Govinda Is Not Coming

We are all told stories as children. Stories of gods and demons, of virtue rewarded and evil punished. We are taught that a cosmic scale weighs our deeds, that a force named Karma ensures that what goes around, comes around. It is a comforting lie, a lullaby sung to us by a world that is too afraid to look into the darkness and see nothing looking back. We believed those stories. When we moved to our small patch of land in Bandel, a place that was supposed to be our heaven, we believed our good intentions and hard work would be enough.
We believed in the inherent goodness of people, in the protection of the law, and in the ultimate justice of the universe. This is the story of how we learned the truth. This is the story of every stolen fish, every poisoned tree, every act of malice we endured. It is the story of the walls we built, not just of brick and mortar, but around our hearts. It is the chronicle of our unlearning, the painful shedding of a faith we once held dear, and the grim acceptance of the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.