The Island Cottage

 

I can feel a tree waiving its hand

Before the large balcony of a cottage,

Facing the sea in a lonely island.

I can feel a chilling breeze

And the shrouding mist

From a mountain ridge.

A shoreline bathing in foaming waves

Keeps knocking my heart in rising raves.

I can feel the long cherished drizzling

In the reddish hue of a fiery evening.

I can feel the silvery drops of rain

Splashing and Dancing over my face

To dissolve the signs of all my pain.

I can feel the breaking dawn

With the chirping birds

In a summer morn;

As I look at the hospital lawn

In the dwindling light of the dying Sun.

I can see the island cottage

That I have never been.

I can feel the sandy shore

And the yellow wild flowers

That keep ushering me in…

In the twinkling tie

If I live or I die...

A Dawning Day

 

A dawning day

With a drizzling bliss

Hitting the coffee

With a morning kiss.

Got a job in hand

To find something.

In the Moon blanched night

I lost something.

I lost some lines

I dreamt last night

In the glimmering glow

Of the dangling light.

With a full glass of wine

With some Moon drops fine

I had a lovely vision

I lost last night..  

Moon Drunk

Was driving alone

On an Inter-state,

Met a forest line

At the night so late.

The dwindling light

Was turning slate

And I stopped my car

To check on the fate.

And I got stuck by….

As the Moon sets high,

Over the large long trees;

With its magical charms

And the glimmering beams

Are no more on a leash…

And I woke up Moon-drunk

In the very next dawn

On a lovely autumn morn

To resume my journey

Alone on the Interstate

With all my pains gone sunk.

One Indian Girl: One and a Half Love Stories

 

One Indian Girl:

One Indian Girl is Chetan Bhagat’s seventh novel, with all the earlier ones being placed in the best-selling charts in their respective publication periods. However, once again proving myself to be always late in the line, I had rather forced myself to read this one as his very first novel, partly because of his mounting popularity as a novelist with a majestic storytelling skill and especially because of Three Idiots, the true classic in the Indian Film Industry. The iconic film was the adaptation of his novel Five Point Someone (with so many changes in the film script though), which raises questions about the grading system itself. However, as of One Indian Girl, it seems to be apparent that, especially from the conversation between Radhika and her mother, she wouldn’t be happy to consider a five pointer for her life partner. “Mom, see the qualifications. BA from some random university. No. Next.”

Chetan Bhagat, the paperback King of India, has dedicated the novel, One Indian Girl to:

All the Indian Girls

especially the ones

who dare to dream

and live life on their own terms.

Living the life on one’s own terms is always a challenging job, particularly for the women in the Indian-subcontinent, with the deeply rooted ideology defining the norms of what it takes to be a girl. And the protagonist of the plot, Radhika, has been challenged by this at the very beginning of the novel. The prologue gives its readers about the chaotic uneasiness and turmoil storming the mind of the bride, who is clearly not ready yet for the grand destination wedding in Goa. And with all the odds against living her life on her own terms she was on the verge of being carried away by all those pressures of being married and settled down.

 

The Feministic Note

The dedication part, the prologue and then the first person narrative style in the voice of Radhika herself clearly point out that One Indian Girl is going to be a feministic novel. 

The feministic tones can be identified at the very beginning of the plot:

You are the girls’ side, so you have to adjust to the 30 rooms available at the hotel while the boys’ side will be allotted with the promised 50 rooms with as many guests as the girls’ side. Radhika couldn’t accept the ‘gender thing’ but was stopped by her typical mother or other family members with the deeply rooted ideology of compromising as the girls’ side in a marriage function.  

“Beta, these are norms. You don’t understand. We have to keep them comfortable. Girls’ side is expected to adjust…”

The unraveling tone of feminism keeps kicking on with the development of the plot. In making the profile for the matrimonial site, a girl shouldn’t give the true picture of her success in the job. The notion that a girl with a most wanted job can drive away a lot of prospective grooms who are not ‘man enough to handle’ the huge salary of their wives.’

“If they see a girl who is too independent-minded, too qualified, doing too well, they get scared……I am hiding my daughters achievements. So we get more boys to choose from. That’s all.”

