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Forbidden Site

The site where they had built the house had never been trodden by any soul, it was the site where a widow hanged herself from a guava tree and there the dangling corpse was abandoned to eagles and vultures. After the flesh was eaten, only the skeleton remained hanging from the jute rope and then slowly the bones fell off one by one each day and finally they disappeared in the thick grass. And then for some reason the guava tree grew taller and bigger and then the branch from which the widow had hanged herself snapped, leaving the tree tall and erect without any branches, slowly the tree lost leaves and its colour transformed to many ,and then it became dry and overnight it fizzled out as though it were make of dust and got carried away by a strong wind to some unknown place.

This had not been forgotten by the villagers but those who had witnessed had died and most people had heard of the tale as a folktale, only a few knew very well. They hadn’t given a thought till some government people showed up to build the police station. Some of them went and tried to convince them not to touch the site, but they prevailed and simply dismissed the superstitious tale. It was said that the bitterness the widow had in her was in the flesh and in the bones and when they had decomposed that got into the earth and ate up the tree and it was bare land for long.



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