"Dont Yawn Under The Peepal Tree"

Heres the start of the story which took almost seven months to write.. my masterpeice. This is the first instance of its promulgation and people interested in reading the entire draft should ask for it as the work is not freeware.

Preface

“In India, the peepal tree takes pride of place in tales of the supernatural. Bhoots, prets, munjias and other unearthly beings all take up residence in this most hospitable tree; when they get a chance they take possession of unwary passers-by and play havoc with their lives. ( I have been warned all my life not to yawn under a peepal tree. ‘A mischievous pret will jump down your throat!’ And then my life, I am told, will not be my own; even if the pret does not kill me or make me insane, it will completely ruin my digestion.
- Ruskin Bond

The aforementioned lines are excerpted from the introduction to “A Face in the Dark and other hauntings” collected stories of the supernatural. They sowed the seeds of inspiration for penning my second horror story after “The Kettle”. All characters in this story are real people I met during my wanderings in Eastern Rajasthan during the winter of 2004: a humble way of immortalizing people who have unfortunately slipped into the vastness of nothingness of my thoughts. The occurrences, albeit, are purely a figment of my imagination and do not bear semblance to anyone living or dead nor do they aim at promulgating any belief or superstition.


Don’t Yawn Under The Peepal Tree

It was at his third strike that he drew blood.

It had no effect on him, but the village folk of Lachhmangarh scurried back to their hamlet and locked themselves up in the apparent safety of their respective hovels. Devendra Singh Rathore wiped a few beads of perspiration from his brow and delivered a crushing fourth blow. More blood, even more… till there was a continuous trickle.

Rathore was cutting the Peepal Tree.

The Peepal was bleeding.

Lachhmangarh was a sleepy village in Central India. It was named after its bravest son Lachhman Veer Naruka who rose to become a general in Maharana Sanga’s army. In the course of its turbulent history it had changed name every two hundred years each time honoring a denizen. But Lachhmangarh had stuck as no one had ever been born to humble the great general. It had some hundred odd families. The rich used to inhabit the northern and eastern part, a geographic schism resulting from the meandering Ulwa river. The soil of the Ulwa was believed to possess therapeutic properties and was smeared on the bodies of all infants born in the village. The demarcation that Ulwa drew on the map of Lachhmangarh did not extend into its ethos as in this village the old and the young, the Brahmins and the Gujjars, the rich and the poor lived together.
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