And Radhika’s mother was not wrong anyway. The first one from their ten short-listed potential grooms was a doctor based in Boston, USA. With his third consecutive inquiry about the salary she makes, Radhika had to disclose that she made half a million USD last year, which was a damn jolt, enough to make him nearly fell down from his chair.    

“Nothing… Okay, I will tell you. This is not going to work. Your salary is too high.”

Okay, with the above-mentioned explanation made by Radhika’s mother, it’s quite clear now how the protagonist of the novel is: too independent-minded, too qualified, doing too well. Highly talented high achievers or under achievers always play a big role either as protagonists or antagonists in the novels of Chetan Bhagat. In One Indian Girl, Radhika is highly talented high achiever and here we go with her one and a half love stories.

 

The Love Story

As a pure mugger, Radhika hit about 98 percentile in CAT to make it to the IIMA and then joined Goldman Sachs, New York as a fresh recruit and which is where she wanted to leave behind her nerdy, unfashionable and virgin life behind and which is how she met Debashish Sen. The first love story apparently begins with the enthusiasm and determination for a new life style of the still virgin Radhika. With the long-cherished consummation of her dates with Debu, they started having a live-in relationship in her expensive apartment. She wanted to take it the next stage with the mounting pressure from her family to get settled with a married life, as an unmarried marriageable girl in the family - no matter how successful she is- is still a burden to the family. While the typical Aditi, her sister is a well-set example, to the pleasure of their mother, for finding herself a good match with hardly any degrees comparable to that of Radhika, with a fairer skin and an attitude.

Radhika was really serious with her first love affair with Debu, who was never in the intention of taking their relationship to the next level. He was apparently unhappy and a little jealous with the achievements of Radhika. He couldn’t imagine of her as a motherly figure to take care of his babies. Radhika was even ready to quit her job and do anything to present herself as a caring and motherly figure.

But Debu, apparently being panicked with the idea of marrying a girl he was never considering as his future wife, abandoned her, leaving her shell-shocked, enough to leave the city, so adorable to her with so many beautiful moments they shared together.   

 

The Half Love Story

With the suggestion of one Goldman Sachs partner, the devastated and heart-broken Radhika decided to move into another country operation of Goldman Sachs instead of quitting the job. She landed in Hong Kong throwing away her new iPhone set into the East River in the desperate attempt to throw away her past with Debu and met Neel Gupta, the dashing and iconic partner of Goldman Shacks. With Neel it was never meant to be a love story any way and it was the last thing in her mind to be involved in any kind of unofficial relationship with a partner. However, with the attraction of his charming personality and dashing look she was just carried away with a special and unpredicted moment in a business trip to an island resort. In a dark night on the cool lonely beach with the escaping glows of the Moon over their heads, she shared the moment of wild pleasure with the damn handsome Goldman Sachs partner- older than her by twenty years, and also with a wife and couple of kids.

But they couldn’t resist the temptation of carrying on the relationship; at first only on the business trips to make it feel less guilty in a remote city than doing it in the same city he had been living in with his wife and kids. But, with their explicit knowledge of no future, Neel, eventually started making regular visits at her apartment, mostly because of the sexual attraction they feel for each other.

However, soon, enough she started being concerned about the possible future of their relationship with a kind of guilty conscience for his wife and family, which she never felt with Debu. And sooner than later she was apparently blown out by a comment blurred out of the careless mouth of Neel:

‘It’s just I never thought of you as the maternal type. I don’t know if you were even meant to be a mother.’

Neel never felt her as the girl with a family of her own. It just didn’t come to his mind, just like the way Debu felt her to be.

The Climax of One Indian Girl

In fact, in the gendering world, a girl with the most wanted jobs and an enviable career with so many successes and lots of money is deliberately, though unconsciously, judged to be a girl solely focused on the career. She can’t possibly hold the image of a family woman with motherly affection and care.

However, at the climax of the novel, the author makes both the serious lover and the half lover begging her hands, this time not only as a partner in bed, but as a wife to start a family: one in a presidential suite in the five star Goa Marriott with a chartered flight to take her away and another one directly from New York.

