Part 18

A lone tree in the middle of a vast
expanse. A pair of coucals, its largest
residents. A family of raucous bulbuls.
And every morning, a brahminy kite
sat on the highest branch as if
surveying its kingdom. Squirrels ran
amok and at the beginning of the rains,
a peacock would swoop in and show-off
its glorious plumage. That tree was a
separate universe. The clouds loved it.
It loved the sky. Something a lot like
peace fell upon that island of solitude.
But if you looked hard, there was beside
it, a pit, now slowly filling, crawling with
life, but a pit, as if there too, was once a
tree. A lot like this one. An ordinary tree.
The moon knows. It saw that tree one
night, wrenching itself out of the ground,
roots and leaves and all. Walking away, its
head bent low, not crying though, not
crying. If the lone tree knew where the
other went (because roots talk to roots
underground, you know), it didn’t tell
anyone, not even the one mynah
squawking for an explanation. After a
while, the bird stopped asking. The tree
stopped knowing. Only the moon knew.
But the moon is always complicit. Weak.
The universe stopped calling the pit, a pit.
The universe stopped calling the missing
tree, a tree. Nothing happened, said the
shape-shifting moon. Nothing walked
away from nothing. Nothing became of
nothing. Erasure is the way the world copes
with history. The ease of negation. The
amputation of time. Never. Nothing. No one.

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