‘If you are truly intelligent, read my mind,’ the courtier challenged Birbal.

‘You pray for the long life of the King,’ Birbal responded.

So the cow profiteer’s grandmother went to heaven.

~

‘Does this man have children?’ the officer inquired.

‘He is not that important,’ a man interrupted who seemed to have taken it upon himself to be the spokesman for the event and was addressing all kinds of inquiries, ‘it’s the crow.’

They looked up. A crow, like any other, sat on a branch of a gulmohar tree. In contrast, the tree seemed surreal—caked over in red, yellow and black. Beyond seven feet, its trunk gradually regained its routine earthiness. A less hurried glance revealed that the tree was covered with rice cakes, turmeric, ash and vermillion. The crow was comfortably perched on a higher branch beyond the reach of the people below. The devotees had developed a new theology—the doctrine of contact—the tree should be considered sacred because the crow was perched on it.

‘Our sacred tree is more than what most religions offer,’ said a new voice. He was the street theologian who claimed to have read the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran, and had been after the Zend Avesta for some time now.

‘The Parsees don’t translate the Zend Avesta, I tell you. Keep it all hidden. What is there in these books? Tell me, what is there? This is it. Humans are animals. Animals are plants. Plants are humans. We become animals. Plants become humans. Sometimes there is an error. The cycle of reincarnation is not perfect. It breaks. The crow becomes human. The tree becomes the crow. This is mischief. This is play. The way lightning illuminates the dark sky, these cracks, these mischiefs, these errors illuminate the divine. What else is there to understand in this small world? Tell me.’