A little crowd had already gathered by the time he emerged out of the woods that morning. They’d been greeting him at the same spot on the third Sunday of every month for many years now. The giant banyan tree under which they met shielded them from the sun and the occasional downpour. He could hear the kids calling out to him as he approached closer. He had reached the age where nobody really knew his name; being comfortable with the name which had passed down over generations. They called him the Puppet Master.

As the first order of business, he put his rucksack down and pulled out all its contents. He then quietly went about setting up the stage for the day’s performance. The younger members of the audience were vocal about their frustration over the delay but he was not going to start until everything was set up just the way he wanted them to be. Over the years he had told them stories of men and women, of heroes and their quests, of kings and warriors, of defeating evil and vanquishing demons. Stories filled with love, laughter, thrills, and valour. He memorized countless stories, some of which had become firm favourites with his audience. He had chosen one of those generational classics for the day.

Stories and storytelling always fascinated him. Every story transported him to a different world where he lived out every moment in the narrative, and he continued to be in that world long after the story was over. From a very young age, he was transfixed by what the puppeteer does behind the veil and often hassled the puppeteer in his village to teach him how to breathe life into these puppets. All his persistence paid off one day as the puppeteer turned around and said ‘Yes’. That changed his life forever and set him on this journey sprawled over many decades.

As the crowd was building up, he opened another box. It had four puppets which could be dressed up to look like the characters whose story was to be told that day. He believed that any story worth telling had a talking animal in it. The box also contained miniature animals who were often served as comic relief or important plot devices in his stories. He dressed up his Warrior and the Demon-lord. He collected all the props he would need from the sack and set them by his side. The stage was set and the show began…

He knew the Warrior’s quest to save his kingdom and the details of his choreography right down to the tiniest detail. One by one, the hero went about collecting the missing pieces of the enchanted Dragon-scale armour which were essential in defeating his nemesis. Every encounter during the hero’s journey was met with gasps of excitement and tangible anticipation regarding the grandeur of the final confrontation. One glance through the gap in the curtains and the Puppet Master knew; he had the audience gripped. In spite of the affirmation, something bothered at the back of his mind. His fingers and hands were not as nimble and graceful as they used to be. His voice wasn’t hitting the notes it used to. Waves of time were taking back parts of him along with it. He felt old. His body was tiring. The realization that he had more performances behind him than ahead dawned upon him. Telling stories was all he knew. Ignorance over what awaited him in a life away from all this sent a chill down his spine. He forced these thoughts to the back of his mind, continuing with the show. Maybe it was his anger over these distractions, or the overcompensating urge to prove his own skills to himself, but when the Warrior, who now wore the entire enchanted armour, jumped and swung his sword at the Demon-lord’s neck, the strings which held him snapped and the hero fell off the stage with a thud.

The old man felt an icicle grow within him. The laughter which followed the disbelief among the assembled crowd pierced into him like needles. He was not prepared for this embarrassment. He rushed to the front of the stage and apologized to the crowd. He picked up his puppet and cleared the dust off it. He held the Warrior close to his chest and apologized to him. Tears were streaming down his cheeks by then. The crowd wished for the rest of the story to be told anyway. He politely refused to grant them their wish for he knew he couldn’t. Some of them turned hostile and some of them tried to comfort him. Neither made any difference. As the crowd slowly disbanded he kneeled on the ground and dismantled the makeshift puppet stage. The rucksack was filled and all the puppets went back into the box except the Warrior, whom he was holding against his chest and still apologizing to. The baggage felt heavier than ever before as he made his journey back to his cabin within the woods.

Many have asked him why he chose to live within the woods rather than settle in one of the villages. His reply was always swift.

“I have everything I need there and it’s at the same distance from all the villages that surround these woods.”

The trail back home was beautiful. The kind of beauty that would draw out a rhyme or two from the most hardened hearts. He saw none of it now. Just a pounding heart and watery eyes. The journey felt longer than he had known it to be. He had walked quite the distance when he heard it.

“This old bastard will ruin everything, won’t he?”, the Demon-lord was speaking now.

“Quiet!!“, the Warrior commanded. “Don’t want anyone hearing us.”

“Oh, come on!! No one is listening to us…Move faster, puppet!!”

“I can hear his heartbeat from here, any faster and it will explode. Just get us home. We will worry about the rest later.”

The old man made the rest of the journey with a sense of impending doom, which he would have happily traded for that exploding heart.

Once they reached the cabin he put down the box and let out its inhabitants, who were already arguing loudly in tongues the old man didn’t understand. He walked towards a corner and locked a cuff around his left ankle. The cuff was fixed to the wall through a long steel chain. He sat on his bed, face buried in his hands, awaiting repercussions for his failure earlier that day.

Upon hearing footsteps he looked up and saw the Warrior walking towards him with an expression which could almost pass for sympathy. “We knew this day would come, it is an issue with you mortals.
I know you’ll be the first one to admit that things aren’t the way they used to be. It’s not your fault. We know that.”

Tears were making their way out of the old man’s eyes now.

“We need to tell stories and we can’t do that if the tools are faulty…“, he continued.

“So, here is what you do. The next time some starry-eyed kid expresses its desire to learn what you do, say yes!!”

“Don’t worry about yourself, puppet. We could always use new animals.“, chuckled the Demon-lord, from the background.

“This is it. This is how my story ends“, thought the old man, wiping away his tears.

“Do we really need someone? Can’t we just do it on our own?“, asked another puppet.

“People like to believe someone is actually pulling the strings… Makes them feel safer“, the Warrior replied, as he walked away.