The Art of Unconventionality

By Jannet Nasim

"The Art of Unconventionality" is a story told from the perspective of Aarmin, Big Daddy's third child. Love and deception run deep in Big Daddy's household. Every character is impacted by the tensions that arise from Big Daddy's decisions, the War, and faith. Aarmin chronicles the struggles of each of the characters through the various phases of their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667850870

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The Art of Unconventionality

Copyright ©2022 by Jannet Nasim.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally.

All rights reserved.

Print ISBN: 978-1-66785-086-3

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66785-087-0

Cover Painting: Sikder Imrul Qais

Cover Design: Zafar Sikder

A person writing on a piece of paper Description automatically generated with medium confidence

In memory of my father, Shafiul Alam Athar, PhD

Acknowledgement

Nazma Anwar, my dearest friend, for inspiring me, it took me to write the book through the years, and without her, the book would not see the light.

Hurrein Shahnewaz inspired me to publish the book and keep my spirit upright till her last breath.

Shahnaz Athar, my big sister, constantly supported me in completing the book.

Kaisal, my love, first suggested writing the book in my leisure time, followed till completion.

Lilly, my firstborn, provided technical help to writeup the manuscript.

Finally, my friend, a Brooklynite, Ummay Ferdous for constantly encouraging me.

"I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.

O me! for why is all around us here

As if some lesser god had made the world,

But had not force to shape it as he would,

Till the High God behold it from beyond,

And enter it, and make it beautiful?"

The Passing Of Arthur, Alfred Lord Tennysonv (1809 – 1892)

https://www.poetry.com/poem/1097/the-passing-of-arthur

The Art of Unconventionality is an innovative reimagining of a family saga centered around Big Daddy, the lesser god. The third child is the chronicler of the eternal flames of tensions inside out the family.

Contents

EARLY DAYS

AMAZING DAYS AHEAD

MIGRATION TO HISTORIC HOUSE OF GRANDMA

DINNER PARTY

THE TEMPEST

PROMISE MADE BY GOD

THE NIGHTMARE

FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE

The sense of right and wrong

PURIFICATION AND WISDOM EXERCISE: HOLY BOOK

FARAKKA ON THE RIVER RAIN

SIBLINGS SECOND CHAPTER

IN THE HISTORIC TERRAIN (1974)

LITERARY MEETINGS AND PRACTICE

BREAKING DAWN

THE BUSTLING CROWD

BARAKUTHEE: THE MANOR HOUSE

MEGHADUTA

PARTY SPECTACULAR

FORBIDDEN LOVE

LIFE AT EDGE

BITTER FEUD

LIFE AND FATE

THE GREAT ESCAPE

FREEDOM AND ECSTASY

TARGET ULTIMUM

1

EARLY DAYS

It was a castle-like house, a mansion occupied by all the members of the huge extended family. As well as a load of servants who were employed to work in it day and night. There were no outsiders in the place because no one had access to the house without the consent of Big Daddy, the central protagonist of this story. Everyone was either a member of the family or an employee of the family. And every dweller in the mansion was well protected and kept safe by the grace of an unseen Being.

Every day, the servants got busy relentlessly doing their respective jobs. The family members were lively enough to be heard in the background. Yet, during the idle hours around noon when the mansion was vacant, it sometimes looked mysterious and highly dubious, like a haunted house. Time was a precious factor here indeed. Most of the time, it felt as though there was a sudden pause in time and then continued again where it had stopped. Every morning, Aarmin woke up to find everything organized and flawless as always. It was a usual thing. Nothing was ever out of place. The furniture always looked polished, the ceiling free from webs, the floor clean, almost like it was sparkling. With servants assigned different duties, it was customary to find everywhere neat that early due to the division of labor. It wasn’t long before her younger sister came sprinting towards her, holding her new pair of yellow sponge sandals in her hand. Aarmin had hers too, only that hers was blue. They loved it, for these sandals were very popular at that time in the early sixties. Both girls were about the same age. Aarmin, the third child of the family, was six years old. Her younger sister, Farah, whose fourth child, was five. As Aarmin pulled out her pair of slippers, both girls began whispering to themselves as if to say they were sharing some of their darkest secrets. The whispering suddenly stopped as Farah paused to stare at her sister in shock.

