Write ✍️ by Parmod Kumar Prajapati...
In the central market of what was once called Angapuri, now simply 'the City', there stood an ancient banyan tree. Its aerial roots had grown into thick, wooden pillars, making it seem less a tree and more a living, breathing pavilion. It was known as the Nyaya Vriksha, the Tree of Justice. For generations, it had been the unofficial court of the people.
But the true justice was not dispensed by the tree, nor by the rotating council of elders who sat on the stone platform beneath it. It was dispensed by the old man who sat slightly apart, on a low wooden stool tucked between two great roots. His name was forgotten; they simply called him Shravan, the Listener.
Shravan was so old he seemed carved from the same gnarled wood as the banyan. His eyes were milky with cataracts, his hands trembled, but his posture was straight, and when he leaned forward to listen, the very air seemed to still. He had no official title, passed no judgements, imposed no fines. He simply listened. For a copper coin, or often for nothing at all, he would hear your grievance, your confession, your tangled family feud. And in the act of listening—deeply, completely, without interruption—something would inevitably shift.
The story of how Shravan came to be was part of the city's folklore. Decades ago, in the turbulent years after the Great War, a stranger had arrived. He was a soldier, they said, from the losing side, his body bearing terrible wounds, his mind shattered by what he had seen. He could not speak of it. The words were locked inside him, a screaming prison. He took refuge under the Nyaya Vriksha, living on the charity of those who came for judgement. He never spoke, just watched the proceedings with hollow eyes.
One day, a vicious case came before the elders. Two brothers were fighting over their father's land. The argument grew heated, accusations flying, old shames dragged into the sun. The elders tried to mediate, but their words only added to the noise. The silent soldier watched as the brothers' rage curdled into something uglier, as the heart of the matter—a boyhood promise, a mother's dying wish—was utterly lost.
As the eldest brother raised his hand as if to strike, the soldier did something unexpected. He did not shout. He did not intervene. He simply began to weep. Silent, racking sobs that shook his broken frame. The raw, soundless grief was so powerful, so utterly devoid of blame, that it cut through the anger like a cold wind. The brothers stopped, shamed into silence. The market crowd hushed.
The soldier, still weeping, pointed a trembling finger first at one brother, then at the other, then at his own ear, and then at his heart. The message was clear: You are not hearing each other.
From that day, he moved his stool to the side. When the next dispute came, before the elders could speak, he gestured for the first complainant to come to him. The man, confused, began his angry tirade. The soldier just listened, his milky eyes fixed on the man's face, his whole being absorbing the words. When the man finished, spent, the soldier nodded slowly and gestured for the other side to come. He listened again. Then, he took the hands of both disputants and placed them together on the rough bark of the banyan tree. He said nothing. He just waited.
And under the weight of that profound, silent attention, something happened. The two men, feeling truly heard for the first time, began to speak again, but not to argue. To explain. To clarify. They found their own resolution.
The soldier never regained his speech. But he had found his vocation. He became Shravan. Over the years, his hearing sharpened as his sight failed. He could hear the lie hidden in a tremor, the unspoken pain behind a boast, the love buried under layers of resentment.
One afternoon, a woman came to the tree. She was not from the city. She was dressed in the rough, travel-stained clothes of a pilgrim, but her bearing was noble, her face etched with a grief so old it had become part of her architecture. She bypassed the elders entirely and went straight to Shravan's stool. She placed not a copper coin, but a small, smooth sun-warmed pebble in his bowl—the traditional offering for a sage.
"Listener," she said, her voice low and musical, carrying the hint of a forgotten dialect. "I have a story. Not a dispute. A debt. And I cannot find the creditor."
Shravan tilted his head, his blind eyes seeming to gaze through her. He gestured for her to sit on the ground before him.
"My name is Vrishali," she said. A murmur went through the few loiterers in the shade. A royal name. From the old kingdom. "I was wife to a king. A king who was… all things. A giver, a warrior, a loyal friend, a man of terrible pride and deeper sorrows. When he went to his fate, he left me with a kingdom to protect and a heart with a hole shaped like him."
She spoke not like a queen recounting history, but like a woman remembering the smell of her husband's hair after riding. She spoke of small things. His habit of humming off-key when he read scrolls. The way he would get clay on his royal robes from inspecting the new pottery kilns. The weight of his head in her lap on rare, quiet evenings, when the mask of the king would fall away, revealing only a tired man who never felt he belonged.
"They sing songs of his charity," Vrishali continued, a faint smile touching her lips. "The great gifts to Brahmins, the gold, the cows. But his greatest charity was invisible. It was in the patience he showed a young son struggling with his grammar. It was in the afternoon he spent mending a bird's broken wing with his own hands, hiding it from the court. It was in the way he listened to the lowliest grain-seller as if his council were the most important in the realm."
She paused, gathering herself. "My debt is this: I have carried his memory as a queen carries a crown—a weight and an honour. But I have also carried the whispers. The things they did not sing. The harsh word on the dice-hall floor. The steadfast support of a wrong cause. The friend he loved too much to abandon, even into darkness." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I loved all of him. The light and the shadow. But the world wants only the sun-lit prince. It wants to cut the shadow away and call it a separate man. In doing so, they cut him in two. And my debt… is that I have let them. I have been so busy guarding his glory, I have not spoken for his wholeness."
