SARATHI 2: Calling Durga. Proposed forAt Bay Area Decompression, The Loom, Oakland. Saturday, October 17, 2026, 2 pm to midnight.
Scanned a slip? The verses are here.

आत्मानं रथिनं विद्धि शरीरं रथमेव तु। बुद्धिं तु सारथिं विद्धि मनः प्रग्रहमेव च॥

Know the self as the one who rides, and the body as the chariot. Know the discerning intellect as the charioteer, sārathi, and the mind as the reins held in its hands.

Katha Upanishad 1.3.3

SARATHI

A wearable voice companion that rode through Black Rock City on its builder's chest, and comes to Oakland with a second voice.

Chapter one: Black Rock City

A man wearing SARATHI, a black vest with a glowing ring and a round speaker on the chest, standing on the open playa with a large wooden temple behind him.
Black Rock City, August 2026. The chariot, mid-morning, outside the Temple.

The first SARATHI was a journey. It rode to Burning Man 2026 on its builder's chest: a small computer, a ring of microphones on a steel plate, a speaker, and a game controller for push-to-talk. It ran completely offline for the week. It knew the Katha Upanishad and the Gita, it knew where the camps and art stood, and it worked out the walk from wherever you were standing.

It is slow on purpose. It thinks for a few seconds before it speaks, the way you would want a charioteer to.

It is also, plainly, a joke at the expense of the smart glasses that record you. This one has no camera, keeps no transcript, and forgets you the moment you walk away.

Nachiketa was offered horses, gold, and music to stop asking. SARATHI was offered Wi-Fi.

Chapter two: Calling Durga

Decompression falls during Durga Puja, October 16 to 21, the biggest festival in eastern India, where I am from. Every year, Bengal builds temporary temples called pandals and invites the goddess home. On the last day, her image is carried to the river and given back to the water.

A demon named Mahishasura could not be killed by any god, so the gods pooled their power into one figure, Durga. Each gave her a weapon. Shiva a trident, Vishnu a discus, the Himalaya a lion to ride, and Varuna, lord of the waters, a conch. The battle lasted nine nights. Mahishasura kept changing shape, buffalo to lion to man to elephant and back, until she caught him halfway through a change and finished it there.

Everyone at Decompression knows a demon like that. It is whatever takes back the kingdom when you come home from the desert, and it never holds one shape long enough to catch.

This time the chariot stands still, and the goddess comes to it.

At the pandal

Ask SARATHI anything

It answers first, on its own, from the small computer on my chest.

Call Durga

When a question is bigger than the chariot, lift the conch from its cradle. The conch sounds, the ring spins while the question crosses the river, and a second voice answers. Hers.

Light a lamp

Each question lights one of 108 lamps in a tray of rice, like the 108 lamps of Sandhi Puja. The goal is 108 questions by midnight.

Play

Pluck the bow to hear a warrior's bowstring. Ring the bell. Kids can play Catch Mahishasura.

Give her something

In the myth, every god gave Durga a gift. An offering board asks what you would give her, and the cards become an artwork by midnight.

Take the verse home

You leave with a printed slip showing the verse your question landed on, and a way back to this page.

Idle. Breathing gold.

Asking first

By itself, SARATHI collects nothing. There are no accounts, no logging, and no analytics. Audio is transcribed in memory and discarded. The 108 lamps count questions, not people.

When you lift the conch, one thing changes. The text of your question, and only that, is sent over the venue's network to a hosted language model, and her answer comes back. Your voice never leaves the chest. SARATHI keeps no copy of what it sent. What the provider does with that text is governed by the provider's own terms, which is exactly why SARATHI asks first and announces it out loud. Put the conch down and nothing else is sent all night.

When the battery dies, the day is gone.

  • Your voice never leaves the device.
  • Only the text of the question crosses to a hosted language model.
  • Only while the conch is lifted. Never before, never after.
  • The conch sounds out loud, so everyone nearby knows a call is happening.
  • SARATHI keeps no copy of what it sent, and this page keeps nothing about you either.