Why did you share your sandals with Pintoo and then put them back on your feet? That is so weird! Farah yelled.

Pintoo was a teen boy who lived next to their door. Everyone thought he looked like a slum boy, so how could her sister be sharing personal belongings with him?

Like an angry bird, Farah rushed to Big Daddy’s private room. Aarmin followed closely, unsure of how much trouble she had gotten or what big daddy would do to her now. Farah hoped to find big daddy, where he usually was at that time of day, lying in his bed with an English Daily overshadowing his face. Big daddy had to remain busy outside the house due to his profession. As she had hoped, he was in his room, and Farah neared his bedside. She immediately told big daddy the crime her sister, Aarmin, had committed. Farah wished to present herself as a pure, unadulterated kid in the sight of big daddy. She wanted Aarmin to be declared a great villain and, accordingly, her punishment. Sibling rivalry stared big daddy in the face. Big daddy put aside his newspaper and looked at his kids disapprovingly. His expression seemed calm and royal, but he did not utter a word. He was silent in his conceit. After a while, both sisters returned to their rooms without a sound, and Farah got her answer, silence. And from this day, sibling rivalry began between the two, and it blossomed from then on.

Time passed quickly, with days and nights following each other. While the nights seemed obscure and hazy, the days were more remarkable. Sometimes at night, Aarmin and her siblings would play with the dining chairs, making ‘railways and trains’ while whistling. And they would do this until it was midnight. Of course, it wasn’t real, but it took them to a whole new level of the world of imagination. They would fold frocks and randomly stuff them into their pants to look like the young and strongly built whistle men and guards at the railway station. The dining room was their everything. It was their play setting. Without it, there would be no railways. And where there are no railways, there are no trains. When the adults of the extended family went to the theatre hall in the evening- show, the children used to play trains with dining chairs. It was their hobby and kept them busy by nightfall—till their guardians finally returned home from the theatre to send the wound-up children straight to bed.

It was also when movies started to flourish in the Indo-Bangla subcontinent. It was the golden era for cinematic theatre and phenomenal entertaining enlightenment—the grownups regularly jam-packed theatre halls. Aarmin was relatively too young to see these ‘enlightening’ movies, and so were her younger siblings. Bengali movies of UT tam-Suchitra were at the peak of Bengali filmdom. Credit goes not only to this pair, but the whole cine-kingdom of divided India developed miraculously. It flourished in its height as a cultural arena and a civil-social phenomenon.

From the fifties to the sixties, the Bengali movie industry advanced magnificently, mainly due to the teamwork of the actors, actresses, producers, directors, and singers of the time. People rushed to the theatre halls almost every day. Aarmin’s mom and the other elders of the mansion were no exception, though they only went there occasionally. Everyone in their neighborhood was a movie fan. But none was as passionate as Shanu Appa, the following neighbor’s eldest daughter. And she was allowed to since she was an adult girl. Shanu Appa was not Aarmin’s age mate. She was in the same age-grade as Hurrien Appa, Aarmin’s beloved older cousin sister.

Hurrien Appa had a very exceptional personality. She had beautiful curly hair down to her waist, a perfectly burnished brown skin tone, and a nose that significantly flashed her birth sign. Hurrien Appa liked to wear a unique but ordinary saree. She was delightful; that’s why she was a close friend of Shanu Appa. It often felt like they were flowers of the same stem. They went to college together and did most other things together too. While passing the time, they loved to listen to their favorite songs together. During the evening hours, they spent most of the time listening to the radio together while leaning into the railings of the southern veranda. Their favorite pastime was listening to the All-India Calcutta song request program (Akash-Bani,’ Anurudher Asar’ Kolkata). And they loved other popular song programs as well. However, they did not have direct access to the radio. The radio set was in big daddy’s private room. He listened to news primarily broadcast from Akash-Bani Kolkata or All India Radio. To remedy this, big daddy had to connect the radio to a special spiral wire through the ceiling that made it possible to hear the radio in the attached southern veranda.

