Love of the Nile and Ganges

By Nobomita Banerjee

As a child, Kakoli's cherished connection was with her nanny, Casaba. Tragically, at age 11, a fatal plane crash left Kakoli orphaned. Being raised by her grandparents in the tranquil city of Rishikesh, the company of her nanny was also gone. In her early 20s, she loses her grandparents and has no one to call family. She firmly believes that anyone she loves will inevitably be taken away. She works for causes such as child trafficking.When a charismatic man from Egypt enters her life, a passionate connection grows. Suddenly, this man vanishes, leaving Kakoli to question the depth of their relationship. She cannot forget him! But how can she win him back as he now resides in the Royal palace in Jaipur, in the company of the enigmatic philanthropist Princess Akshata? This man's unexpected return and unique proposal challenges Kakoli to reevaluate the boundaries surrounding her heart. Will Kakoli consider a second chance at love and life?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Rose Publishers
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9789359897691

Book preview

CHAPTER 1-

HOW I HEARD ABOUT YOU

Far across the distance and spaces between us as the melodious eternal love song played on her iPad while she lay half asleep wearing the new camisole she bought from a newly launched fashion app. A phone call awakened Kakoli’s senses. It was her soon-to-be-guest Vidyut calling to inform that his flight from Cairo to New Delhi had landed half an hour ago and wanted to announce that he would soon board his next flight to Rishikesh. Vidyut was meticulous about details- a man who planned his every move, a perfectionist with a calculative mind to complement his organized nature. The flight from Delhi to Rishikesh is 56 mins, so he will reach Kakoli's house, Sharma Niwas, at 12:30 or 12:40 am. Now, this was quite late in the night for a young lady to welcome a young male scholar-traveler or guest in a small town with restricting strict cumulative minds of society as to what women should or should not do and at what time of the day or night to be known as a decent, respectable person.

Indeed, safety is an issue with the security guard Hansal, who is away in his native place, and his nephew, a teenager, filling in for him this weekend. Kakoli knew about the odd timing of this Airbnb guest's arrival. Still, she needed means to run the household and for her higher education after her only family member, her paternal aunt, passed away three years ago. Deaths in the family were something she had unfortunately been long familiar with. She had been an orphan since her parents died in a plane crash in Cairo in 2016. She has lived with her paternal aunt Mansi, a young widow, and her grandparents, The Sharmas, since 11, after her parents' untimely death in a flight crash. Her parents, who had become Egyptian citizens, were in their mid-thirties when fate decided to take them away from Kakoli forever.

Her father, Mangesh, had been an ardent admirer of her mother, Gouri, since their college courtship days in IIT -Delhi back in the nineties when the fragrance of Gouri would transcend Mangesh to a different world, their own far away from the problems of their families. Being neighbors and from other communities, their families had been orthodox and opposed to the match. Getting selected for the IIT was their best move since the family feuds had gotten bitter. The Chakraborty-s were an arrogant family of doctors who ran a private hospital in Rishikesh named Shadhona. Why they shifted from Kolkata to Rishikesh is unknown to people. Still, as talks go, their hospital business flourished in Kolkata. Dr Ramesh Chakraborty's love for the hills brought him here, or it was to meet his classmate and first love Urmila, who now lived with her husband Vikash, a reputed businessman very close to the Chakraborty's. Mrs. Shadhona Chakraborty was a simple, excellent homemaker who trusted her husband blindly (and that's what all Indian women are taught by their parents to do). She had no inkling that after twenty-one years of marriage, Ramesh would devise a scheme to live the rest of his life close to his once lady-love Urmi, as he fondly called her in medical college days. Her parents' background is essential to understand why Gouri always wanted a simple, honest, and devoted husband who would be a one-woman man all his life. In Mangesh Sharma, Gouri found that man. But she knew her parents were caste and community-conscious. Bitterness between her parents was so much due to her father's affair that Gouri felt it would be better to run away with the love of her life and start a new, happy life. Being dominated and forced to make all big and small decisions by her father, this was the only decision she took other than buying dresses, which her mom stopped doing for her. An over-protected wealthy girl and a good student of IIT ran away to Egypt after getting placed in a software firm with a huge pay package and lots of hope and desire.

Kakoli was born in Cairo, on the banks of the Nile in Egypt, but grew up in Rishikesh, which happens to be on the banks of the Ganges in India. One summer, she was on holiday, living with her grandparents, when her parents had to rush back to Egypt for some property deal. Some say they (Mangesh and Gouri) changed completely after living on the banks of the Nile. Just as the river got infested with poisonous snakes and water creatures and polluted with debris and industrial waste, this intelligent romantic couple got greedy. They started selling not-so-good properties at hiked prices and getting unlawful deals or loans by bribing bankers there. Some say they chose to leave their jobs due to cultural mismatch and decided to work as real estate agents. Sounds good, but the bad part is wanting to make quick money by selling inferior properties at sky-high prices where construction was stalled due to laws getting changed or some goons wishing to benefit from those deals. The couple dealt in