Farida: To Hell and Back

By Chetan Singh and Madhu Mitra

Farida, the second daughter among six, is her fathers favorite. Her tremendous beauty is enhanced by the livid streak of empathy and magnanimity. Being born in a conventional family located in the cold hills of Kathmandu, her parents who are overwhelmed by the thought that birth of a son brings honour to family, neglect their daughters need for education and empowerment, marry her off at an early age. They even disregard her lover Jamil who escapes abroad for further studies. Faridas marriage that took off with a zoom begins falling apart. She returns to her fathers place to find that her ugly younger sister is being married to her lost lover but old love is inflamed when Jamil sees Farida. They meet up to sort out any misgivings only to find herself embroiled further into a doldrum of relationships as she meets with people of varied shades during her adventurous journey to another city to divorce her absconding husband.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Nov 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482858259

Chetan Singh

• The author Chetan Singh is a young Indian screenplay writer and a feature film director. He has already completed a feature length film and shooting his second. From a psychological thriller to a college campus drama, he likes to flip around different genres and his scripts revolve around human relationships and are characterized by many twists and turns. • The co-author, an alma mater of La Martiniere has been writing poems and stories since she was a little girl. Being an avid reader she has learnt her writing from the greats of the literary world. She is into cinematography when she is not writing. Her stories revolve around issues faced by people in real life and she binded the framework of this story with flesh and blood. It is their first novel to be officially published.

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Copyright © 2015 by Chetan Singh; Madhu Mitra.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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www.partridgepublishing.com/india

Contents

1.  The Woman, the Bus and the Orangeman

2.  The Rendezvous Companion

3.  The Hills The Plains and the Train

4.  Ladies Coup, Samosas and Chicken Soup

5.  A girl is born. Again!

6.  The Hush and Rush of the City

7.  The Honorable Guest

8.  My First Encounter

9.  The Nikah, the Mehr and the Shikhara

10.  Home Office Home

11.  My Father, I Need You Now

12.  From The Frying Pan Into The Fire

13.  The Tour Through the City

14.  Try and Try till you Die

15.  My Job and my Family

16.  New Horizons in the Offing

17.  Tamir, my worst Enemy

18.  I should get home now

19.  My Tryst With Destiny

20.  My Nightmares Still Haunt Me

21.  The Sweet Meeting

Based on true Facts

Tribute To Womanhood

1

The Woman, the Bus and the Orangeman

F ARIDA LAY ON HER SIDE facing the trellis work of the narrow arched windows to her room watching every moment of the night break gradually into dawn, the tangible stillness of darkness dissipating behind the first rays of soft light.

The nasal voice of the Mu’azzin cracked the silence of morning with the recital of Adhan, the call for prayer as in Muslim culture.

Throwing aside the sheet on her bed, she got up hurriedly, performed the wudu or ablution of washing her hands and face. Sitting on her haunches on a mat on the floor facing the Qiblah, direction of Mecca, she performed the prayer.

The birds had already started to leave their nests; a sparrow perched on the ledge, fluffed up in the chill pecking on the worms inside tiny speckles on random surface of walls.

Hands cupped like a book, this day she stayed longer in communion with Allah, to seek strength for the task that she was setting out on; her bravery was not to be doubted that had been put to test several times since Tamir left her.

Even after she had finished her sisters were still unmoving in their respective cots in their rooms; their clothes a tangled mess with the bed sheets. As she passed by them she paused at the foot of Jamila’s bed, the flat as a slate forehead creasing and eyes clouding with subdued emotion, clutching her heart she moved forward to draw the quilt to cover the shoulders of her sister.

She randomly visited her room for the last time, wrapped the burkha, the outer wear for a Muslim woman, over the pink salwar -kameez; Tamir loved pink on her, pushing left over tortillas from the night before, rolled them in newspaper and dropped in the blue cloth bag kept near the exit of the room, hauled it over her shoulder sideways; it was light weight. She reached for another bag, a heavier one by the look of it, she had to apply greater power to haul it over the other shoulder, her weight now unevenly distributed as she bent on the left more than the right then decided otherwise and put it back. It held nothing more than a few pairs of clothes and several books.

