Astray 1

The Night of Shadows and Silver Light

Then, suddenly, a strange noise — alien to this natural harmony — pierces the stillness.
Every creature startles. The stag’s ears twitch in confusion. The cheetals freeze. The tigers rise, tense and watchful. A cheetal calls out once, and others answer — two, three more — and then, in nervous leaps, the herd vanishes into the deeper forest. The stag follows, but his would-be predators have already slipped away into the shadows.

The artificial sound grows louder now — the steady roar of an engine.

It is a motorcycle, entering the jungle by a narrow dirt path. The fields end, giving way to tall saal trees. About a furlong ahead flows a river crossed by a bridge of logs. At the edge of that bridge, the rider stops, dismounts, and sits down to light a cigarette.

Poor Lallu — once a swaggering tough back in his village — had become a helpless fool in Lucknow’s glittering maze.

After endless expenses, his family had stopped sending money. Friends had long refused to lend. His girlfriend, once affectionate, now wouldn’t even sit beside him, let alone share his bed. And when a man like him finds his pockets empty, the road to ruin seldom stays hidden for long.

So it was that he began mixing with a few boys in Gomtinagar — chain snatchers and petty thieves. After joining them in a few small hits, his girlfriend reappeared, spending the loot as freely as ever.

Soon, the gang planned something bigger — a “real job.” Lallu, desperate and cornered, agreed without much thought. He didn’t know the full plan until it was too late — until they broke into a house in Gomtinagar and found a woman alone inside.

What he hadn’t expected was what followed: his companions killed her.

He had never committed murder before — perhaps never even imagined it — but now that terrible stain had found its way onto his soul.

Only a handful of stars remain visible on the horizon, dimmed by the full glow of the moon. Bathed in its cool, silvery radiance, the wild expanse ahead seems almost spectral. A gentle night breeze stirs; the trees, silent sentinels, sway now and then as if whispering secrets to the wind.

This is the forest adjoining Kanchankheda, a small village in the Maelani region. Beyond the village boundary stretch fields of half-ripened wheat — it is the month of Phagun. A faint chill lingers in the air. The forest hums with the calls of crickets and beetles, and now and then, the shrill chatter of young mongooses playing near a field drifts through the darkness.

To protect the crops, the villagers have fenced the forest side with long rows of thorny babool branches. Yet the sambars and cheetals have made small breaches here and there, and when night falls, they quietly steal toward the fields. It is midnight now. Several cheetals are already grazing, nibbling at the tender green shoots of wheat. A large stag with a thick neck and twelve-pointed antlers stands apart, motionless — whether sniffing the air for danger or listening for sound, one cannot tell.

Farther away, beneath a sprawling banyan tree near a cluster of karonda bushes, a pair of tigers wait in utter silence for that same stag’s return. Though this part of the jungle teems with jackals and foxes, tonight they have found no prey. The stag stands still, alert, listening for the faintest rustle of dry leaves that carpet the forest floor in this season of falling foliage. But the tigers are too skilled; not a leaf dares to betray them with a sound.

His name was Ankit Yadav, though the world knew him simply as Lallu. He belonged to Jagdishpur in Amethi, but lived in Lucknow, studying engineering. In truth, he was a torchbearer of that restless generation for whom freedom and indulgence mattered more than consequence — willing to take any step, no matter if it ruined their future or dragged them to the edge of death.

It was his third year, but Lucknow’s liberated air hadn’t exactly corrupted him — cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, flirting... these vices had long been familiar companions. What the city did give him, though, was a permanent girlfriend — a student of a reputed college, living in the same hostel. She came from a middle-class family but lived beyond her means, always striving to match her affluent friends. To keep up appearances, she needed branded clothes, costly makeup, a Samsung Note with unlimited 4G data — and for all that, she kept him as her provider.

Written by Ashfaq Ahmad