Until then, she was uncertain of herself regarding her ability to attract someone as a prospective wife to begin a family with her true self. She was losing confidence with her previous one and a half relationships; one in New York and the other one in Hong Kong. As her mother would say, ‘I can’t have anything better than this one…no prince on a horse will come.’

 

The Choice of Free Will

And finally the great lesson for everyone: as long as you are not sure about marrying someone for the rest of your life, not sure enough to enter a new life with an individual you are sure about, there is always a choice left for you to step back before the marriage is done, even if costs you a lot of money, an insult to your family members by the boys’ side, and all the rebukes from the family members and relatives as well. Just forget about all those pressures, stay calm, ask your ‘mini-me’, what she really wants, go for your free will and be the decision maker in taking the most important step in your life. And move on…

Moving on in one’s own wish was the thing happened to the novelist himself. He himself was in the Goldman Shacks too with one of the most wanted jobs in the world. And then he switched to Deutsche Bank, Hong Kong. He was a vice president in its Strategic Investment Group before quitting to pursue the career as a fulltime writer, which undoubtedly demands a huge courage to fight the pressures both from inside and outside. Being well-settled is the big thing in the sub-continent, one can hardly avoid. 

And in his novel, One Indian Girl, Radhika did the same thing. She had the dream of living the life in her own terms and she couldn’t just go with the flow to be in the mess of a grand wedding she wasn’t feeling okay with. She was able to calm down her mind, pick up the pieces together and manage Brijesh Gulati, the bride from San Francisco, even in the confusion with the return of her one and half lovers. And finally she got herself out of the mess she was feeling terribly uncomfortable about. She called off the marriage which eventually created a scene that resembles more with a funeral one in the five star luxuries. But, she was out of the mess!

 

The post Credit Scene

By rejecting the proposals from her past lovers, Radhika was finally able to move aside her past with them. But she wasn’t in the present either. She was really nowhere. In a big void around her, Radhika was in desperate need of finding herself back. And the best way to pick up the pieces together is to set yourself absolutely free with no pressure to go anywhere, with no pressure to chase anything and with no pressure, either internal or external, to do anything. A long journey without any specific destination, a vacation to find yourself back, to calm down your soul, to feed your mind can be really a good choice.

Radhika was probably able to do all those things at the post-credit scene of the novel, One Indian Girl, and by the end of her long vacation from works she started seriously thinking about Brijesh Golati, the software engineer working with Facebook in San Francisco.  Brijesh, the tech guy with a vision to initiate his own start-up, didn’t blame her for the foiled marriage program. He was the one who truly understands her situation and saved both the parties from an awkward situation. But he regrets not being able to marry a girl with whom he would be able to live a crazy life with full of madness like the moments they spent together by riding on a bike without a license and testing the puffs of marijuana available in the Goa beach. Radhika finally finds the courage to meet him again in San Francisco in a settled mind.    

The Reckoning of the Untold Words

 

“Love her, love her, love her! If she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces, and as it gets older and stronger it tears deeper, love her, love her, love her!”-  Allen poured down his thoughts over this unusual text message for the fifth time, which made him nearly forget to partake into his usual events in the morning.

While he was getting himself ready for his office, his mind kept busy elsewhere, partly wondering who could send him this text message and partly making a short visit to his university life spanned nearly seven long years, which came to an end five years ago.

“Hey Allen,” Omit blocked his way through while blocking his thoughtful mind and thoughtless eyes, as Allen was getting into to his department, late, as usually as he always was.

 -Missed the class again? It was damn interesting man!

-Yah, but a little less than the last hour of my morning sleep, needing a little more time to touch the finishing line.

-Hmm, probably Sophie was there just outside the finishing line. She was asking me about you. You might find her in the tea stall behind the library.

- Let’s track her, then.

- I’ll join you before the next class. Have to go to the hostel, I forgot my texts again. I don’t understand how come it always happens to me. Mahib Sir never misses to get me standing whenever I miss to bring the text to his class.

- Very sad indeed. Probably Omit without text books is more easily noticeable than Omit with text books. And surprisingly enough, it happens with the teacher who is more interested with the girls. I just don’t understand how he can always manage to get away with so many rumors of sexual harassment. Okay, See you than.