She glided on tip toe across the large expanse of the ground floor of the house, from outside her parents room; her father was a light sleeper and would wake up at even the brushing of the slightest wind against the heavy oak doors, silently and steadily shutting the main gate behind herself, resisting the strong urge to look back at the house one last time, needing a silent moment for taking a grip of herself and then just as quickly disappeared into the misty dawn.

She hardly met anyone on the way, slim chances anyone would be alarmed.

Flitting down the steps in the rocks cut by the winds over the years, she reached the Pashupatinath Temple, the biggest Hindu Temple dedicated to Lord Shiva along the banks of river Bagmati in Kathmandu. Undaunted she entered the abode of Lord Shiva, even though she was a Muslim. Today she needed the blessings of all God’s in the world. She had to go to a church too after finishing here, she reminded herself. But Lord Shiva had other plans; to make people envy her decision for choosing freedom.

After sounding the bells in the temple, she turned to leave, clandestine but full of vigor, who should cross her path but her childhood friend Hema, a bright, chirpy and volatile girl with her body ever expanding at the right places. Surprised no less to see swanky Farida so early in such an unlikely place.

I always thought you were a rebellion, Hema commented.

It is Gokurna Aunsi, I seek blessings for my father, all God’s are the same, Farida retorted.

Hema held a queer expression on her face. So it is said. What must your father think of this! Does he even have an inkling of what’s on your mind?

Farida rolled her big eyes at her, not wanting to wait for a repartee she headed straight for the bus stop with determined steps, abandoning the visit to the church. Hema smiled wryly, nodded and moved on, miffed at the way Farida chose to keep her in the dark.

A gloomy look enveloped the bus stand on that cloudy day making it remorseful even though festivity hung in the air. The distant mountains hid behind a white haze of hanging moisture as only the moss like greenery at the bottom of the mountains showed up like boots to the massive earth mounds.

Bus number 54, perched between such twin rocky mountains, the only bus that goes to Patna; mutated form of Pataliputra, the ancient centre of prosperity for creators of history, Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka the Great and still in continuum except for the occasional scams; the bus was practically empty.

The conductor, dressed in traditional Nepalese attire, Daura Suruwal; an eight stringed kurta and pajama, his original way of marketing Nepalese attire, a side business propagated by his cock-nosed Uncle, yelled for passengers, waving his multicolored cap at all passers-by.

It is always hard to find passengers at this time of the year.

A tiny man, with eyes like slits on a yellow sheet, beaming in shades of turmeric powder, essential element in the Indian culinary, an elixir to innumerable ailments; clutching his square cloth bag to his chest, trotted hurriedly to the languidly waiting bus.

The conductor stood outside the bus, rubbing gutkha between his palms and thumb. He scoured the scenario for any prospective passengers among the few that walked past that way. Pushing the masala between his tongue and cheek, rubbed clean his big palms on his already soiled white daura, lifted his cap from the precarious position on his almond shaped head and waved in mid-air at the Yellow Man, To Patna, ready to roll.

The man, now almost out of breath, tried to jump into the bus, imagining the shifting of the gears. Shyly he lifted his thick wool covered leg, not high enough for the steps and fell inside; smiled at his silly notion as oranges of the highest quality spilled out of the bag, one of which rolled down the ant eaten wooden steps of the bus to the conductor’s feet that smothered the green grass lifting its young snout from between the stones.

Now this is an awesome hold-up, the conductor said as he swore under his breath.

Looking at the high quality of the product, he picked it up and surreptitiously slipped it into his muslin kurta pocket, with the Yellow Man not noticing, after which turning a volte-face, the Good Samaritan offered to help him collect his belongings as he waved his cap again to some people he spotted, We are headed to where you go. His hand dropped to his side as they passed him by, not listening.

