Begum Fasi could talk to trees. She could walk up to any tree, whisper a question, and the tree would speak to her of the secrets of the world. Banyans, with their twisted, weathered stems, were the oldest of all the trees and they knew about the past. Neem trees, of course, could prescribe cures for various ailments. Khejri trees, with their thin smooth leaves, told you about the future. And Rohira, with its delicate saffron blossoms, could advise you on matters of love.
I knew Begum Fasi better than most people in the town because she and my father had been friends. My father first met her when he was about ten, and he and his older brother made the trek from our town to Begum Fasi’s tiny house in the hills. This was my father’s favourite story to tell, so I heard it many times during my childhood.
Although my father and my uncle had started out before the sun, it was almost directly above them when they arrived. The little house seemed to be built into a wall of rock, it was the same colour as the stone around it and, if you didn’t know what you were looking for, you might never find it. Begum Fasi was sitting on her porch, petting a dog the size of a bear, whose nose rested on her knee.
‘Begumji?’ my uncle's voice didn’t quaver.
‘Yes?’
‘We want you to ask the trees about us.’
‘Please ask,’ my father added, ever polite.
She got up from the porch, leaning heavily on a walking stick, and hobbled over to a Banyan tree.
‘I want to know…’ my uncle began.
‘Sh-sh-sh.’ She turned away from the boys and put her mouth close to the tree, whispering something the boys couldn't hear. After a moment, she put her ear to the rough bark.
Begum Fasi remained that way for a long time, then she straightened and turned to face my uncle, ‘Stealing is wrong. You should pay Nazir Sahib for the jamun you took from his stand.’
My uncle's eyes grew wide and my father clasped his hands over his mouth in shock. His brother had taken the fruit the day before, confident he would never be found out. A small smile played around Begum Fasi’s mouth, then she turned to face my father. He began to wonder if this was such a good idea. She took my father by the hand and led him to a Kherji tree. Again she whispered something to the tree and again she put her ear to the bark and for a long time did not turn around. My father looked up at the blue sky from among the thin, twisted branches and remembered thinking how the branches looked like frozen lightening, shooting off in every direction. Begum Fasi finally did look up at my father and his brother but it seemed she was looking past them. When she spoke, her voice was deeper and more powerful and my father was frightened.
‘The tide of life is turning, a powerful force that will sweep boats out to sea and drown men before they reach the shore. Stay your course, don't let the winds push you aside and you will succeed. Be strong, beta. Be strong and don't waver from your path.’
Neither boy spoke for a long moment, and then my father and his brother turned and ran down the hill towards town, as fast as their legs could carry them.
That was the first time my father had ever met Begum Fasi, although she was already a legend in our little town. She had been the youngest wife of the youngest brother of the old jagirdar of this area. Her husband had died young and Begum Fasi had retreated to her husband's hunting lodging to live out her days. Our way of life ages people quickly, so no one knew exactly how old she was but she had lived up in her tiny little house in the hills since most people could remember. Some people in the town believed she was a spirit or an angel, or that she was over two hundred years old. She was revered by all; everyone from the poorest widow to the wealthiest merchant would come to seek the knowledge only she could gain from the trees.
At the time my father first went to see Begum Fasi, his parents were debating whether or not to send him to school in Bombay. After Begum Fasi's counsel, my father refused to go and insisted he would stay at home and follow his father into government work. Initially, my grandfather was quite upset that the opportunity to have a son educated in this high manner was lost. But only the next year, all of the boys from our town who had gone away to study died in a cholera epidemic. This convinced my father that Begum Fasi's trees had been correct and he silently vowed to stick to his path.
It was a couple of years after my father and his brother had made the trek up to Begum Fasi’s house that they saw her again. It was the end of harvest season and my grandmother had her sewing circle over to the house. My uncle was old enough to sit with the men in the courtyard, but my father’s youth had relegated him to fetching cups of tea for the ladies. When there was a harsh pounding on the kitchen door, he was overjoyed to leave the cramped sewing room to go and answer it. It was Begum Fasi.
‘Can I help you, Begumji?’ he asked her, trying to keep the childish quaver from his voice.
‘There is going to be a flood,’ she yelled, startling my father and bringing the men running to the door. ‘A great flood, a terrible flood, the town will be destroyed!’
Even though our town was on the edge of the desert, and the last flood was a distant memory, Begum Fasi was as trustworthy as the Prophet, peace be upon him, so we immediately began to prepare for the impending flood. Many people moved away; to the Jaisalmer Fort or east to Jodhpur. The families that stayed collected boxes of supplies and began to tear apart sheds and fences to make boats and rafts. Sentries were posted up and down the small river that ran near the wealthy area in town, looking for any sign that the water was rising above normal levels. Then everyone waited. And waited. And waited. Days passed, then weeks, then an entire month and there was still no flood. People began to come back; they stopped hoarding supplies and started to take apart their rafts and boats. And people began to doubt Begum Fasi and her all-knowing trees. People still went up to her little house in the hills in an attempt to glimpse their future, but Begum Fasi claimed that all the trees could talk about was this terrible flood that would destroy our town. So eventually people stopped making the long walk to see her.
