{"id":7687,"date":"2017-09-07T18:00:11","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T00:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=7687"},"modified":"2017-09-07T18:00:11","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T00:00:11","slug":"the-house-by-the-banyan-tree","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=7687","title":{"rendered":"The House by the Banyan Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Ahimaz Rajessh<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Seven decades ago<br \/>\n(one September)<br \/>\na storm swept a solitary house<br \/>\ninto the dense woods that had roots<br \/>\ndeep underneath the red earth<br \/>\nrendering the house a blasted mess<br \/>\nof concrete and wood.<\/p>\n<p>As the family left (having returned and picked<br \/>\nup what was intact), the girl &#8212;<br \/>\nhaving noticed (and having wished) a floating dandelion<br \/>\nsettle on the same spot the house once stood &#8212;<br \/>\nstopped, so did her brother.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Yamma, look,\u2019 she said,<br \/>\n\u2018the house is growing.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>If the future is made out of the past<br \/>\nand the present, the past cannot ever<br \/>\nnot be present, the present is the ever-passing<br \/>\npast (or so the parents thought) then how is one<br \/>\nto have a firm handle on the present?<\/p>\n<p>They did not look back.<\/p>\n<p>When the children called again and looked<br \/>\nback, they were poof &#8212; gone.<\/p>\n<p>The parents (it\u2019s said)<br \/>\nwere transformed into<br \/>\nthe pillars of the house<br \/>\nthe dandelion built.<\/p>\n<p>The perplexed children<br \/>\nwho ran into the house<br \/>\nwere never seen again.<\/p>\n<p>The girl (it\u2019s also said)<br \/>\nclimbed the banyan tree<br \/>\nin the vicinity to the very<br \/>\ntop of its roots and the boy<br \/>\nwho ran through the weeds<br \/>\ninto the woods grew up to found<br \/>\nthe mobile House of Flux.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>AHIMAZ RAJESSH<\/strong>, a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, has been published in <em>Jellyfish Review, The Airgonaut, Nanoism, Strange Horizons, Pidgeonholes, 7&#215;20, Cuento, 200 CCs, Flapperhouse, Malaigal, Thalam, Manal Veedu<\/em> and <em>Padhaakai<\/em>. His writing is forthcoming in <em>Milkfist, Liminality, Surreal Poetics<\/em> and <em>unFold<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ahimaz Rajessh &nbsp; &nbsp; Seven decades ago (one September) a storm swept a solitary house into the dense woods that had roots deep underneath the red earth rendering the house a blasted mess of concrete and wood. As the family &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=7687\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":7680,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7687","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-1ZZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7692,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7687\/revisions\/7692"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}