خانہ بدوش

Ajeet Cour

After many years, one day I set out to find that same road in the hills.

I walked on the same path, but God knows where that road had disappeared to.

Have you ever heard of an entire road vanishing from the history of a city? From history, and even from the face of the earth?

I searched for it for a long time like a child lost in a fair, but it seemed as though, in the noise of the new roads, that poor old road had been slaughtered. That road, and all the trees that grew upon it, those rocks that looked like sheep chewing cud, the sunlight trembling in the blades of grass, the green color of the grass, the old cold ruins—everything.

Massacre! A bloodbath!

The new roads went in another direction. The rocks that were broken to carve out the new roads, the redness of their hearts was still brand new, like freshly shed blood.

A few bushes were still standing there with apathy, but those were not the bushes I was familiar with.

From 'Aap Beeti' (Khanabadosh)