Beneath the Mango Tree: A Tale of Greed and Consequence #ShortStory #fiction

No Country For Old Dreams

The sun claws its way up the horizon, flinging a painful light across the barren fields of Madhupur, the earth a palette of burnt umber and rusty ochres, as if the gods had spilled turmeric on dirt. Raghav, my name, my breath, stitches itself in the canvas of this dawn. I have always been a man of this soil, like my father, and his father before him. But this morning, in the half-light, the world feels different, altered in a way that my mind struggles to articulate.

Dusty roads, think dusty roads, endless, with borders drawn by old kings and new politics. Kings and borders, and I, stumbling upon a scene right out of the Puranas, but here no gods will come to save the day. A shootout; had I been walking this path just an hour earlier? An alignment of fate, twisted, like the bodies now cold on this parched earth. There, a bag, heavy, burdensome, packed with bundles of notes. Rupees, not karma, their texture rough like the tongues of liars.

The air, still, whispers with the voices of the dead. They speak of greed, of power. Their fingers point, as if to say, “Take it, take it and run.” I listen. There is no Arjuna here to counsel; no Krishna to steer the chariot of my conscience. My hands, they tremble, dirt-stained, honest hands that have only known the weight of ploughs and prayers, now clutch this modern Mahabharata. A Mahabharata in a bag. Could I, should I, turn away? Madhavi waits at home. Her saree, always the color of the morning sky, grows faded from the soap and the hard water from our well.

Carrying the bag, the weight of it pulls at my soul, dragging it down, a ship sinking slowly. The road under my feet crunches, each step an echo in the vast silence. They say silence is the language of the gods. If so, what divine plot writes itself into the dust of Madhupur today? The village, when it appears, seems to blink slowly awake. My mind races; possibilities, dangers, hiding places.

Hide the bag, hide the fear, hide the greed. Beneath the old mango tree where my grandfather once declared he’d seen a vision of Durga, there, the earth soft and forgiving, I bury the bag. The soil stains my fingers, marks me. The whispers grow louder, carried by the wind that rustles through dried leaves like the rustling of currency notes.

Days, then weeks, the normalcy of life attempts to return, but beneath it, the undertow of what I’ve hidden pulls stronger. Shadows lengthen, not just with the setting sun, but with the men they bring. Strangers, with eyes like oil slicks and words smooth like ghee, but bitter, bitter in their intent. They ask questions, their Hindi tinged with the accents of far-off cities, sharp and quick.

Their presence, suffocating, like the air before a monsoon storm, hangs heavy. Madhavi, she knows something has changed; her eyes search mine, probing, questioning without words. Our conversations, now dances around truths and untruths. Love tangled with secrets; a knot, tightening.

One night, the storm breaks, not in the clouds, but in the footsteps that approach our door. My heart, a dhol in the festival of fear, beats a warning. The door, a barrier thin as hope, holds. Their voices, demanding, insistent. “The money,” they say, “it belongs to someone powerful, someone dangerous.” Words, like arrows, find their marks.

I stand, my resolve a brittle thing, Madhavi’s hand in mine. There is no running from this; no country for old dreams, where a simple man can stumble upon a fortune and not awaken demons. The truth spills, bitter as neem, from my lips to their eager ears. The mango tree, the buried dreams, the unearthed nightmare.

As they dig, the night grows older, and with it, my dreams whittle away into the stark light of consequences. Money, power, greed—it circles back, a karmic wheel. The bag, exhumed, carries with it not just rupees but the weight of broken peace.

The men leave, their departure as sudden as their arrival, the bag in tow, a hole left beneath the mango tree, a gaping wound in the earth that mirrors the one in my heart. Madhavi, silent, her disappointment a shroud. No words can mend, no monsoon can wash away the drought in our spirits.

And as dawn beckons once more, the world, reset to the palette of harsh lights and longer shadows, whispers its old lessons in new pains. My land, my life, tethered once more to the plough, to the soil, where truths, buried, might grow into something more forgiving than this morning’s sorrow.

The earth beneath my feet, a little harder, the sky above, a little colder, and I, just a man, caught in the whirlwind of tales as old as time, where no gods intervene and no morals emerge unscathed.

#Indian Literature #Rural India #GreedAndConsequence #StreamOfConsciousness #ModernMahabharata #MoralDilemma #CrimeStory #CulturalStorytelling #NoCountryForOldDreams