The Road that doesn't exist

The meeting started at seven in the evening.

Swati’s grandmother had gone to attend it, as she always did on the first Monday of summer. The village council met under the old banyan tree near the ghat, in the open air, with a hurricane lamp placed at the centre of the circle of chairs.

Rony and Aakash had come along. Visitors were allowed to sit at the edge and listen.

Dhansuli sat at the foot of the hills, on the eastern bank of the Shankha river.

The hills produced things — timber, fish from the cold streams, vegetables, woven cloth. None of it could reach the plains without passing through Dhansuli. The only road from the hill districts ended here, at the river. The Shankha was too wide and too strong to ford. There was one way across: Kishore-da’s ferry.

On the western bank, a road continued to Harpur — the district market town where buyers, wholesalers, and traders from across the plains came every Tuesday and Friday.

Everything flowed along this single corridor. Hills to Dhansuli. Dhansuli ferry across the Shankha. Harpur market to the plains.

The surrounding land — both banks of the river for kilometres in either direction — was protected reserve forest. No construction was permitted. No new roads could be cut. The government had declared it so thirty years ago. The forest had grown dense and untouched ever since.

This made the ferry the only legal crossing on the entire stretch. Every trader who wanted to move goods from the hills to Harpur had to cross here. And when they crossed, the village collected a transit tax.

It had always been enough. More than enough, in good years.

The panchayat head, a thin man named Hari Mahato, opened the register and spread it on his knees.

“This year’s tax collection is down by sixty-two percent,” he said.

The circle went quiet.

“Sixty-two,” someone repeated.

Mahato looked up. “The ferry logbook shows fewer crossings than last year. Kishore, you know this better than anyone.”

Kishore-da sat two chairs away from Swati’s grandmother. He was the ferryman — fifty years old, weathered, with hands that looked like old bark.

Crossings are down by half since March, he said. I cannot explain it. The hill trade has not stopped. But fewer traders are crossing here.

An old woman spoke from across the circle. “My brother-in-law brings fish from Manikpur every week. He says the Harpur market is as full as ever. Fish, vegetables, cloth — all of it. Where is it coming from, if not through our ferry?”

Nobody answered.

“We had planned to repair the school roof this season,” Mahato said. He closed the register. “And the pump on the northern well. Both must wait. We do not have the funds.”

The meeting ended in low voices and a general heaviness.

On the walk home, Rony was quiet.

“The market in Harpur is full,” he said finally. “The hill trade has not stopped. But the transit tax here in Dhansuli is down sixty-two percent.”

“Yes,” Swati said.

“The only way all three things can be true at once,” Rony said slowly, “is if the goods are reaching Harpur without passing through Dhansuli.”

Aakash turned to him. “But every road leads here. There is no other way across the river.”

“According to the official maps,” Rony said.

They stopped walking. The Shankha moved below them, dark and wide in the half-moonlight.

“Something is crossing this river,” Swati said quietly, “that is not appearing in any record.”

Rony opened his notebook and wrote down the question: How?

The next morning, they went to the ghat before sunrise.

The ferry sat tied and still. A thin mist lay on the water but the river itself was visible — wide, brown, moving slowly.

Kishore-da’s logbook was in a tin box under the bench seat. He produced it without being asked.

Rony turned the pages. He was looking for fog nights — the heaviest mist nights, when visibility over the river dropped to almost nothing.

On those nights — and there had been seven since March — crossings had not gone to zero. But they had dropped sharply. Four crossings on one night. Two on another. Never the usual fifteen or twenty.

“Kishore-da,” Rony said. “On the heavy fog nights, when you had only two or three crossings — what time did those happen?”

“Early. Before five in the morning. The regulars who knew the river well.”

“And yet the Harpur market always opened full on those days.”

Kishore-da looked at the river. He said nothing for a moment.

“I have thought about this myself,” he said. “I cannot make sense of it.”

He paused.

“There is one more thing. Six days ago, a man washed up three kilometres downstream. Young. Nobody recognised him. No papers on the body.”

“What did the police say?” Aakash asked.

“Accidental drowning. But I saw his hands before the body was taken away.” He held up his own hands. “Calluses — here, and here. A man who carried heavy loads regularly. Not a swimmer who fell in. Someone who was working.”

Rony wrote it all down.

Someone was moving goods across the Shankha on fog nights, avoiding the ferry. A man who carried heavy loads was dead. The village’s school roof was broken.

He did not yet know how these things connected. But he was sure they did.