 40:9]

"Do not worship anybody but Him. Praise Him alone." [Rigveda 8:1:1]

"There is only one God." [Rigveda 6:46:16]

"There is only one God, not the second; not at all, not at all, not in the least bit." [Vedanta Sutra]

Beads of sweat formed on the forehead of the naive Hindus audience who heard this argument for the first time. Some even began to bite their nails, except a few debaters the rest were clueless.

"If you, as a Hindu, believe God is Brahma, the four-headed deity," Dr Nayak continued. "Then you are going against Vedas, which says God has no form or image. He's formless. If you believe Vishnu is God, then you are going against your Upanishads which say God has no parents. Yajurveda doesn't allow you to worship idols, animals or nature. If you believe in any of your favorite god and goddesses, then you are going against Vedanta Sutra which says there is only one God, not two."

A genuine smile (not smirk) spread across Dr Nayak's lips to see perplexed faces of his opponents. He looked back at his leader, Stan, and exchanged funny looks.

Whoa, Sid thought to himself, this argument is insane. We can't use any verse from Puranas and epics. This argument is more complicated than it seems, one wrong step, and you'll be caught in his loaded-questions. I hope I get a chance to present my—

"Does this insinuate those millions of Hindu gods and goddesses are later imagination of sages who compiled Smritis? I believe mythology is a perfect word to address them."

"How dare you to call our gods myth, fake doctor!" A hot-headed debater sprang up from his seat, his bellow travelled across Manor Hall. Spittle flew from his mouth at the last word.

Another debater stood up. "Honorable host should take notice of it, Dr Nayak is spreading hatred."

"Hatred?" Dr Nayak interrupted with a peal of laughter. "I'm quoting verses from your scriptures. If you think wrong, I'm open to correction. But..."—He cocked his left eyebrow before saying—"With scriptural proof. Don't try to shut me down with your heckling."

The hot-headed took a few heaving breathing and burst out in anger. "Why don't you ask such questions to Muslims who bomb people in the name of their God. Why find faults in our scriptures?" The debater waved his hands towards the audience. "He is misquoting scriptures and insulting our god and goddesses by calling them imaginary. We should complain about it."

Several people gave yes to this. Poor Sid amidst this ruckus of salty debaters, he kept on saying, "I can answer, please let me speak." But his tiny voice was inaudible to almost everyone. Ronit gestured him every now and then to stand up and speak, but the boy felt helpless.

"Faults? Are you trying to say your scriptures have flaws?" Dr Nayak grinned. Stan and Prakash's teeth were also visible to see how the doctor was toying with these so-called debaters.

"Silence, calm down, people." An old man got up, his voice was loud as an elephant. His appearance made him look like a guru. A gleam of hope warmed everyone's heart because they thought the old brain of this man must have come up with a befitting answer. "The Samaveda, the chapter first." The wise old man spoke, "sings the glory of Agni. Chapter two glorify Indra. In fact, all four Vedas praise gods. So you indeed are misquoting our scriptures. Shrutis do talks about gods. They are not imaginary, you idiot! Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti, Rigveda says, which means God is one, but sages see Him differently. Understood? You arrogant fool!"

The old man also quoted from Upanishads which glorify various deities. When he stopped, almost everyone broke into uproarious cheers. Finally, someone did it!

Even Dr Nayak sported poker face, his smirk was actually wiped off from his lips.

"Fools!" Stan spit out this word.

A slow-motion evil smirk twinkled Dr Nayak's canine tooth like a star. "If Shrutis glorify gods, then this leads to bigger complications. This means Shrutis are contradictory to each other. At one place they say God is one, another place many. At one place they say God is formless but also talks about many gods and goddesses. How can anything so contradictory be considered infallible or, in simple language, words of God? Aren't India was ruled by invaders they might have fiddled with many verses, this is what Hindu apologists argue, right?"

Dr Nayak gave a piercing look to the—once shouting and now tongue-tied—debaters, there were no more uproar or yelps. "Now debate me. First answer me those two questions that I asked in the beginning, then this last one. I'm open to correction. Time starts now." And he wore his iconic smirk.

There was pin-drop silence. No one dared to utter a word even the hot-headed debater. They thought they were debating, but they were slowly entering Dr Nayak's famous labyrinth. The Chakravyuh.

After more than a minute of pause, a voice became audible. "I guess, now I can answer." Sid got up from his seat. Everyone's eyes followed the boy as he began to advance slowly, with tentative steps, to the stage. 

******

A/N: This is one of my fastest updates, maybe because I'm myself hyped up for debate. This is one of the chapters which I wrote beyond my expectation. Please, comment and vote, it is necessary for my inspiration.