India's financial markets find themselves caught between forces both distant and intimate — crude oil surging past $104 a barrel on Middle Eastern conflict, a Federal Reserve signaling rates will climb further, and technical charts confirming what sentiment already knew: the path of least resistance is downward. The Sensex and Nifty 50 closed the prior session with sharp losses, and Wednesday's open offered little promise of reprieve. For a nation that imports much of its energy, rising oil prices are not merely a market abstraction but a pressure that moves through currency, inflation, and da