Introduction - The Book Beneath the Gulmohar
The Gulmohar tree had been there for as long as anyone could remember.
Its trunk had grown thick with age, its branches spreading beneath the sky like an enormous, silent shelter. Every summer, its red flowers covered the ground—a bright crimson against the dull brown of the earth.
To those who passed it every day, it was simply part of the landscape. They noticed the shade. They noticed the flowers. But no one ever thought to look beneath its roots.
Until a shovel struck the soil.
It began with the ordinary clearing of earth. Soil was dug away, dry leaves were pushed aside, and the darker layers beneath were slowly brought into the open.
Then—
Clink.
The sound was faint, but unmistakably different from stone.
The digging stopped.
The earth around the spot was cleared by hand, brushing away damp clay until something dark emerged from beneath the roots.
A corner.
Worn.
Almost black beneath the soil.
A book.
For a moment, it remained where it had been uncovered, half-trapped within the tangled roots of the Gulmohar. When it was finally lifted from the earth, grains of soil slipped between its pages and fell back into the shallow pit.
The cover had once been beautiful, perhaps. Time had taken most of that beauty away.
Its edges were frayed. The leather was cracked and faded. There was no title, no author's name, no date—nothing to suggest where it had come from or how long it had remained buried.
Only a faint, unfamiliar mark remained stamped upon the front.
The book was opened.
The first page was blank.
So was the second.
The third contained only a few faded words.
They were handwritten.
The letters were strangely uneven—some small and deliberate, others hurried, their strokes stretching across the paper as though the writer had been racing to capture thoughts before they disappeared.
The pages that followed offered no explanation.
No introduction.
No name.
Only writing.
Some sentences had been crossed out so violently that the paper beneath them had nearly torn. In other places, the ink had faded into little more than shadows. Notes crowded the margins, sometimes squeezed between lines, sometimes written sideways along the edges.
And then there were the dates.
They appeared throughout the pages, but not in any order that made sense.
Some seemed to belong to different years.
Others appeared to contradict one another.
A few had been scratched out completely.
Whoever had written the book had left behind almost nothing that could identify them.
Not their name.
Not their history.
Not even a reason for why the book had been buried beneath the Gulmohar.
Perhaps it had been forgotten.
Perhaps it had been hidden.
Or perhaps it had been left there deliberately, waiting for someone to uncover it.
The reader turned the first written page.
The handwriting continued.
And, for the first time in years, the words beneath the Gulmohar were read again.
The story began.