It rained last night. Having had a shower with the drops of heaven, the campus was giving a refreshed look. Refreshed enough to synchronize all those young looks dangling around here, there and everywhere unreasonably yet making sense to the hypothesis that youth goes untamed, youth thinks sporadic, youth splatters colors.

Allen stepped forward, feeling the beams of sun, escaping the rejuvenated leaves of the long trees beside the narrow walking street. The shadow kept brushing away the rays twinkling on his face. And he kept giving his looks. And his looks went everywhere while he himself was missing his own heart, beating so hard. One more thing his eyes got missed; the pair of eyes which could get his heart stopped beating.

-Won’t you ever change?

Allen’s world actually began melting, with the sweetest question in his world of beauty and imagination.

- Why can’t you get up a little early, even for the sake of such a beautiful class? Oh! You can’t believe it. He is the best. How easily he can fly us all to some other world! How lively he can bring down the characters so close to our souls! You must know, Mahib sir is taking Great Expectations. Charles Dickens’.

As soon as the music started from the lips of Sophie, with the very first word she pronounced, the world around Allen started dissolving into a great void housing only two living souls. One is stunningly beautiful with the nicest pair of eyes which sparkled and glittered while she kept saturating Professor Mahib Hasan and commenting on his last lecture. And as she went on coloring her favorite teacher, the other one started relocating the color of the things which were being faded away and losing their existence before her enthralling beauty. The drum insight him stopped playing. The ever enchanting music, produced by her beautifully dancing lips, suddenly lost its melody and Allen’s wings of poesy to get to world of nightingale crash-landed. She would never understand actually why he always nurtured the deliberate reluctance to attend Mr. Mahib Hasan’s lecture.

Oh! Shit! I should have been a little faster. Going to be late again for this this damn traffic jam. Allen felt disgruntled so much as to feel like kicking his back with his own leg. In a hot summer morning on the eve of ushering in the New Year, Allen kept sitting idle and sweating, never minding calling the name of fourteen generations of Dhaka city, in a jam-packed bus, painted as it seems like, on a painted road. A little boy carrying newspapers in miniature form got on the bus. Not unlike many others, he took the chance to get himself updated, spending only five bucks, once again appreciating the cheapest luxury of the metropolitan. The text message, fluctuating between his subconscious and unconscious level of mind, once again peeped out, as he came across a well-dressed- imposing rather than attractive lady- on the front page showcasing a New Year Collection from a famous fashion house.

The trio Allen, Omit, and Sophie were brain storming new ideas to celebrate the first day of the New Year. For the last couple of days they kept painting their plans with more colors and shades to make sure how well and artistically they would observe the day. To Allen, the day was indeed going to be a very special one as he took the day to unearth the hidden layer of his heart before Sophie. His courage finally stopped turning against him and he conquered on making his mind to declare the words he cherished and nurtured ever since the drums insight him started beating at the sight of Sophie.

In the last morning of the dying year, Allen came to the department late enough as to make sure the first class was already done. It was scheduled to be conducted by Mr. Mahib Hasan. To escape any accidental encounter with the teacher, a little conscious Allen somehow managed to catch Omit who was holding a mixed gesture- more worried, little surprised and a bit confused.

- Is there anything wrong? How was the class? Where’s Sophie?

- The lecture was a shortened one. Sophie left for hostel. I just saw her stormed out of Mahib sir’s chamber. Seeing her rushing out in a devastating look I tried to talk to her. She said something, but I didn’t understand the words laden with tears.

Allen’s imagination found its way through spreading its branches towards every possible and impossible idea, which finally turned out to be the locker of his heart. There were no more moments of joy; no more New Year celebration. Just some untold words buried deep down his heart. Sophie flew to London to complete her M.A without bidding goodbye.

Having been back from his office, a little late than usual, at his lonely apartment, Allen threw himself onto the couch, switched on the TV, kept shuffling the TV channels with the blank pair of eyes, which was trying to focus on something at far far away. He finally managed to get back to his bed room and come close to his mind. Does the text message quoted from Great Expectation push forward a question whether he was really in love with Sophie? The quotation once he learned by heart to answer a question in his final year exam is back again to demand an answer from his own self.  Contemplating a response he got to the message option of his cell phone and wrote:

              “It must have rained last night. As I woke up this morning I found that the silvery rain, the drops of heaven had shoved a layer out of my heart. I can see some words, untold, laid buried deep down my heart…”

A message tone sprang up to his ear. He had a new message from the same number which had his heart got one more electrifying leap.

