It was extremely dark. I couldn’t even see my shadow, but I walked straight ahead.
In our village, they say a shadow is the only friend who never leaves you in daylight. At night, even the shadow goes home. So I walked alone.
I didn’t think much about the dangers of the woods. All I needed was a bit of light. Branches struck my face, thorns tore at my legs, and somewhere behind me, the owls kept repeating my name, the way the villagers had, as if saying it enough times would make it mean something else.
Then I saw a light far away. It did not flicker like a lamp. It waited.
It began with whispers. Then the whispers grew legs and walked from house to house. They called me the biggest liar the tribe had ever known. Soon, nobody spoke to me. Mothers pulled their children indoors when I passed and told them not to talk to me, for I might mislead them. Even the dogs stopped barking at me, as if I were no longer worth the noise.
In our tribe, when a man lies, his shadow grows thin. Everyone knows this. Every harvest, the elders measure the shadows at noon, and every harvest, mine was a little fainter. By the last monsoon, you could see the ground through it.
So the tribe decided to put me on trial.
The whole village gathered under the banyan tree at noon, when shadows are shortest and truth is supposed to be easiest to see. The tribe leader sat on the stone seat. I stood inside the circle of ash they had drawn around me and had to answer every question.
“Wasn’t he your best friend? You told us you were inseparable. As boys, you cut your palms and swore brotherhood by the river. But now you don’t even speak?”
“Wasn’t she your soulmate? You said the stars had tied your names together before you were born. Then how could you not miss her while she was gone? She was away for three monsoons, and not once did you walk to the edge of the village to watch the road.”
“Weren’t you the flag-bearer of our old leader? You carried his flag at every festival, and you said you would carry it to your grave. Then why didn’t you come on the day he died? We lit his pyre without you.”
“Didn’t you promise your mother, on the night she lit the lamp for your journey, that you would come back unchanged? You came back. But who came back?”
“You used to sing to the children by the fire. The whole village knew your songs. Why did you stop singing?”
“You swore you would never leave this land. Yet your feet walked to the city and stayed there for years. Were your feet lying, or was your mouth?”
“You said you believed in the old gods. Yet when the drums called, you did not bow. Which of your words should we believe?”
Each question fell like a stone into a well, and I listened to it fall and fall, never hearing it land.
The leader rose. The crowd went quiet. Even the wind waited.
“You are dishonest, disloyal, and no example for future generations. You are not a man of your word. Look, even your own shadow is leaving you. So your punishment is this: you will be sent to the land of shadows, where you can speak only with your shadow. Nobody will speak to you there. Do you have anything to say?”
I knew it would be the last question anyone would ever ask me. I said yes.
“I wasn’t lying.
There was a time in my life when he was my best friend. When we cut our palms by the river, I meant every drop. But he is not my friend now, and I don’t know how or when that changed. There was no fight, no betrayal. One day, I looked for the friendship, and it was simply not there, like a tooth you lose in your sleep.
A part of me felt she was my soulmate, and now it doesn’t. When I said the stars had tied our names together, I believed the stars. I still believe the man who said it. But he is not the one standing here.
There was a time I loved to follow the leader. I would have carried his flag into the sea. I don’t know when that changed. Maybe it changed in the city. Maybe it changed on an ordinary afternoon while I was having lunch.
I wasn’t lying. But the version of me who spoke those truths has left me. I am not one person. I live, die, and am reborn in the same body. In between moments, in silence, I die. I don’t know when, but I am reborn. And every time I die, a little of my shadow goes with me. That is why it is thin—not because I lied, but because so many versions of me are already gone.
My love wasn’t a lie. But the version of me who loved died along with that love.”
Nobody answered. The leader looked at my shadow for a long time. For a moment, I thought I saw it move before I did.
Then he turned his back, and one by one, the whole village turned their backs.
I screamed. I screamed again and again. I screamed the names of my friend, my love, my leader, and my mother, as if names were ropes that could pull me back. But they abandoned me in the woods.
And I walked toward the land of shadows.
The light grew as I walked, though it came from no sun and no fire. There, shadows stood without bodies—hundreds of them.
Among them, I saw a boy with a cut palm. A young man looking up at the stars. A flag-bearer, straight-backed and proud. A singer with his mouth open, though no sound came out. They did not speak. They only looked at me the way you look at a house you once lived in.
Then my own shadow—the thin one—stepped away from my feet and stood in front of me. It was the first time in years I had seen it clearly.
My shadow started talking to me. It did not ask me a single question. It only said, “You are still here.”
I told my shadow, “In all my life, I have never seen anything as beautiful as you.”
The shadow smiled. I smiled.
And I wasn’t lying.
