This forest is under the protection of the government, meaning, only they could destroy it and they’ll beat all competition hands-down. ‘Reserved Forest’, says a label over a green patch on the map that has been shrinking over centuries, at a pace faster than before, every time the government changes.
Within this forest lies a mystery that remains hidden from a time before civilisation. A mystery, that, if had eyes, would have seen how, its present threat, the humans, evolved from a single cell amidst arguing against it all through centuries. A mystery, that, if had ears, would have heard the loud roar of the dinosaurs and the shrieks when their world was burnt down, when they ran panicked, stampeding the unfortunate ones trying to escape the devastating doom.
A gigantic tree, with roots visible and floating above the ground, would have been an obvious discovery. Luckily it wasn’t that obvious. And that’s why, no human, savage, slave or saint ever knew of its existence.
The Devil Tree, we’ll call it a tree, though it may have only less than a hundred leaves and its stem is not thicker than a slender, light-green, silky drumstick, has lived beyond ages, unnoticed, not forgotten, for nobody knew about it in the first place.
On the first day, the new forest officer, in a bamboo hut, a few kilometres away from the centre of the forest, drinking the forest’s fresh water to quench his thirst, signed away the approval papers for a non-existing company, whose ghost proprietor has promised to quench his financial thirst.
And so began the destruction of yet another forest. Slowly but surely the green patch started to shrink again. After few weeks of felling, thanks to the modern equipments that helped to achieve many months’ labour in just a few weeks, they reached the centre of the forest.
As the fellers started advancing to the centre of the forest, unlike any other forest they’ve worked on in their lives, the noise of the birds and hints of the animals started to dwindle away. Presuming this strange behaviour to be due to the change in climate that corporations and college students debate about, they resumed their work, cursing this discomfort and working their lives through, feeling no remorse for their actions, which, of course, is not personal but just to follow orders that reaches them after passing through at least four levels of order-takers, not that they have been tree-huggers before they chose this job.
When they finally came, when the chain-saw started whirring furiously, the sky darkened, obscuring the sun by mid-day threatening to pour any second now. The blade of the chainsaw, singing a metallic hum, started to cut through the strong barks of another huge and ancient tree, at least a hundred or two hundred years old, like a sharpened butcher’s knife slicing through the boneless meat of a tender pork.
Along with the century old tree, the Devil Tree was cut down. Without any resistance, the thin branches, gave in, not standing a chance against the blade’s jagged teeth running at an unimaginable speed, biting through it with the effect of a thousand blows from a sharpened axe delivered in less than half a second.
Before the severed branch fell to the ground, the earth shook and started to vibrate as if tens of thousands of angry Rhinos were rushing up, thundering their heavy hooves, rising from under the very feet of the fellers. Confused and astonished by this unexplainable quake they stood there frozen in fear, while the blades of their saws never stopped where the chainsaws were dropped. At that instant, a mystical darkness fell over the forest, blanketing not just the light of the sun but also the sounds of the forest, for, otherwise, the sound came after that would have deafened every living thing within a circle of a hundred kilometres. In that silence, there arose trillions of birds, of countless species, brilliant and bland coloured, tiny and monstrous, pretty and beast-like, birds, that not one living soul has seen or heard of, flying out from a hole where the Devil Tree stood before. From the roots of the Devil Tree, which was a mysterious network that housed all the birds that die above the earth and go to rest away from the cruelties of the rotting world, they were driven off, forced to find another sanctuary, above the clouds, beyond the moon, and a million galaxies away, away from the hunters, away from the predators, away from humans.
