Chapter 44 Separated By Death

• Suddenly, the sound of a gunshot pierced the air, followed by his name being called. The caller seemed light-years away. He remembered when his mother used to wake him up in the mornings, when he was a child. Bhairon opened his eyes and was blindfolded in the dust. Then he could make out the guards with Colonel Bhonsle in the lead. As he lowered his gun, a flock of birds scattered away. The elephants seemed to have vanished into thin air. Suddenly he wasn't interested in his surroundings, the forest, the expedition anymore. What he looked at with bated breath was the tall man walking up to him, smiling. There was one distinct trait in his personality - whatever the situation was, he always smiled and cheered up his teammates. In his personal life too, he was met with a number of mishaps - he heard- but he never gave up on seeing the positive side of life.
• Bhairon reflected on his childhood days. When tired of critical mathematical equations and subjects he was to remember by rote, when the iron grills of his classroom windows appeared like windows of a jail, Bhairon would wait for his father at school to take him back home after a long ordeal with books and teachers. When at school, he missed the cool breeze trespassing into his courtyard, the leaves of jamun trees swaying, the scent of ripe tamarind beckoning him to climb the trees, pluck and savour the fruits for long with salt. He missed them even today after joining service as a forest guard.
• It was during one of those school days that the incident happened. It had made him feel a strange feeling of dread and sorrow, the reason he wasn't aware of that time. But now he knew. His school was four miles away from his home, and he had to cross the forest on the way. He walked with his friends to school, except for the few days when his father would find time to accompany him. His father worked as a Group D staff member in the Zila Parishad office, ten kilometres away, and left home early in the morning by bus. Often Bhairon would get so enchanted with the trees, birds and butterflies that he reached school late, inviting a punishment from the class-teacher. The state highway ran past his village, and when at home he'd watch with childhood amazement the buses and trucks passing by at a distance through the windows of his room. Along the border of the forest, there were sprawling fields where corn and maize were grown by the villagers. At night, tuskers sometimes strayed into the fields to eat corn. Their huge ears swayed in the wind, and white tusks shone in the dark as moonlight reflected from them.