Short story: Insentient

By Srinjoy Bhattacharjee

I was axed a couple of days ago. I now lie on the bank of the muddy river that had swollen up a few days back, thanks to the rain. Dumped in the open in the wet weather with a pile of objects, all a part of the same thing – logs chopped off a parent tree. I was  part of a branch not too long ago and birds perched had on me. Now I am at the mercy of a drunk who might opt to reduce me to cinders when he pleases.

However, this is not about me, this is about the dead. Strictly speaking, I am dead too – inanimate so to say, but people don’t care much about trees – neither for the ones standing in the woods nor for those chopped. In fact, at times, rather most of the times, they don’t probably care for each other – even for the living ones, leave aside the dead. I don’t care about the dead either. Because I don’t see the point in caring for them, and besides, they don’t need your care — they are dead. But this is not about any random dead person, it is about the one that is about to be brought here in some time. Ah! There she comes.

There were leaves once that stemmed out of me. And from time to time they shed, giving way to new ones. On one such occasion a leaf drifted afloat from my branch down the aerial path to alight softly on her hair; that was when I first saw her. And I fell in love with her. Juvenile she was, probably thirteen, as old as the tree I presume. That made us coevals.