He turned to the side close to the tyre to spit and was overjoyed to find a pair of feet that looked like a young woman’s, probably waiting to be beckoned into the bus. The slender pink fingers adorned with poor quality nail paint, not the least undermining the beautiful fingers peeping out of worn out socks and could not be mistaken as only a sampling.

The woman, a slim figure, just wide enough to block the faint rays of the now appearing sun from falling into his eyes. He looked up, his surma outlined eyes measuring the dimensions of the earthen being inside the black sequined burkha. He let his imagination race up the shrouded body and down again-the haze was too strong to penetrate, the burkha, stark black littered with sequence work, revealed much too less to lead to a riot of imagination. Then clicked his tongue at the mission impossible. A clandestine smile at his misfortune broke his otherwise straight narrow colored red from ‘paan’ lips.

"Is this bus headed for Patna?" she enquired.

"Where would you like it to go, Mohtarrma? he bent forward putting his face close to hers, asked her politely through his teeth. Dark glistening eyes with a depth like that of the sea, he noticed from close quarters. Farida lunged backwards to avoid the suffocating smell emanating from his being. Your Abba coming along? he whispered in her ear. She stared at him suspiciously, does he know? A look of fright flashed across, and then pulled long her spine exuding confidence as she pursed up her lips. None of my business," he claimed with a shrug.

Wiping the particles at the corner of his mouth with the back of the (once white now designed with dirt) sleeve along the line of dripping red colored saliva, red with the extracts of the masala he chewed; Make way for the lady, he announced as he climbed the wooden steps.

She looked around trying to decide where to sit, most of the seats were occupied by male arses busy with their chatting, a baby’s inarticulate gibberish caught her attention.

She scanned the few numbered heads through to the rear seats as she ramp walked along the aisle, the beads at the end of her veil chanting music to the beats of her swinging derriere. A young lady with a baby, the most saintly picture, as of Mother Mary and the Child, an epitome of love and compassion. Now the ramp walk transformed into a marathon, and the prize? A seat before the gurgling baby! She settled down after fastening the bag on the overhead rack, letting her once burkha tight waist muscles to relax and spread out on the seat like a fluff of fermented dough.

The bus travelled downhill gently through the narrow roads. Farida, head resting on the rim of the seat, her muslin veil thrown back to let the countryside wind caress her fair cheek, looked out of the window, and kept looking.

In the distance the peaks of Mt. Everest stood out loud and clear in the vastness of the skies, the haze swirling around the tops ready to melt them within, the morning sun now catching a glittering gold on its eastern surface, tantalizing and inspiring to again conquer- its first conquerors being Sir Edmund Hillary and Tansing Norgay Sherpa.

The yellow man with oranges tapped on his crude homemade bongo, began a song in his sonorous voice, the popular song of unrequited love that filled the air in the bus with an overflow of sorrow.

Farida relaxed, lost in her reverie, unforgiving tears rolled down her cheek. She closed her eyes, mouthing the words of the song, sighing out her heart’s agony.

2

The Rendezvous Companion

A LITTLE GIRL OF ABOUT NINE, soft fair cheeked and bright eyed, in shimmery clothes, ran amidst tall weather beaten walls lighted eerily by the glowing lamps set high on the pillars. Strings of fresh flowers adorned the doors and roofs. From a distance a medley of joyous cries and laughter filled the air. Looked like a big occasion-a marriage ceremony to be more specific, so the welcome board at the head of the gate indicated. Traditional music travelled between the walls to where the girl stood.

A little boy, taller than her with hazel color eyes that set off against his wheatish skin to give him an unusual charm, ran after her dressed in shimmery clothes too, shouting the name Farida and giggling. Catching up with her, pat patting in his slippers, he tugged at her full sleeves arm. She giggled shyly as he leveled with her, having cornered her against the wall, came close to her. Her silken clothes caught in the roughness of the walls creating an electric current like wave, she moved not, lest her shiny party clothes should tear.

Jamil, your Ammi is calling you. You have to fetch some things for your Aapa, said the girl. "She is going to