Ink Drift - July

The Banyan Tree of Deuli
Issue 12 - Fear
“Good song,” I croaked and realized I
hadn’t uttered a word in the last one
hour or so. I continued in Hindi - “You
sing well.”
“You saw them,” the boy’s reply was
broken. “Up, on the tree, you saw
them.”
“Who were they?” I asked, thinking of
those alabaster faces drained of life and
color, hanging on the nooses.
“They died, long time back; some see
them. I killed a dog and now I see, too.”
I only registered the first sentence he
had phrased for me—they died, long
time back. I knew what I had seen was
true, although it was hard to believe.
My fanciful mind had even considered
the sight to be a joke for one moment,
probably played by the locals. That
thought had ceased to last beyond the
spectacle of the angry crows of the banyan.
After fifteen minutes of blindly following
the boy, I reached Deuli. My motley
crew was already on the move, carrying
boxes of equipment. My cameraman
waved at me.
“Where were you? I sent one guy to
the Banyan, you weren’t there?” he
said. “You look ill. Is everything fine,
Manoj?”
I lied by nodding my head. “It’s really
getting hot,” I said and moved towards
the shade of a mango tree by the path.
“But we have scheduled the shoot,
right? We have assembled the equipment
there, all ready to rock.”
I had no reply to that. I checked my
watch and sighed. Of the boy who had
accompanied me there was no sign. I
wanted to say something to my cameraman;
explain to him what I had seen at
the banyan tree; that I didn’t want to go
back there again. The crew was talking
excitedly around me, exchanging jokes
and complaining of poor cell-phone reception.
“You know I just managed to gather
some scoop about the banyan tree.” The
cameraman told me, bright with fascination.
Even the mention of the tree made
me tremble, but I feigned interest.
“Have you noticed none of the villagers
step under the tree’s shade? Apparently,
the place served as gallows during the
British-rule. They carried out unofficial
executions there, of those freedom-fighters
whose public spectacle would have
created animosity.”
“When was this?”
“Eighteen-hundreds, I guess. Back when
the East India Company ruled the roost”,
my cameraman replied. His eyes were
twinkling with incredulity as he laughed
and shook his head. “So they worship
the tree and fear it at the same time. Ah!
listen to this bit”, he paused to recollect,
tugging at the leaves of a Jamun tree as
he passed by. “So if you’ve ever committed
murder, killed innocents, the spirits
in the banyan-tree would haunt you, you
will see the dead.”
He was trying too hard to make it sound
scary. He didn’t have to. “Oh, I forgot to
tell you this bit: what the Panchayat does
with the banyan tree, you’ll love it, trust
me. So in the past, the few times they
had trouble deciding between murder
suspects, the authorities resorted to the
tree. The murderer usually confesses his
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