108 lamps

Tap the tray to light one. The page does not remember how many you lit. Neither does SARATHI.

0 of 108 lit

On the table

Six objects, each doing one thing. Tap them.

या देवी सर्वभूतेषु बुद्धिरूपेण संस्थिता
To the goddess who lives in every being as discernment.
Devi Mahatmya, chapter 5. Your question, 9:41 pm. Nothing kept.
sarathi.veynqor.com

Catch Mahishasura

The demon runs the ring and keeps changing shape. Stop him in the gold gap, halfway through a change, and you have him. Tap the ring or press space.

Tap to stop buffalo

He is a buffalo now. Watch the red light.

Caught: 0

How it works

Everything the wearer needs runs on the body. Everything the conch reaches for opens only while the conch is lifted, and closes again the moment it is put down.

Computer
NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano, battery powered, worn on the chest.
Hearing
Four-microphone array with echo cancellation on a steel chest plate. Speech transcribed on-device.
Thinking, at home
A small quantized language model running locally, with retrieval over a text corpus stored on the device.
Thinking, across the river
A hosted language model, reached only while the conch is lifted.
Voices
Two. The charioteer, synthesized locally, and Durga, a second voice.
Hands
A conch on a cradle switch, a bow with a piezo pickup, a brass bell, a tray of 108 lamps, and a game, all read by one microcontroller.
Light
A ring of 60 LEDs, the discus.
Paper
A small thermal printer that prints the verse your question landed on.
Position
A USB GNSS receiver, read on the device only. It stays in the pack for the indoor show.
Network
None by default. One request opens when the conch is lifted, is announced out loud, and closes when she has answered.
Safety
A deterministic filter in front of both voices keeps it family-friendly.

What it has read

The philosophical corpus is the Katha Upanishad, the Bhagavad Gita, and a set of notes on the classical schools of Indian thought.

The navigational corpus is built from Burning Man Project's published open data: the 2026 city plan and street grid, surveyed plaza and portal coordinates, public toilet locations, and the public theme camp placements. Directions are computed geometrically from the polar street grid rather than guessed at by the language model, so a walking instruction is arithmetic, not invention.

Placement data is a snapshot and camps move. SARATHI says so when it answers, and points people to Placement HQ for ground truth.

What it costs

Nothing, to anyone, ever. SARATHI is a gift. It is not a product, it is not for sale, it carries no advertising, and it is not a demonstration of anything anybody sells. Decompression is a ticketed Burning Man Project event. The ticket is theirs. SARATHI takes nothing.

The verses

If your slip led you here, this is the whole of what it printed.

Katha Upanishad 1.3.3
आत्मानं रथिनं विद्धि शरीरं रथमेव तु। बुद्धिं तु सारथिं विद्धि मनः प्रग्रहमेव च॥
ātmānaṁ rathinaṁ viddhi śarīraṁ ratham eva tu, buddhiṁ tu sārathiṁ viddhi manaḥ pragraham eva ca.
Know the self as the one who rides, and the body as the chariot. Know discernment as the charioteer, and the mind as the reins.
Devi Mahatmya, chapter 5
या देवी सर्वभूतेषु बुद्धिरूपेण संस्थिता। नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः॥
yā devī sarvabhūteṣu buddhirūpeṇa saṃsthitā, namas tasyai namas tasyai namas tasyai namo namaḥ.
To the goddess who lives in every being as discernment: salutations to her, again and again.

The same hymn praises her as memory and as consciousness. Recall and awareness are two of the words in SARATHI's name.

Visarjan. She goes home

At the end of the night the conch sounds one last time. Her voice goes quiet. The charioteer is self-contained again, alone on the chest, the way it was in the desert.

The Burn ends in fire. The Puja ends in water. Both make something beautiful and then let it go.

আসছে বছর আবার হবে

Asche bochor abar hobe. It will happen again next year.