Ink Drift - July

Issue 12 - Fear
The Banyan Tree of Deuli
to move nor shout. The foliage above
me whispered with the voice of the
wind, and the ropes tied to the branches
creaked; the sound was a chorus of
dull moans, almost similar to that of
doors in an abandoned house swinging
on rusty hinges: CHIRR—CREAK—
CHIRR—CREAK.
Then a crow cawed; another joined,
then one more before the tree itself
seemed to burst forth with cacophony,
cawing, and croaking, making
the hanging dead swing like pendulums.
The ugly birds were all over
the banyan-tree—too many to count,
like swarms of darkness covering the
boughs. And they were all looking at
me; cawing, snapping their beaks furiously,
flapping their wings in agitation.
I took one small step backward, then
another and another. What had the
people done to deserve such punishment?
And why were the crows acting
so weird? I whirled around and sprinted,
fear and puzzlement pumping my
heart and limbs. I didn’t care where I
was heading—just ran; I had never run
so fast. When my fifty-five summers of
life and bad knees began to protest I
stopped, panting and clutching at the
pain flashing in my abdomen. Drenched
in sweat, my clothes in disarray I
flopped on the ground, on my knees.
I had veered off far from the main path
leading to and fro between the forest
and the settlements. But through the
trees a hundred yards away, I could see
a uniform ochre wall of wood and hay
and a thatched-roof of some building. I
somehow managed to find ingress into
a courtyard with a house of mud and
wood, a small barn and a cattle-shed.
Woven baskets in a plethora of colors
and patterns lined the wall; statuettes
and idols of gods and goddesses in bright
colors lay drying under the sun.
There was an old man feeding the cows.
He saw me. His toothless mouth and
sagging wrinkled cheeks stretch into a
grin as he came closer. But then his grin
faltered and disappeared. My sweat-dripping
face must’ve given away something
for he began to chatter loudly in the local
dialect. I couldn’t understand a word of
the dialect but I was sure his words were
full of concern, for he offered me a seat
on a cot and procured some water from
the earthen pitcher by his door.
While I was regaining my breath and color,
he called someone—it was the same
kid I had seen beyond the banyan-tree.
The old man must have told him to guide
me back into the settlement because the
moment I got up to leave, he prodded the
boy to lead me on.
The boy complied rather reluctantly.
He led me through the twists and turns
along the forest trails—Deuli was across
the woods; on dirt trails and game trails.
He didn’t speak a word and I didn’t feel
like talking. My platter of thoughts was
full. Would anyone believe if I told the
person there were dead bodies hanging
from the banyan-tree, like the gallows?
There were still places in rural India
where mercy-killing was the norm, those
horrific remnants of regressive thought
that gave a chosen few to mete out judgment
on biases of caste and religion.
The boy began to hum a tune. I knew
the song, it was a racy tune from a Hindi
potboiler.
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