That morning, deities Shiva and Ganesh received a rather unusual prayer from the Prakash family. They asked the gods to cleanse Bista’s karma of the murders he had committed and help him forget all about it. Only weeks earlier, the 25-year-old was fighting in the Russian army and killing Ukrainians. He didn’t even know how many people he had killed, estimating the figure to be between 10 and 50. After completing the ritual, he rose to his feet in full confidence that his karma was now clean. Truth be told, Prakash did not suffer from pangs of consciousness. But his war wounds, the nightmares, and the fear that his Russian commanders would find him and drag him back to the front line, continued to torment him until the day in May when we met.