The Boy Who Talks to Forests
2120 Words
Rainwater slid slowly down the prison window like melting shadows.
The interrogation facility stood on the edge of Chandigarh’s restricted wildlife division zone, surrounded by high concrete walls and armed security towers. Officially, the building existed for dangerous smuggling suspects connected to cross-border crimes.
Unofficially, it was where inconvenient truths disappeared.
Inside her black SUV parked across the road, Bhaag Kaur stared silently at the prison gates through tinted windows.
Her driver glanced nervously through the mirror. “Miss Kaur… are you certain about this?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
Honest.
Quiet.
That surprised even her.
The driver hesitated. “Then maybe we should return.”
Bhaag continued watching the prison.
Three nights had passed since she first saw the mysterious boy beside the dead elephant on television. Three sleepless nights filled with news reports, leaked photographs, conspiracy theories, and something far more disturbing:
Rumors.
Forest workers claimed the boy had lived inside restricted jungle territories for years.
Villagers whispered he appeared before animal attacks.
Some swore wounded creatures approached him without fear.
Others believed he was mentally unstable.
Or cursed.
Or not entirely human at all.
Bhaag hated herself for caring.
But she did care.
Too much.
Every time she closed her eyes, she remembered his expression beside the elephant.
Not guilt.
Not cruelty.
Something emptier.
Something that reminded her painfully of her own reflection after her mother died.
She looked down at the security clearance papers in her hand.
Her father’s influence had opened doors within hours.
Money always did.
That fact disgusted her more each year.
“Stay here,” she told the driver.
Before he could object, Bhaag stepped out into the cold morning air and walked toward the prison gates.
Above the building, clouds moved slowly across a pale gray sky.
Storm weather again.
Senior Officer Harjit Rana looked deeply uncomfortable the moment Bhaag entered his office.
“This is highly irregular, Miss Kaur.”
“And yet you approved it.”
Rana exhaled heavily.
Her presence filled the small office strangely. She looked too elegant for a place filled with criminals and exhausted officers. Even in simple black clothing, Bhaag carried the polished confidence of someone raised among wealth and cameras.
But her eyes looked tired.
Restless.
“You have exactly fifteen minutes,” Rana said finally. “And only because your foundation has supported wildlife enforcement divisions for years.”
Bhaag crossed her arms. “You still haven’t charged him.”
“We’re investigating.”
“You’ve been investigating for days.”
Rana’s jaw tightened. “The elephant killing isn’t simple.”
“No,” Bhaag agreed softly. “It isn’t.”
For a moment silence filled the office.
Then she asked the question haunting her since London.
“Who is he?”
Rana looked toward the interrogation room window across the hallway.
“We don’t know.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I thought so too.”
The officer rubbed tired eyes before continuing quietly.
“No birth certificate. No school records. No fingerprints. Nothing official connects him to existence.”
Bhaag frowned.
Rana lowered his voice further.
“But he knows things he shouldn’t.”
“What kind of things?”
“The locations of illegal traps before we find them. Animal migration changes before they happen. Hidden forest routes even local tribes avoid.”
Bhaag felt cold uneasiness creep through her chest.
Rana continued carefully.
“Yesterday he described a poacher camp near the eastern river sector.”
“And?”
“We raided it.”
Bhaag leaned forward slightly.
Rana’s expression darkened.
“It existed exactly where he said.”
Silence followed.
Outside, thunder echoed faintly in the distance.
Finally Rana stood. “Fifteen minutes.”
The interrogation room smelled faintly of rainwater and old concrete.
A single metal table separated Bhaag from the boy sitting across from her.
Joga Singh.
That was the name police eventually extracted from him after days of silence.
Though even now, nobody knew whether the name was real.
He sat exactly as before.
Still.
Calm.
Dark hair slightly wet from a recent shower.
Fresh bandages wrapped across old scars visible near his wrists.
But it was his eyes that unsettled her again.
Emotionless on the surface.
Yet carrying strange exhaustion underneath.
The guard closed the door behind her.
