The Face Without a Smile

In the sweltering heat of a Rajasthani summer, the old banyan tree at the edge of our lane was our kingdom. Its sprawling branches were our jungle gym, its thick aerial roots our curtains. I was six, and the world was a sunburnt playground. My friends—Ravi, Sunita, and little Gopal—and I would spend every hour from dawn till dusk shrieking with laughter, our bare feet slapping against the cracked earth. We knew every knot in that tree, every hollow where a bird might nest. But I never noticed the strange fruit that seemed to appear one day, high in a crook where only the crows perched.

It was a girl, I realized with a start. She wore a pale yellow frock, stained at the hem, and her dark hair fell in tangled ropes around her shoulders. She sat on a thick branch, her legs dangling, swaying gently as if an invisible wind moved her. But there was no wind—the leaves hung limp and heavy. More unsettling, she had no face. Just a smooth, featureless oval where her eyes, nose, and mouth should have been. She wasn’t looking at me; she was angled toward my friends, as if observing their game of hopscotch. I remember feeling a prickle on my neck, a sudden cold that had nothing to do with the shade. But I was a child, and my imagination was a busy thing. I blinked, and she was still there, one hand reaching up to stroke her own hair—a slow, rhythmic motion that made my stomach clench.

‘What are you staring at?’ Ravi asked, his voice breaking my trance. I pointed, my finger trembling. He squinted, then laughed. ‘That’s just an old sari caught in the branches. You’re seeing things.’ Sunita giggled, and Gopal threw a stone, which clattered through the leaves. I looked back, and the girl was gone.

But she came back the next day. And the next. Always in that same spot, always facing away from me, always stroking her hair. I began to dread the tree. I told my mother, who dismissed it as a childish fancy, but she did give me a small talisman—a silver pendant of Hanuman—and told me to wear it always. I did, and for a while, the girl vanished. I thought I’d imagined it all.

Then, during the festival of Diwali, the lane was lit with oil lamps, and we children were given sparklers. As I twirled mine near the tree, I glanced up. There she was, but now her legs were longer, her dress a deeper yellow, as if it had absorbed the years. She had a face now—but it was wrong. It was a mask of smooth, milky skin, with lipless mouth and blank eyes, yet somehow, she was smiling. I could feel it, even though she had no features. I dropped my sparkler and ran inside, my heart hammering.

That night, I dreamt of her. She was sitting on a well, her legs dangling over the dark water. She beckoned to me, and in the dream, I walked toward her. As I drew close, she leaned forward, and her face split open like a cracked gourd, revealing a mouth full of shiny black seeds. She whispered, ‘You played here, and I was alone. Now be with me.’

I woke up screaming. My mother held me, wiping my forehead. ‘It’s just the heat, beta. You ate too many sweets.’ But I knew.

Weeks passed. I avoided the banyan tree, playing cricket on the other side of the lane. But loneliness gnawed at me. My friends were still there, laughing, and I felt an outsider. One evening, Sunita came to me, her eyes wide. ‘I saw her too,’ she whispered. ‘The girl in the tree. She waved at me.’

The next day, Sunita didn’t come out to play. Her mother said she was feverish. Then Ravi, then Gopal. Each of them stopped coming, one by one. Their windows stayed closed, and when I crept by, I heard their mothers weeping. The last time I saw the girl, it was the night before we moved away. My father had been transferred to a new city, and we were packing. I crept to the back window, peering at the banyan tree in the dark. She was there, sitting in the same crook, but now she was the size of a grown woman. Her face was still blank, but she raised a hand and waved. Not at me—at the empty windows of my friends’ houses.

We left the next morning. The new city had no banyan trees, and I grew up, went to school, made new friends. I thought I’d escaped. But sometimes, in the quiet hours, I catch a whiff of marigold and burnt oil, and I turn to see a girl in a yellow frock, sitting on the edge of my vision, stroking her hair. She never approaches, never speaks. But I know she’s waiting. And I know that someday, when I least expect it, I’ll wave back.

Years later, I returned to that lane for my father’s funeral. The banyan tree was still there, gnarled and ancient. A new generation of children played beneath it. I stood at the edge, my heart heavy. I didn’t see her. But as I turned to leave, I heard a voice, thin as a thread: ‘You’re back.’ I whirled, but there was no one. Only the tree, its roots like veins spreading over the earth. On a low branch, a single strand of yellow cloth fluttered, as if caught on a nail. I approached carefully, and I saw that it was tied in a knot—a child’s knot, the kind we used to start our swings. I pulled it free, and beneath it, scraped into the bark, were the initials ‘S.G.’—Sunita Goyal. My friend. And then, another: ‘R.K.’ Ravi Kumar. And another. And another.

I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. I didn’t turn. I knew what I would see—or not see. The voice was closer now, almost a breath in my ear. ‘You were my favorite. You saw me first.’ A pause, and then a whisper, ‘But the tree is hungry, and I am lonely. Come, let’s play.’

I looked down at my feet, and they were already walking toward the banyan tree. I couldn’t stop them. The children scattering before me stared with wide eyes, and I heard a mother call out, ‘That man’s gone crazy!’ But I kept walking, the talisman growing cold against my chest. The last thing I remember is the girl’s face, finally forming—a perfect mirror of my own, smiling at me from the branch above. Then the tree’s roots closed over me like a mouth, and I understood: there is no escape from the games of childhood, only the chance to play them forever.