Flummoxed In The Forest

Prologue

'Dadu Dadu' a sweet voice, as soft as cream, albeit cackling, came upon Sridhar's ear as he followed his usual afternoon routine which consisted of memorizing the newspaper while lying upon the cot of the verandah in soft cotton pajamas and later taking a siesta for an hour in the warm sun of the afternoon.

Hearing the tumbling and rolling voice calling him out, his lips bent in a crescent as he smiled and folded his newspaper,  getting down the creaking cot to look down from the verandah that adjoined his room in the second floor.

'Hey Radha what brings you here at this time...don't you know? Dadu sleeps now?'Sridhar said with mock anger from the verandah looking down.

'Yes Dadu, but you are still awake are you not?' The reply came in a sly mellow voice from below.

Sridhar laughed witnessing the little girl's witty remark. 'Yes, yes, I am all awake, come up little girl, don't you stay in the sun for too long.'

'Yes dadu...' The reply came fast as the little girl vanished from his view as she went towards the gate.

'Bani' Sridhar called out his maid, 'Bring some pastry for Radha...the little girl's coming up.'

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It was the month of August, the month where the hot sun was often accompanied by the pitter patter of rain drops. Sridhar was a retired teacher in the small village of Dholla, a village created by clearing a part of the large forest of Illambazar. As a result the village was surrounded masses of trees and often there were reports of elephants moving around nearby in the forest, causing panic among the villagers. A monsoon-fed river, Ajay weaved its way in the vicinity of the forest skirting the village.

Sridhar had a been the history teacher of the local High School in the region. But it was not that this small village was devoid of its own history.

It had been created long back, the oldest members of the village even say it existed centuries before the Independence of the country. Some zamindari-aged monuments, and a Rajbari were the attractions of the few finger counted visitors that tickled in the small village. However owing to years of disuse, the surviving parts of history of the place had by now fallen to ruins. The Rajbari, had broken down in parts in its eastern wing while the fields and the front garden were covered with vines and tall Shegun trees. Sometimes the villagers rued the very less amount of resources the small village in the hearth of the forest had and cited it as the reason the pieces of history were falling apart.

Sridhar though was absorbed in the history of the place and even read various  scripts trying to discern the origins of the the living pieces of history that were in front of him. While he was in his forties, he had come upon a certain script written in  the dialect Magahi Apabhramsha, which is often considered as the origin of the common Bengali language.

After months of toiling with the incomprehensible scripts, Sridhar had discerned one similar afternoon, that the monuments were supposedly of the Pala kingdom, which ruled Northern India between 750-1200 A.D.

The Rajbari  was created upon the orders King Nayapala, who ruled the parts of Bengal and Bihar during the period of 1030-1050 A.D.

Sridhar was immensely astonished when he came upon the scriptures, which he had collected from a friend of his working in the National Library in Kolkata, the capital of the state West Bengal.

After another few months of hard work, trying to crack the dialect between his classes, he found an interesting anecdote on the papyrus, by an historian of the Pala king's court.

The anecdote recounted how Nayapala was betrayed his own uncle for the throne who later became the next king, Vighrahapala.

Fearing rebellion by own forces sparked by his uncle, Nayapala was forced to run away from the Palace with his valuables and his only wife with a few trusted servants. They didn't have any child to their misfortune.