Now they were alone.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Joga simply watched rain sliding down the narrow prison window beside her.
Bhaag hated how aware she suddenly became of every small movement in the room.
The sound of his breathing.
The storm outside.
Her own heartbeat.
Finally she sat down slowly.
“You know who I am.”
It wasn’t a question.
Joga’s gaze shifted toward her calmly.
“Yes.”
His voice remained low.
Controlled.
She folded her hands together to hide slight nervousness. “How?”
“People speak your name loudly.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he agreed quietly. “It isn’t.”
The response irritated her immediately.
“You enjoy confusing people?”
“No.”
“Then why won’t you answer normally?”
Joga studied her face silently for a moment.
“You ask questions you already fear the answers to.”
The words struck harder than they should have.
Bhaag’s expression hardened. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Another silence.
Then Joga looked toward the rain again.
“When you were eleven,” he said softly, “you stopped sleeping with lights off.”
Bhaag froze.
A chill ran down her spine.
“You woke from nightmares after hearing your parents fighting downstairs.”
Her throat tightened instantly.
“You sat near windows because rain made the house feel less empty.”
The room suddenly felt too small.
“How do you know that?”
Joga ignored the question.
“You learned early that rich people hide loneliness behind noise.”
Bhaag stared at him speechlessly.
Nobody knew those things.
Nobody except—
Her family.
Her mother.
Herself.
Anger rose quickly beneath the fear.
“Did someone investigate me?”
“No.”
“Then stop talking like you know my life.”
Joga finally met her eyes fully.
And for one terrifying moment, Bhaag felt completely seen.
Not admired.
Not judged.
Seen.
“You carry grief like a second heartbeat,” he said quietly.
The storm outside deepened.
Bhaag looked away first.
Far from the prison walls, deep inside restricted forest territory, Ranger Nirmal Kaur crouched beside a hidden animal trail with mud covering her boots.
She was thirty-two, sharp-eyed, disciplined, and already disliked by several powerful officials because she asked dangerous questions too often.
Around her, dense jungle moved restlessly beneath approaching rain.
One younger ranger approached carefully. “Ma’am.”
Nirmal held up a hand for silence.
Then pointed toward the ground.
Tiger tracks.
Fresh.
But beside them were boot prints.
Human.
Multiple.
She frowned.
“No poacher camps are supposed to exist this close to sanctuary lines,” the younger ranger whispered.
“That’s because someone keeps warning them before raids.”
The ranger looked uneasy. “You really think government officials are involved?”
Nirmal stood slowly.
“I think poaching syndicates move too freely for this to be ordinary corruption.”
She removed a folded photograph from her jacket.
It showed burned map fragments recovered after a recent forest fire.
At first glance the markings looked random.
But hidden beneath the damage were coded route symbols.
Smuggling paths.
Protected crossings.
Illegal transport zones.
Someone had tried destroying the evidence quickly.
Not quickly enough.
Nirmal narrowed her gaze toward the dark forest ahead.
“Search the northern ridge.”
“Yes ma’am.”
As the ranger moved away, Nirmal noticed something half-buried beneath wet leaves nearby.
She crouched again carefully.
A tiger claw.
Old.
Sharpened intentionally.
Attached to black thread like some ritual object.
Nirmal’s expression darkened immediately.
She had seen similar symbols before.
Years ago.
During another investigation abruptly shut down by higher authorities.
The same investigation that eventually killed Bhaag Kaur’s mother.
Thunder rolled overhead.
Nirmal slipped the claw into her pocket slowly.
Someone powerful was protecting this network.
And whoever it was…
…they were watching the forests carefully.
Back inside the prison, Bhaag struggled to regain emotional control.
“You still haven’t answered the main question,” she said finally.
“Which one?”
“Did you kill that elephant?”
Joga remained silent.
The silence itself felt deliberate.
Almost painful.
Bhaag leaned forward. “People are calling you a monster.”
“The forest has seen worse monsters.”
“That’s not an answer either.”
“No.”
