The Old Banyan Tree of Jallainwala Bagh

Why are you here? Death is not a spectre to be visited, and here, Death is all there is. If you wish to grieve, I suggest you visit the Golden Temple, where you will find a well-tended, gracious, and welcoming Jujube tree. My boughs can barely offer shade, and that won’t last much longer.

Thankfully, my leaves are drying under the persistence of the sun’s glare and have finally begun to drop. Dust to dust, like everything else here. The only hospitality I can extend is the hard, brown, cracked ground beneath my wearying dangle of roots. Be careful; one rogue breath from the air and their spidery shadows could spook a man.

Oh, why do I tease? Old habits, I fear. In truth, there is unlikely to be any movement among my roots today. The sun has us all trapped beneath the all-seeing weight of its eyeglass sky, and like everything around here, the breeze has lost the will to live.

Yet, here you are, casually strolling through our blood-stained dust, barefooted, your eyes rolling over the bones of this place, like a crow searching for somewhere to peck. Have you not had your pound of flesh?

We have never met, but I know who you are. I heard your name on the day of Death’s almighty tantrum. It bobbed about the roused crowd like frothing foam on a crashing wave. It was in their whispers, prayers, chatter and chants.

Gandhi. Gandhi. Gandhi.

Your name circled above us all, an entity on its own, looking down from far away as Death’s most ferocious roar silenced the rising human seas.

Now, here you are, sitting down, cross-legged, by the weft of my weave, looking out at the barren land left by the destruction raked under the promise of your name.

B-dum-B-dum-B-dum-B-dum.

Your heart beats so peacefully. How can you look out at the acres of graveyard before us with such ease rippling through your veins? Can you not see the blood on your hands? It is the same blood I have splashed across my boughs, that stains the dust where you sit, and streaks the walls around us.

It does not wash away in the rain.

When Death touches you, it never leaves, and here Death has clawed all our insides out and dragged the entrails across the floor.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Can you hear it?

Death may be sleeping full and fat, but its rage howls and prowls through its nightmares. Let me show you how to feel it. Maybe that will convince you to take your heart and go.

Place your palms on the ground in the dust beside you. There, that’s it. Can you feel the vibration in the earth? The slow groan of Death sleeping. Lick your lips. Can you taste the salt of its sweat in the septic air? Now, listen. As entirely as you can. Close your eyes. Fill your lungs and sink into the Bagh’s silence as deeply as you dare.

There.

Can you hear the human screams crying out into the nothingness?

Death’s sadistic song.

I have been tuned into it all my life.

It is in the rattle of a snake about to strike, in the screech of an owl as it claims its prey, in the rumbles and crack of thunder and lightning, in the sway and fall of a child from a branch, in the dance of a fistfight, and the choke of a hold. Death's song precedes its action like a smell precedes a feast and lingers long after the food has gone. But until that horrific day, I had never heard it rip and roar across the Bagh as it did through the unholy constancy of a belt-fed mortar.

This is why the sun does not dare let the air breathe. It fears that should it stir the dust or ignite the rustle in the patchy canopy of the trees, it could muster the monster we now know Death to be. We must stay still. We must remain silent. The birds must not sing. The grass must not grow. No heart should come here and calmly beat. We all must do our duty. We have a city to protect.

Beyond these battered walls, children run, rats race, spiders weave, birds fly, and insects scuttle. If we move, we risk rousing Death from its slumber. It could easily climb these walls to wreak destruction further afield.

B-dum-B-dum-B-dum-B-dum.

You feel it, and still, your heart beats steadily. Why do you not run away or cower afraid? I did not take you to be a fool. Get up and go. Why, when you can hear, feel, and taste it, do you calmly sit?

Has Death’s cruel rhythm bewitched you? Is that it?

Please! You must resist. It is a seductive perversion. You must be stronger than I was. I have been weak, and I have seen where such weakness leads.

Many times at night, when the air shivered beneath the moon’s gaze, I let my branches sway to the old rhythms from when Death and I were first intimate. It was through the sting of a wasp that had crawled into the fig of my mother’s bounty only to die in the instant of my creation. The humming echo of that wasp has sung to me my whole life. It has never left my leaves for long.

I believed that wasp’s echo to be my friend. Oh, how Death played me! How cruel I was, dancing to the swansong of a life; how bitterly I have learned my lesson. Now my boughs weep their leaves to purge themselves of Death's macabre song, to finally set that poor wasp free.

