A Story by Archaeologist Dr. Anjali Rao The Oath of Hanuman

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The Oath of Hanuman
In the mountains of South India, where mists and treetops whisper together, people still spoke of the City of the Conspirators – a place that vanished when the last temple priest broke his sacred vow. Only one thing remained, according to legend: a statue of the monkey god Hanuman, hidden in the heart of the jungle, where no map can guide them.
Dr. Anjali Rao, an archaeologist with a penchant for the daring, found clues to the story in a forgotten manuscript – barely legible, written in Sanskrit on palm leaves. It spoke of "a guardian made of stone who speaks when the promise is again valid." She sensed: This statue was no mere myth. She had to find it.
After three weeks in the jungle, a failed bridge over a river, an injured ankle, and nighttime cries that silenced even experienced porters, it happened:
A troop of monkeys suddenly scampered across her path, stopped, looked at her—and ran off in one direction. She followed.
Behind a wall of bamboo and ferns lay an ancient terrace, half-overgrown, with stone walls, little more than shadows of past architecture. And in its center: Hanuman.
The statue was enormous—made of bronze, with flexed muscles, one arm raised in which he carried the mountains. His eyes, made of a strange metal, glowed in the slanting sunlight. Moss covered his chest, vines hung from his arms. He seemed frozen mid-leap. Anjali felt goosebumps. This was not a statue. This was a vow, cast in metal. A guardian who had not forgotten.
And as she knelt, she thought she heard the echo of an ancient mantra—carried by the wind, by the jungle, or perhaps... by Hanuman himself.