Aarmin loved those afternoon moments when everybody was in a relaxed mood. They were Keenly waiting to listen to the song that would soon broadcast from big daddy’s private apartment, floating in the air from the spiral cord that brought them to the southern veranda.

Aarmin often listened to music there, but she was never very close to the older girls because of their age difference. She was just a little girl. They were already fully developed young women, vibrant, full of vitality, and highly romantic in their thoughts and behaviors. Aarmin often found magazines and other full-volume books of cine-kingdom scattered on the floor or table of the southern veranda. These were full of photos, including scenes from movies and pictures of the in-demand actors and actresses of the time. Hurrein Appa and Shanu Appa used to look eagerly at those books and magazines leaning back against the railings. And grasping them keenly in their hands like they were trying to prevent them from flying away and whispering to themselves as they read. But Aarmin was never very interested in those photographic books and magazines and other materials from the ‘cinematic world’. However, she always had a deep passion for the film stories she used to hear, along with her younger siblings from Hurrien Appa’s lips. She and her siblings always had a wonderful time with Hurrien Appa. She would tell these stories in the morning leisurely after watching the previous night’s movies. Shams and Omar, her two older sisters, would join in sometimes. They perhaps got the double joy, first from watching the film in person the previous night and the other by listening to it again in the form of a story by Hurrien Appa’s lip. The stories she would tell them were enchanting, extraordinary, overwhelming, mixed with love and sorrow. Collectively, these experiences would fill their hearts with different kinds of sensations. The siblings would laugh and cry for no reason at these unforgettable stories, just because Hurrein Appa told them in a very engaging way. Hurrien Appa was their only beloved big-cousin sister, so all the siblings loved Hurrien Appa the most, and she also loved them from the bottom of her heart. Aarmin & others grew up on Hurrien Appa’s lap in this way. This was how they spent most of the idle late hours of morning and would wonder how time passed so quickly.

As for Aarmin’s mother, she was a very busy woman. She was never present during those hours, and she never had much quality time to spend with her children. Aarmin knew this, but there was just no way for her to manage it. Her mother was a simple woman, though. She never spent much time doing silly things like dressing up extravagantly or making herself ‘ultra-gorgeous’, though she could. She had everything she needed at her fingertips to do whatever pleased her yet didn’t partake in it because she felt that it stole her time and money in a tricky way. She was just not that type of woman. She had countless Sarees from Cotton to Muslin. Muslin Sarees in the British Period were famous because of their quality. It was so thin that a whole Saree fabric, when folded, could fit through an average size jewelry ring.

Womenfolk in the neighborhood often came to her to demand sarees whenever they planned for cultural shows in and around the vicinity. The womenfolk never returned disheartened or disappointed because mommy never hesitated to supply them with her costly sarees. The sarees were always returned to her whenever the cultural functions were over.

She had a large extended family. She had to take care of her six children, her ‘college-going’ nephew Pappu Bhai, niece Hurrein Appa, and a party of constantly visiting guests. There were other people, such as the servants, the peons, and the chaprassy. So, she had to take care of many people.

Osman, the office peon, lived downstairs in the separate side building, where he had his private ‘family-sized apartment’. But he lived alone. Its dark look made it appear mysterious. There was a small and shady veranda with a roof. A small portion of the damp and mossy pavement was beside the porch, and a little below ground level. To the far end of the pavement was an ‘old-fashioned’ well with a tin roof above and tin on the sides that made things look even more shadowy. No one dared go near this well. The water inside looked like the solid black firmament, like darkness over darkness. And it shrouded the environment with more whodunit-type mystery. Only water needy trespassers or the servants who bathe beside it often dared to approach it. Everyone else avoided this dangerous pit.