I wish I could have stopped Death’s song from ever entering my canopy. If I only knew then what I know now. Please learn from me. I was a foolish tree, and Death beguiles all fools. Its music can be gentle, peaceful, and soothing right up until the point that it is not. If you had been here that unholy day, you would not be sitting as you do. You would know Death as the cold and calculating monster it is, and your heart would fall silent like my leaves.

Looking back, one of the greatest tragedies of my life is the number of times I have shaded humans like you as they marvelled at Death dancing and frolicking across the Bagh. How delighted they were by the delicate dyeing scents of Jasmine and Periwinkle drifting through the piquant notes of seeding yellow grass. The joy they felt as the warm breeze, rustling through my leaves, trickled over their skin, before going on to lift the tiny pink and white flower petals from their mantels. And how they sighed as billowing, pastel clouds of floral confetti landed on the ground around us to rot.

There would be giggles alongside those of the Laughing Birds in my canopy at the rambling nonsense of the Myna, while the other trees around us bled shades of red into the golden, honeycomb hours of a long and languid day.

Then, as night’s cold air drew in and the wasp’s melody fluttered above us, we would listen to the creaks and moans of the second kill of my life: the old Neem tree that I strangled and consumed as a virile sapling.

As I watched over my various visitors, I could feel the old seeping sap of that Neem tree in my core. They would lie, where you are now, and together we would listen to the threatening screeches and hunting howls of a cold, dark, moonlit night, our dalliances with Death keeping us warm inside.

I am ashamed of how complicit I have been in Death's seductive games. So many artists and poets have sat beneath my boughs and looked out across the Bagh, mesmerised by Death’s muse as it pawed its way around them with lilting rhythms and golden trails.

Over the years many philosophers have spent days here in deep contemplation of life’s questions, and I have distracted them with the sound of the wasp humming through my leaves and the moans of the dead, strangled tree crying in my core. I have even, wantonly, swung my roots to tease them.

Who knows how far the corruption I helped facilitate has travelled?

Please, learn from my mistakes. I have been a fool seduced by Death. I have stared into its abyss and lost myself to it as an instrument of destruction. Do you not see how Death has used you in its game, too? Within the vicious shots that echo between these walls and the screams that climb out of the well into the deadened air, can you not hear the harmonising sound of your name?

B-dum-B-dum-B-dum-B-dum.

Why does your heart not change its beat in the face of all that is unholy here? I know the path we must follow is full of sacrifice, and I know what a comforting bedfellow Death can be. Oh, how I long to wriggle my roots into moist soil rich with rotting life and sleep underneath an icy moon. But if we calmly carry on, Death will win.

Oh no. What is that? It cannot be! Why are my leaves fluttering? No. Why is the air moving? Sun, please stop this! Too many of my leaves still cling to my branches. I have not had enough time to dry through. Oh my, why has the dust begun to stir? Why does the air begin to breathe?

“Mahatma!”

Who is that calling out across the Bagh? No. Is that part of your name? No. No! Not again. Death will wake. It will rise like a viper. I can feel it beginning. It moves between the cracks in the ground and shifts slyly in the space between my leaves. Tell that man to be quiet and go.

What are you doing? Why do you lie down?

No. Please. How do you not understand what is at risk here? No matter how soothing the breeze, you must go. Do not lie down. It is not safe.

“There you are, Mahatma. I wondered where you were.”

“Ah, Rabindranath Tagore. It is good to see you. Please join me.”

What? Why do you invite him to join you? Now, there are two of you looking up at me from the grave you helped make. Each of you is as calm as the other. Your hearts are beating as one harmonious song! Have you felt nothing, seen nothing, learned nothing from what has happened here?

“Rabindranath, what can you feel as you lie here?”

“I can feel the soft touch of the breeze and the caress of this old banyan's shadow as it stretches its dappled hues around us. There is a gentle grace among the macabre weaves and knots of this tree. I can hear it whispering.

Can you hear it, Mahatma?

It says there is life inside the darkness.

To answer your question, I feel hope, Mahatma.”

“Indeed. There is much to admire about this tree. I feel my heart expanding, connecting with all who are lost. Lying here beneath the protective boughs of this Banyan Tree, watching it sway and creak in an air that struggles for breath. I, too, feel the gentle touch of its shade and hear its whispers, and as I look around at the breadth of land this tree covers, I am reminded that inside the darkest shadows, one can find the most extraordinary life. You are right, my poetic friend; there is hope and much comfort in that.

Rabindranath, I look up at this tree and see a hero who has weathered the cruellest, most violent, and most vicious human storm. We must honour this tree and all the people who have died by sharing its story and returning Jallianwala Bagh to the embrace of life that pulses within the emptiness of death’s most deafening silence.”