The Rite of Ending

by Virender Jaiswal

Bhuvan sat cross-legged under the old peepal tree in his backyard.The ancestral house behind him was over a century old, built by a renowned local Tantra practitioner. Now, it was crumbling. Strips of paint curled off the damp brickwork, black moss suffocated the northern wall, and the sour smell of wet lime and mildew hung heavy in the air. Four of the eleven upstairs bedrooms were roofless ruins, their wooden ceiling beams sticking up like the house had fangs.He checked his watch: 12:30 AM.One more hour.The humiliation from three weeks ago was still raw. During the second-year project review, in front of forty classmates, Nagraj had casually picked up Bhuvan’s printout. He didn't yell; he just read the first sentence in a mocking, theatrical drawl and asked the room, "Does anyone actually understand this garbage? My son in fifth standard could have done better research on...