Homecoming
A young man alights from the train onto the empty platform in the village Nimbara, in the silent of the night. There were no people on the platform. Only the eerie whistle of the train engine.
Arjun, looking visibly nervous, exited the station and looked for a ride to the village. He only returned as he got a notice from the government regarding the sale of his ancestral land. His parents had long died in a village fire fifteen years back.
There was a lone rickshaw-puller at the station, sleeping in his rickshaw. As Arjun woke him up and gave him the address, the man looked startled, then suddenly nervous. He hurried on the seat, asking Arjun to keep his luggage and get on.
As the rickshaw drove deeper inside the village, Arjun could sense something was misplaced. The village was unnervingly silent. There were lamps inside lit inside homes, and few kids played alongside. But it was the silent eeriness in the air that troubled him. He felt as if people peeped at him from behind the closed doors.
As Arjun reached near his home, he saw an old lady near the large banyan tree next to his home. He asked the rickshaw puller to stop, paid him and walked towards the banyan tree. It was Aaji, the old nanny, who once had taken care of him.
‘Aaji, how are you?’ Arjun said as he moved forward, touching Aaji’s feet.
‘Arjun!’ Aaji said in a quivering voice, one that had faded in the fifteen years since he left the place. He was just a boy then.
‘Aaji, what happened here? Why is the village so quiet?’
‘Arjun, do you not know? The village was destroyed fifteen years back. The village broke an ancient vow.’
‘What ancient vow, Aaji? Nobody told me about this.’
‘To create a hospital in the village, the villagers decided to cut down an ancient tree that had been there for over thousand years, invoking the wrath of the goddess Vana Devi. The Devi’s anger came in form of fire that engulfed the entire village.’
‘You mean – everyone died?’
Aaji nodded.
‘But now its resettled, right? I can see people everywhere.’
‘Yes, but you. You are not meant to be here.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
Aaji pointed Arjun towards a wall on the school village. A young boy was scribbling something on the wall. The boy turned. He looked familiar. Arjun gasped.
It was Arjun, only fifteen years younger.
‘What? How? How is this possible?’
‘Arjun, you need to run. You need to hide.’
‘But what happened?’
Before Aaji could respond, the sky burst bright with lightning, and then a crash. A lightning bolt fell on the banana tree, setting it on fire.
‘Run, Arjun,’ Aaji cried as the flame engulfed her.
Arjun ran, with his might, towards his home, but his younger self had already darted inside and closed the door. In another moment, another lightning bolt fell on the home, and it exploded.
Arjun ran back towards the station. He did not know what was real, and what was not.
Everywhere around him, the village burned.
Arjun ran for his life, reaching the station. The harried rickshaw puller was there, watching in horror as the village burned.
‘Quick, kaka. When is the next train out of this village?’
The man looked at him, his face wrinkled with old age.
‘There is no next train, Arjun.’
‘What? What is happening?’
‘Did Aaji not tell you? Every fifteen years you return to this place. And every fifteen years, the village goddess burns this village to the ground. Time resets and everything starts again for the villagers, their life reset. There’s nobody left here except you in the village.’
The rickshaw-puller’s words clung to the air like smoke.
“Every fifteen years,” he said, staring at the burning horizon, “you return here… alone.”
Arjun’s breath wheezed in his chest. “But why me? Why only me?”
The man hesitated—then stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper, as though the flames themselves were listening.
“Because you never left, Arjun.”
Arjun blinked. “What do you mean?”
The rickshaw-puller pointed a trembling finger at the inferno consuming the village.
“The goddess burns everything she deems real. Everything that belongs to this world. But you… you don’t belong to any world now.”
The firelight warped the man’s features, making his eyes look ancient—far too ancient for his face.
“You were erased fifteen years ago when Vana Devi struck the village,” he said. “But you didn’t die like the others. You slipped… between time. Neither alive nor dead. A leftover echo the Devi cannot cleanse.”
Arjun shook his head violently. “No. I lived in the city. I grew up. I—”
“Those memories aren’t yours,” the man said softly. “They’re memories you borrow each time you reform.”
Arjun stumbled back, his chest tightening.
The rickshaw-puller took a shuddering breath.
“She tries to erase you every cycle. That’s why the lightning always falls where you stand. That’s why the fire begins the moment you return. The goddess is hunting the last fragment of a timeline she destroyed—and that fragment is you.”
A crack split the air behind them.
The station clock froze mid-tick.
Time bent—warping like a sheet of metal held to flame.
The rickshaw-puller suddenly looked terrified.
“Go,” he whispered. “Before she realizes you’re still here. Before she resets it all again.”
Arjun turned toward the tracks—
but they were dissolving, metal curving backward into molten streaks as reality folded in on itself.
A banshee-like shriek filled the air.
The rickshaw-puller shouted, “Run, before she—”
He never finished.
A bolt of searing white tore him apart like paper.
Not burning. Erasing.
Arjun screamed and stumbled back as the flames roared, but carried no heat—only blinding, merciless light.
The village blurred—
houses melting into outlines,
trees folding into silhouettes,
stars collapsing into streaks—
until only the banyan tree remained, towering, ancient, alive with divine rage.
And a voice—everywhere and nowhere—whispered his name.
“Arjun…”
He covered his ears, but the voice curled inside his skull.
“You do not belong in the world I rebuilt.”
He fell to his knees.
“Return to your unmade place.”
The world shattered.
A flash.
Darkness.
Then—
A train whistle.
A platform.
Night.
Dust swirling under yellow lamps.
Arjun stepped down from the coach, suitcase in hand.
He looked around, confused.
The station was empty.
The air recognized him.
And somewhere in Nimbara, a village quietly braced for the fire that would soon begin again.