Experimental fiction: A river hatches a conspiracy with a tree to transform human civilisation

Everyone goes to Lampati to listen to stories, to learn from fables, or to seek a way to avert a danger. It’s even whispered that Lampati was a rock in the life just before his current one as a tree. Although he doesn’t have direct control over this part of the world in social or political or cultural terms, Lampati is effectively the undeclared monarch of Tadingdong. He may not feature in everyday activities, yet he’s everywhere. Even though no one in India is aware of Lampati from Tadingdong, many internationally-renowned sages from South-East Asia know of him. It seems the word Lampati has been found in carvings on stone in a left-to-right script, without a horizontal line above it, on a wall in an ancient temple in the Yunnan province of China. But there is no linguistic proof of this. The word should at least have had a botanical meaning, but no such meaning exists.

Apparently, the story of Lampati’s international fame and mysteriousness, and of its being the undeclared monarch of a valley of sapiens is included in the syllabus for young lamas in a Buddhist monastery in Japan. During their visit to Gosanimari, the capital of the old...

Read more