amit bhatt

It was near dusk with the skies darkening on the distance, yet the village was abuzz with excitement. It was the time of their fortnightly ritual, in few hours whole village would gather under the huge Banyan tree. The tree itself was old, as old as time, with roots as deep beneath the earth as tall it stood above the ground, and many other roots stemming from other branches, it looked like a rather large umbrella, an umbrella covering the whole world.  The tree however was not nearly as fascinating as the man sitting underneath it. He was an old man too, though it was hard to tell how old he was, nobody in the village remembered. He had silvery white beard,  he used to limp when walking, he didn't have a home and yet he was the most important person in the whole village. He was not thier leader, he used to tell them stories, everytime when the moon was full and when it was completely disappeared. Nobody even knew his real name, they just called him the storyteller.  ...

Could you please turn the light off good sir, asked the boy, timidly. Why, asked the guard, he was not so fond of the new boy. They don't like to visit when the light is on, they say it shows them for who they are, and they don't like that. Who's them, asked the guard? They never tell me, but one looks like the knight, he even has an armor and a shiny black sword, the other one doesn't look so good, he has a big scar on his right cheek, and he doesn't like fire at all. What are you talking about boy, the guard asked, it wasn't unusual for him to hear such things, but this boy made him uneasy, when he looked at him, he felt that more than one pair of eyes were gazing back at him. Once mommy left the lights on, my sister was afraid of the dark and mom dad were going out so she had to sleep in my room, that night when they came they asked me who she is, she was really pretty you know, and she used to laugh a lot. But when they looked at her, she was laughing ...

She was sitting on the road, bruised, burnt and desolate. She didn't understand, she was a good woman, she prayed everyday to her god, even when her husband died leaving two small kids behind , she didn't blame the god. She decided to fight and fight she did. And today when she thought all her hard work of a lifetime was coming to a fruition, all was lost, in a matter of minutes, she didn't even have time to react. She didn't know what caused some angry young man to storm into her small hotel, some of them even used to come there for tea and occasional kulcha. But the eyes she encountered today wasn't the eyes of the youths she called 'beta'  affectionately. They were cold and there was hate in them, though why would anyone hate her was beyond her comprehension. She remembered how happy she was in the morning, the family has agreed to the alliance, there were times in the past when she thought she'd never be able to marry her daughter, her son joined t...