My father did not see her for few years then, when he was eighteen, my grandfather got him a job as a tax collector for the outlying homes and farms. Every other month he would make the climb to see Begum Fasi, and she would greet him, feed him and warn him, yet again, of the impending flood. Begum Fasi was the favourite of all the people my father visited; unlike many of them she never shouted at or cursed my father and, between the warnings of destruction, she would ask about his life and family.
Many years passed in this manner, my father got married and my sister and I were born. As I got older, I assisted my father on his collection rounds. I would go up to Begum Fasi’s tiny house in the hills, where she and I would talk. All the while she continued to caution me about the flood that never came. As my father got older, I began to take over much of his work and by the time I was married with a son of my own, my father had retired from his job.
One day, about ten years after I had taken over for my father, my wife took our son to visit her mother and I, never being much of a cook, walked down to the local hotel for lunch. As I was crossing the street a tree collapsed, falling maybe a metre in front of me and partially demolishing the building I was about to enter. This appeared to be as clear a signal as I was likely to receive, so I made the long walk up to Begum Fasi’s house.
Almost immediately I knew something was wrong. It was dead quiet, and the bear-like dogs she kept around were nowhere to be seen. I went inside the little cabin. Begum Fasi was lying on her bed, her face nearly white and her body old and frail. One of the dogs had his head resting on her feet while the other sat in the corner of the room, examining the old woman with a mournful expression. I rushed to her side and picked up her wrist, checking for a pulse. She grabbed my arm with remarkable strength for someone who appeared to be dying.
‘You have to…’ She began to cough and I moved to fetch her some water, but she grabbed my hand tighter. ‘You have to warn them about the flood.’
‘I will. I’ll warn them.’
‘They will die, all of them, you have to stop it. Promise me.’
‘I promise.’
Her features smoothed and she almost smiled, I held her hand for the next hour, until I felt the life slip away from her. I sat by her bed for a long time, then I put her in a cart, covered her body with a blanket, and stumbled down the hill into town, followed by the two gigantic dogs. I went to my uncle’s house, the brother who had first taken my father to see Begum Fasi. This uncle had become a prosperous merchant and had bought a big house in the wealthy area of town. My uncle agreed to pay for Begum Fasi’s funeral, and even found a home for her dogs on the farm of one of his hunting friends.
The town mourned the passing of Begum Fasi; she had been a constant in the town for so long, with her talking trees and dire predictions of floods, it was hard to imagine what life would be like without her. But the sun still rose and fell and life continued.
My father grew older still, and the revolutionary protests that shook the country saddened him. He longed for the simplicity of his childhood, a simplicity that, every day, was being washed away by rebellion and modernisation. He still lived by Begum Fasi's command to stay his course and not waver, so he still went to the mosque every morning, twice on Fridays, and continued to pledge his loyalty to the maharaja. Men began to protest in the streets, chanting about independence and breaking the windows of the houses in my uncle’s district. Although the protests were not so strong as in the British-controlled areas, it still made my father upset to see them. He hated to see his country torn apart, he often mentioned how he wished that Begum Fasi was still alive, so she could get the trees to tell us what to do.
In the late summer, my father grew very sick, shaking and coughing, with an illness that not even the best physicians my uncle hired could fix. He lay in the spare bedroom in his brother’s fancy house, waiting to die. One warm June evening, I went to play a game of cards with my father, bringing my son to sit in the corner and work on his lessons. Suddenly we heard a commotion outside.
My father coughed, ‘Must be those damn troublemakers.’ In recent weeks men and women from neighbouring villages had poured in to protest at the government buildings.
‘Go see what’s going on,’ I told my son.
He got up from the desk and ran downstairs. I picked up my cards, ready to continue playing, but my father was staring off into space.
‘A powerful force that will sweep boats out to sea and drown men before they reach the shore.’ He was repeating Begum Fasi’s prophecy. ‘Stay the course,’ he murmured, almost to himself, ‘stay the course.’
My son came running back up the stairs, his face flushed.
‘What is it?’ I asked him.
‘It’s the river, Abu. It’s beginning to swell.’
I ran to the window and looked out. Sure enough the light rain we had enjoyed for the past couple of days had turned hard and fast and the small river was overrunning its banks. My father made a noise and I turned back to face him, afraid he was choking. He wasn’t. He was laughing.
‘Wa Allah,’ he shook his head, still chuckling. ‘It’s the flood.’
*
Rebecca Winslow-Pandey grew up in Colorado, USA. At the age of twenty, she moved to India to study Urdu and political science at the University of Hyderabad. Since then, she has studied shayari in the Old City in Lucknow, taught at a college in Sana'a, Yemen, trekked for weeks in Ladakh, lived in a village in the Kerala backwaters, led student groups travelling and trekking in Nepal and Bhutan. After years of working as a travelling educator in South Asia, Rebecca moved to India permanently in 2017. She currently lives with her husband in Hyderabad.