In the Forest of the Night

A friend of a commune gang member, Uday Vir lived in and managed one of the few organic tea estates in India, a most beautiful corner of the world. The estate was itself a relic from an earlier world. As Prahlad crossed the last villages, the gain in height led to a world where Nilgiri Langurs ruled. In this bitingly clean air, life itself seemed sanitized. The langurs, otherwise endangered, were playing in large groups. Jumping from exotic Acacia trees that have spread to the very corners of the Nilgiris, the Langurs were content in hearing their own echo. And they loved shouting from the tree tops, resulting in a continuous cacophony of monkey sounds for endless minutes. He slipped into a side road, one that can scare the living any day of the year. Dense groves of acacia had smothered all forms of life. And what was worse is that their roots now entangled with each other, creating an unlikely maze of interlocked body parts. Walking was impossible here. The acacias had created