The Banyan Tree

 

 

 

This umbrageous Banyan tree was 100 years old. If one stood under it and looked up, one would feel that he was inside a huge cathedral with a green canopy. Shafts of tropical sunlight pierced through little openings in the canopy, dappling the carpet of dried, brown leaves underneath it. And at the base next to its gigantic trunk a modest, wooden temple stood. The temple was as old as the Banyan tree.

 

Just as the roots of the Banyan tree sunk deep and wide to give it firm support, the temple rested on a foundation of a strong, uncompromising faith. So, with the passage of time, roots and faith intertwined to form a symbiotic union. Like a pair of Siamese twins joined by a strategic organ and should a surgeon were to attempt a separation, neither of the twins would survive. Kill the Banyan tree, the temple is destroyed; destroy the temple, the Banyan tree dies.

 

In the temple lived an old priest who had devoted his life to the services of his God and temple devotees, just like his father before him, and his father’s father. The land that the Banyan tree stood on belonged to the state. By men’s law the Banyan tree was an illegal squatter. 100 years of undisturbed occupancy appeared to have given the temple and the Banyan tree a semblance of moral legitimacy. But when avarice was pitted against compassion, avarice won.

 

Then came the enforcers of the men-made laws with their mechanised chain saws and wrecking ball. The Banyan tree that took 100 years to grow from a tiny seed was hewn within hours. Thus were the twins forcibly separated. The old priest remained steadfast in his temple against the threat of the wrecking ball and began his fast unto death in protest.

 

On the first day of his fast, pilgrims of his exacting faith came from near and far to hold a vigil. They came in droves flooding the temple and its compound like the unstoppable flow of monsoon-season flood water. They chanted prayers. The rhythmic intone rising from a murmur to a crescendo and back to a murmur again, like the unceasing tempo of the angry, roaring waves leashing at an impregnable, uncaring sea shore.

 

Lying on his cotton mattress on the first night of his fast, the old priest tossed about constantly and slept fitfully. Nightmares tormented him. He dreamt of falling helplessly down a dark bottomless abyss and losing his grip on his God. He dreamt of a weakening in his faith against the formidable might of the state.

 

He woke up in a cold sweat, in the early hours the next morning, when all the pilgrims had dispersed. He got down from his bed, shuffled towards a cabinet from which he took out a gallon tin of kerosene, went back to the bed and sat on it in a lotus position and immediately doused himself with the kerosene. Then he opened the drawer of his bedside table and with his right hand groped inside to fish out a flint lighter. He positioned the lighter close to his kerosene-soaked garment. Without a moment of hesitation he flicked the wheel of the lighter with his thumb.

 

The flames at first spread to the cotton mattress and then grew to an inferno that finally engulfed the tinderbox temple.

 

Three years later, out of the very spot where the Banyan tree grew rose a new temple ……. a gleaming 30-storied condominium. Kneel, all ye faithful. Kneel to the new God!