Shravan had not moved. But a single tear traced a path through the dust on his wrinkled cheek. He reached out a trembling hand. Vrishali, without hesitation, took it. His grip was surprisingly strong.
"Who is the creditor, Listener?" she asked, her own eyes shining. "To whom do I owe this debt of truth? His sons? They have their own memories. The bards? They sing what sells. The people? They need their perfect hero."
Shravan gently pulled his hand back. He pointed a bony finger, first at her own heart, then at his ear, and then he swept his arm in a wide, slow arc, encompassing the entire market square—the gossiping merchants, the playing children, the bickering couples, the weary farmers. He pointed back to her heart.
The debt is to yourself. And the payment is to be heard by all.
Vrishali bowed her head, understanding. She stood up. She did not go to the elders' platform. Instead, she walked to the very centre of the space under the banyan, where the light dappled through a million leaves. She took a deep breath, and in a clear, carrying voice that silenced the market, she began to speak.
But she did not tell the story of the hero. She told the story of the husband.
She spoke of his insecurity, the deep, childish fear of being mocked that made him lash out at Draupadi. She spoke of the blinding gratitude to Duryodhana that felt like a chain of gold, beautiful and binding. She spoke of his secret jealousy of Arjuna, not just for his skill, but for his effortless sense of belonging. She spoke of the nights he woke trembling from dreams of a river and a basket. She spoke of his final, serene acceptance not as noble sacrifice, but as a man too weary of fighting his own divided soul.
She painted a portrait not of a marble statue, but of a man of magnificent, flawed, earth-shaking humanity. She spoke of his charity not as a divine trait, but as a desperate need to fill the emptiness left by his own abandonment. She spoke of his loyalty not as a virtue, but as an addiction to the first hand that offered kindness.
The market had gone utterly still. The spice-seller forgot his measures. The children stopped their game. The elders on the platform listened, their mouths slightly agape. This was not history. This was a soul's testimony.
When she finished, there was no applause. Only a deep, collective exhalation. A young woman, a potter's wife, was weeping quietly. A hardened old soldier nodded slowly, seeing his own commander in a new light.
Vrishali looked exhausted, cleansed. She walked back to Shravan. She knelt before him and took his hand again. "Thank you," she said.
Shravan smiled for the first time anyone could remember. It transformed his ancient face. He opened his mouth, and a sound emerged—not a word, but a low, soft hum. It was a familiar, off-key tune. A tune some of the oldest citizens recalled a certain king humming as he walked among them.
Vrishali's breath caught. She squeezed his hand and rose.
She stayed in the city for a week. Every afternoon, she returned to the Nyaya Vriksha. People came, not with disputes, but with their own memories of the old king. A now-ancient gardener spoke of the king helping him pull a stubborn stump. A merchant's daughter, now a grandmother, confessed she had once, as a little girl, presented the king with a wilting flower, and he had worn it in his armour all day. Each story was a facet, some bright, some smudged, all real.
Shravan listened to them all, his head tilted, his silent presence giving each memory weight and validity. The monolithic legend of Karna began, under that banyan tree, to dissolve into a complex, living mosaic of a human being.
On the day she left, Vrishali returned to Shravan's stool for the last time. "Who are you, old man?" she asked softly, not expecting an answer. "You have the hearing of the earth itself."
Shravan reached into the folds of his simple dhoti. He pulled out a single, aged object and pressed it into her hand. It was an old, worn bow-string grip, made of leather and woven horsehair, the kind used to protect a warrior's fingers. It was stained with sweat and time. And tooled into the leather, almost worn away, was a small, twelve-rayed sun.
Vrishali stared at it, then at his face—the lines of suffering, the peace in the blind eyes, the familiar set of the jaw she had kissed a thousand times. He was impossibly old, impossibly changed, a vessel emptied of everything but the capacity to receive.
She did not cry out. She did not fall to her knees. A profound, gentle understanding settled over her. The creditor and the debt had finally met, and were dissolved in the act of listening.
She brought the grip to her lips, kissed it, and placed it back in his hand, closing his fingers over it. "Keep it," she whispered. "You have earned your peace, my love. In this form, as in all others."
She turned and walked away, her step lighter than it had been in decades.
Shravan sat under the banyan tree for many more years, listening to the joys and sorrows of the city. The story of the queen's visit became another layer of folklore. No one connected the silent Listener to the radiant king of the old tales. They were two different legends.
But sometimes, when a particularly heartfelt confession was made, or a deep truth finally spoken, those sitting close to Shravan's stool would swear they felt a faint, warm radiance emanating from the old man, like the memory of sunlight on skin. And in those moments, the Nyaya Vriksha did not just dispense justice. It bestowed a far rarer gift: the healing grace of being truly, completely, and compassionately heard. The Listener had finally found his voice, and it was the silence that held space for every other sound.