Sitting beside the well, the maid-servant Kali, a young girl, always washed utensils and the large cooking pots. Aarmin watched her from far behind, then approached her and stood eagerly opposite her. From that day on, it became Aarmin’s routine. Aarmin regularly watched her from far back in the early morning hours and soon started helping her do the utensils. She always did this with so much eagerness. Aarmin learned how to clean large cooking pots with ash powder; its sticky and thick nature is the most suitable agent for large cleaning aluminum pots.

This young servant, Kali, was from a village called Sandwip. It was also called Sarna Deep, the Golden Island. The Island glittered like a jewel within the sea of water, with a town tucked between the dunes. There was fresh water on one side, saltwater on the other, and a long stretch of golden sand beach in between. Making tracks in this part of the world meant traveling over a great deal of sand before arriving at the village, and Aarmin visited this Island only twice in her lifetime. Big daddy left this native village early, just a student. So Aarmin did not know her ancestral home or origin. Her grandparents died before she was born, and naturally, connections between then Dacca and Sandwip had started to decline slowly. She only knew some of her uncles and aunts were from Sandwip, and a host of cousins, indeed.

Summertime in Rajshahi came with a lot of perks and inconveniences. It was always unevenly hot, and the sun cared not who was getting scorched. During this season, Aarmin loved to spend idle hours watching the clear blue sky with kites chasing one another. She would always lean back in her stool, enjoying them gleefully, with nobody else around. And yet, she never felt lonely. The blue sky and these kites were her true best friends, and her pleasure was this perfect solitude. Aarmin could not get admitted to the school, and these golden free hours were to enjoy in her way.

That morning, she ate egg halwa with chapatti as she sat on the vast roofless pavement. This middle pavement was part of the second building, and the bathrooms, toilet, and kitchen were there. The kitchen was situated at the far end of the adjoining building, turning abruptly to the right. A greenish (concrete) plastered wide hallway connects the kitchen two steps down the pavement. The bathrooms & toilet stand on one side of the roofless pavement. This roofless pavement seemed so big to little Aarmin; she imagined it as the playground of "Gorher Math," a vast open field in Kolkata. The kitchen was lovely; the wall was deep yellow, and its three large, long black windows with iron bar gave it a somewhat romantic aura. One of the windows was on the backside, and the other two were on the right. Aarmin usually sat on the right-side window box, looking downwards through it. The view it gave was very ‘un-delightful’ to one’s sight. There she saw a half of the well with its black, ‘solid-firmament’ looking water. And the other half was very clumsy and congested with materials like wood, tin, and sacks used as the roof to protect the well water. There were different sections in view beside the well, like the rooftops of the other houses around the area.

The back window was beyond her reach as kitchen cupboards, and kitchen racks shielded the view from inside. But once she had a chance to look through, maybe when somehow removed the cabinets, she stared lost in marvel, what she had seen! It was an epic view, and if a writer had been present, he would have written a masterpiece. The scenic view it provided was so relaxing.

Aarmin’s mother liked to cook ‘egg pudding’ on the giant wood stove in the kitchen. Aarmin regularly saw a pudding pot inside the oven, upon which charcoal stayed for an extended period. But she hardly saw her mother cook. Most times, when Aarmin entered the kitchen, she found it empty. She enjoyed the open kitchen, sitting on the window box all by herself.

