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species – the mangoes were large, round and ruddy around the stalk while ripe and the fragrance was enchanting. The local people – Rajbonshis of the villages around and the madeshia laborers of the tea gardens – had never seen such a mango tree elsewhere and it was mysterious to them how a mango tree was grown amidst the wild plants.

  The mystery shrouding the colossal tree inspired local people to invent fantasy stories and myths and the local people held the mango tree sacred being planted by deities. Expert tree-climbers could climb the vast tree easily and pluck ripe mangoes, but they dared not incur displeasure of the deities by such inadvertence and therefore, everybody had to remain satisfied with the ripe mangoes offered to them by the tree itself. The marsh, rich in floral and faunal resources, contributed to the living of local people by providing firewood, pot-vegetables, herbs, fruits and small games. It had also become a part and parcel of the lives and culture of them in various ways and got inexorably associated with pleasures and pains of them.

  Boys and girls of the locality used to collect offspring of birds like mainas, cuckoos, doves, shaliks, parrots and parakeets from the nests and bird-holes in the trees. Monkeys at times feasted on the ripe fruits of the trees and naughty urchins derived great fun from riling the monkeys by throwing blobs of earth and snippets of twigs at them and the enraged monkeys used to return back the stuffs and chase the boys unleashing menacing clenched teeth.

  The dusty road, that separated the tea shrubs from the marsh, branched out into the small villages of the Rajbonshi peasants and paddy fields and winded through the forest toward Siliguri town. At the corner of the road close to the marsh were small temples, made by bamboo wattles and roofed with tin or straw, of various gods, goddesses and grotesque apparitions. The Ganesh temple was the largest and was roofed by corrugated tin on wooden structure. Local people used to keep large flat vessels of burnt earth full of haria in front of the temple. The liquor was an offering to the elephant-god Ganesh but virtually it was guzzled by the elephants which happened to cross over from the forests. It was a treat to watch the tipsy mastodons wobbling along after drinking the rice fermented liquor. It was not known who had first initiated this custom but everybody agreed that this was an act of myopic vision. These elephants, residing at the fringe of the forest, got addicted to haria in course of time and at times invaded the villages in quest of the liquor damaging houses and killing people.

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  The Author

  The author of these short stories is a Ph.D. in economics and professionally an economist but his passion for literature occasionally robs him out of the dry arena of economics to the world of love romance and adventure. From his very childhood his favorite hobbies included swimming in turbulent rivers during the rains, small game hunting, boxing, hill trekking and adventure in wild animal infested deep forests. Later on he gave up hunting and boxing considering them to be cruel sports. In course of his hill treks he came in contact with various hill tribes and he could feel the heart bits of these honest and simple people, especially the charming girls. Many of his romantic short stories are based on these hill people and the hilly charm amidst which they are born and brought up. Dr. Basu may be contacted at [email protected].

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