Frustration mixed strangely with curiosity inside her.
“You speak like riddles.”
“You listen like someone searching for escape.”
The words irritated her again.
“Why do you keep analyzing me?”
Joga tilted his head slightly.
“Because you came here lonely.”
Bhaag laughed once bitterly. “You think you understand loneliness because you hide in forests?”
His eyes darkened slightly then.
For the first time, emotion flickered briefly across his face.
Not anger.
Memory.
Pain.
“You think cities cure loneliness?” he asked softly.
Silence settled heavily between them.
Outside the window, rain intensified.
Bhaag watched him carefully now.
There was something deeply unnatural about his calmness.
Most prisoners:
begged
lied
manipulated
panicked
Joga simply existed.
Like someone who belonged somewhere far away from ordinary society.
She noticed scars again along his hands.
Not fresh injuries.
Older.
Deeper.
“Where did you get those?”
He looked down briefly.
“Forests remember violence.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
“No,” he agreed quietly again.
Bhaag should have stood up.
Should have left.
Instead she asked the question she truly wanted answered.
“Why were you beside the elephant?”
For the first time since entering the room, Joga hesitated.
A long silence followed.
Then he spoke almost gently.
“It was afraid.”
“The elephant?”
“Yes.”
“And you stayed with it while it died?”
His gaze lowered slightly.
“No creature should die alone.”
The answer hit something inside her unexpectedly hard.
Bhaag looked away quickly toward the rain.
Because suddenly she remembered sitting alone beside her mother’s hospital bed years ago after the accident.
Machines.
Silence.
Artificial light.
No creature should die alone.
The same sentence echoed painfully inside her chest now.
She hated him a little for understanding that.
Late evening covered the prison complex in darkness.
Most visitors had already left.
But Bhaag remained inside Officer Rana’s office reviewing confiscated evidence photographs connected to the poaching investigation.
Her eyes narrowed over one particular image.
Wildlife photographs recovered from a smuggler’s camera.
At first they appeared ordinary.
Tigers.
Forests.
Riverbanks.
But hidden carefully within background details were coded symbols.
Tree markings.
Rock patterns.
Directional clues.
Transport routes.
“Smuggling communication,” Bhaag whispered.
Rana nodded grimly. “The photographs were messages.”
“Who decoded them?”
The officer hesitated.
Then reluctantly answered:
“Joga.”
Bhaag looked up sharply.
“He identified every hidden route correctly.”
Another strange chill moved through her.
How could someone learn forests that intimately?
Unless…
He truly had lived inside them.
A younger officer suddenly rushed into the room holding documents.
“Sir, satellite reports confirm illegal movement near border sectors again.”
Rana cursed under his breath.
“Same routes?”
“Yes.”
Bhaag looked toward the interrogation hallway instinctively.
Joga already knew.
Somehow he always knew.
The next morning arrived cold and silent.
Before sunrise, Bhaag stood awake inside the guest quarters arranged for her near the prison compound.
Sleep had abandoned her completely.
She stepped outside onto the balcony overlooking distant forest hills barely visible beneath pale mist.
The world looked suspended between darkness and dawn.
Then she noticed movement below.
Near the far security fence facing the forest.
Someone sitting alone.
Bhaag narrowed her eyes.
Joga.
A guard stood nearby watching him cautiously from distance while allowing him fresh morning air under supervision.
But Joga seemed unaware of everything around him.
He sat cross-legged silently facing the forest horizon.
Completely still.
The rising wind moved softly through his dark hair while early dawn light touched his face.
Then Bhaag heard it.
Softly.
Repeated like a breath.
“Waheguru…”
Again.
“Waheguru…”
Not dramatic.
Not performative.
Peaceful.
Ancient.
Like someone speaking to the universe itself.
Bhaag watched silently from above.
For the first time since meeting him, Joga no longer looked frightening.
He looked alone.
Deeply, impossibly alone.
Birds slowly began singing within distant trees as dawn approached.
And strangely…
the forest itself seemed to listen to him.
- Writer