The kitchen was quite far from the dining room. There were solid and ‘thick-plastered’ fences throughout the hallway to the kitchen on both sides. The walls were too high for even an adult to get an outside view. No roof was there. Still, it was very safe and secure so that ‘women-folk’ could go back and forth in the passage regularly, even at night, shine or rain. Adjacent to the hallway, two steps up, was the very middle roofless pavement, where the bathrooms and toilet were. At the far end of the pavement, the backside, close to the hallway, you could see a vast rose garden if you climbed the wall. The wall was too tall for anyone in the manor house to see the Garden’s delights or smell the roses’ beautiful fragrance. The dwellers’ walls deprived them of the essence of the Garden because of the manor’s highness and the high wall on the backside.

This Garden belonged to Himmani, the Hur (fairy), a lustrous young lady of this time. She moved around the Garden blissfully like a fairy from the fairy tales, but to Aarmin, she looked like ‘Snow White’. Himmani sounded akin to ice or snow in Hindi, Bangla, and Urdu.

Himmani never joined Hurrien Appa and Shanu Appa, though they were almost the same age. Himmani liked to keep herself employed at her self-dom. She never came to this mansion to join the people of the house. Never accompanied an estate member to a matinee show and never entered the afternoon gatherings where they listened to the unique Request Song Program. In contrast, the other young women were very keen on listening to the radio during the sixties. Himmani was an extraordinary young lady who loved gardening and planting roses. She was known as the ‘queen of the roses. Anyone who wanted to enjoy the fragrance of the Garden or catch a glance at this hur (fairy) would only have to climb the wall a little. There, one saw, smelled the Garden, and met Himmani, who was always ready in her Garden to ask the 'up-sided’ people, if they would like some roses?. She was just like a 'flower-selling fairy,' which usually asks for flowers in the dreams.

Aarmin’s mother, Hurrien Appa, Shams, and Omar were always eager to get roses and have a conversation, sometimes a long hour with Himmani. A bucket tied by string regularly fell to Himmani to be lifted, full of red/pink roses. Himmani’s compound was vast. The one-storied bolstered building was in the middle. Also, in front of the house was the rose garden, which was the backside of the mansion. The other side of the vast area, which looked about a hectare of land, was practically a kitchen garden. Once, Aarmin went to see their estate when she visited with her family through an invitation to someone’s wedding taking place there, though Aarmin never knew whose. It might have been Himmani’s cousin-sister’s or her biological sister’s, half-sister, or somebody else’s. But Aarmin was quite sure it was not Himmani’s wedding. Himmani had hit marital age long ago, the most seamless young lady of the time. Above and beyond, she appeared as the queen of the unmarried young ladies of the house, and why she was still single was one of the mysteries that shrouded the family.

At the wedding, when Aarmin looked for Himmani, she didn’t find her. She tried to find out who was getting married. Eventually, she discovered that a young fat lady was the one getting married. Aarmin had never seen that lady before, nor did she know who she was. Coming out from the bride’s room, she stepped down to the kitchen. She walked past the frontal passage and the kitchen. There, she found a colossal ‘grinder stone’ with turmeric pastes, ready for the bridal shower. Then she walked through the small portion of the iron gate out to join the handful of people in the open area. Who comprised all ages of people from minors to seniors and enjoyed music with the help of a ‘Gramophone’. Technology is helping people around the globe do incredible things, from making music to exploring things. The people also played it through a loudspeaker, so the sound was so loud that it almost burst the guests’ eardrums. That was the first time she visited Himmani’s home.

On another occasion, which was an early summer day, Aarmin visited Himmani’s house with a host of friends. Aarmin had a lot of friends in her life. Among them was the most bosom buddy of her childhood, and her name was Poppy. Poppy was a carbon copy of Marilyn Monroe, especially in her early teens. Her life story was, in no doubt, also somewhat like Marilyn’s. If a biographer had written the biography of Poppy, no doubt it would have been very similar to Marilyn’s in so many ways. Poppy was the stepdaughter of her present mother. Her biological mother died while giving birth to her, maybe ten to twelve years before. Since then, she had been an orphan in the truest sense of the term. She could have lived a natural and everyday life, but alas, everything turned upside down. She looked normal. She wasn’t. And she had no one to guide her or look after her, inside or outside the home. However, mystery-shrouded how she grew up.

How could a kid be growing up without their parents’ care? How could her parents exist but in disguise? Aarmin pondered amazingly, who raised her?

Aarmin used to roam around with Poppy everywhere. They played together for long hours in the morning and were heart friends and soul mates. Each wanted to understand the other overwhelmingly. Plus, they were the only two females in that neighborhood, while the other children were all boys. Aarmin accompanied Poppy and other playmates in the community to Himmani’s large estate. One of the most surprising things about this vast green area was that it was only one highlight of the locale. There they liked to play, like they were cooking, shopkeeping, and merchandising among the vegetation. It was fun to buy and sell among friends and take turns acting like merchants, buyers, and so on. They would weigh items on a miniature scale, usually made with strings and copper foil. Aarmin always liked to play as a buyer. She never acted as a seller, for selling was conventionally reserved for the boys, as it was considered a male job during that time. She bought vegetables which were wild herbs and meats that were stiff stems of arum plants, from the ‘shopkeeper,’ who weighed them sincerely with his scales. Subsequently, all the buyers had to cook their groceries; thus, they cut the roots of vegetables or chickens, which were the solid stems of all types of plants, into small pieces. Of course, cooking the rice was part of the criterion. Then they liked to spice them up with red brick dust as chili powder for flavor. When everyone had done their jobs, they distributed the cooked food to everybody, including the merchandisers and the surrounding neighbors. Here, the children learned the concept of brotherhood through this playful act. In other words, such activities were not just lively acts. Still, they knew, in this way, the great inspiration and lessons for care, kindness, compassion, benevolence, philanthropy, altruism. Even though Poppy and their other friends, Bachchoo, Pintoo, Minto, and Shonto, were still older, their friendship was yet as fresh as a daisy.

On not-so-hot days, Aarmin liked to go to Poppy’s house after breakfast. And Poppy was also fond of meeting Aarmin at these early hours of noon. So, most of the time, Poppy waited for her. They were fond of playing inside her room and outside in the frontal Garden or backyard.

Aarmin was also fond of studying in the dining room after lunchtime. In other words, the long dining table was free during afternoon hours. She was lucky to use the vast tabletop for her personal use; nobody shared. Big Daddy brought books, backpacks, children’s rhymes, and so on for the siblings. Aarmin used to read and write, carrying her ‘book pack’ wide-open. In addition, she loved to study all by herself and didn’t like anybody’s interruption. Also, she took much pleasure in possessing books. Her passion for books made her have more love from big daddy. Among the siblings, she was much-loved and admired for her sincerity in her study.

Aarmin usually shared the colorful sparkly chocolates wrapped in beautiful boxes with her siblings. These treats were always so sweet and so wonderful to share. Consequently, they grew the habit of collecting the charming, sparkling tiny treat wraps as their prodigious hobby horse. Aarmin also liked to share the beautiful books of melodious rhymes, stories of horrors, adventures, friendships, and comedies with her siblings. The excellent book she least forgot was the Adventurous book: SUNDAR BONE SAT BACHCHAR, translated in the English version as SEVEN YEARS IN SUNDAR BON.

‘Sundarbans’ is a beautiful ‘deep forest’ in Bengal; half was in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, and the other half in India (West Bengal). Indeed, fifty years ago, the forest was an extra horrible, dangerous pit with more and more wild animals. It was a tremendous deep forest in Bengal with Crocodiles, Royal Bengal Tigers, Pythons, beautiful spotted deer, etc. Aarmin had never been fortunate in her life to go and visit this wonderful land, though she dreamt a lot about it. The illustration of the book cover was so horrible and scary to describe. A giant Python about 15-20 feet long swallowed a spotted deer into its belly in one part. Half of the deer’s body was