         “Sorry the message was mistakenly sent to your number. I meant it for someone who never understood me.”

A smile, hardly understandable, played on Allen’s face. Now he knew it was she.

Allen deleted his response, switched on the darkness, and lit the light of his own world where she walks in beauty.

The Beach Tour (Part 2)

 

The Beach Tour (Part 2)

Being continued from part 1.....

Neela was left shell shocked in the unbearable loss. This time she didn’t cry for the missed opportunity of fulfilling her intense desire to visit a sea. She cried her heart out, mourning the death of her father. Not only Neela, but also the other members of the family couldn’t help crying in the limitless waves of pain, infinite helplessness against the fate, and the grueling uncertainty they were going to face with the loss of only earning member in the family.

For the next few days, they keep thinking how a person, so dear to them with all his appearance; a person at a specific age and with a distinguishable physique and identity, with all his love, passion, responsibilities, dreams, just gone away out of the border line of all living things, to somewhere inexplicable to human mind. When a dear one left for the after-world, leaving all the illusion of the world behind, to somewhere as blurred as the mental image of a sea in Neela’s mind, the surviving members of the family can’t do anything other than shedding tears. 

Shedding tears was nothing new to Neela. She used to cry a lot after being rebuked or bashed by her parents, after quarreling with her friends, after being upset with her father for his frequent failure in keeping promises of the dream trip to the sea. She used to cry in the stomach pains. She knew how it feels when she gets hurt in an accidental fall or cuts her fingers by a knife. She even knows the salty taste of bloods dipping out of the fresh cuts. At this earlier age, she had already learned to distinguish the physical pains from the mental pains with her obscure and self-made definitions. But, the pains she feels after the death of her father was entirely different and inexplicable to her innocent mind.       

After the death of Neela’s father, the whole family migrated to her maternal uncle’s home in a small town far away from Calcutta. Her mother didn’t want to take her marriageable daughter to such a place. She wanted to rent a small house and stay until her marriage. But her brothers didn’t want to bear the expenses involved.

It takes a day long train journey to get to her uncle’s home. The small town remains the same. The home in the south of an age-old pond beside a mango orchard was looking unchanged too. But, this time, the behavior of her uncles, aunts and the cousins as well got apparently changed a lot. No more welcome notes, or the festive moods from her suddenly changed relatives. They cried for her father too, but even after that no one offers her foods or other things with the love and affection she used to get in her earlier visits. She wasn’t sure, if she should cry or not for the changes she was feeling.

However, it didn’t take long to understand she no longer needed to decide all by herself whether to cry or not. Tears naturally started to stream down her face with the physical pains she was required to undertake in the household chores she had never imagined of doing at her father’s home. And with the mental sufferings she was going through as a neglected, unwelcomed and marriageable girl stamped as a burden to her uncle’s family.

With the radical changes of the surroundings, Neela got to learn to keep calm with her dirty and torn-out dresses comparing to those of her cousins; with the quality and amount of food she and her little brothers were given; with the discrimination of treatment she and her family members would receive; with the dresses and foods her brothers were sent to school and with the Big void of love and affections she would hardly care about as long as her father was alive.

Soon enough, one of her younger brothers succumbed to malaria fever and her mother got stuck into a bed with partial paralysis, probably followed by a stroke no one was ever aware of. But, luckily enough she was married off to Hospital Assistant in a nearby town, with all the promises of a new life, a renewed beginning and a rekindled identity.

Neela was no longer living on the mercy of someone else merely as a helpless refugee. Now, she had a family of her own with the right over everything with her lost sense of belongingness. Her husband seemed to be happy with her and as her in-laws. But, her tears never left her. In the lingering silence at night, tears kept rolling down from her eyes. In the past, she knew the reasons of her crying. She used to cry either for an emotional outburst or the pains from being physically hurt. But, now, she could no longer realize the reasons of her uncontrolled pathos. She couldn’t figure out how the images of her long-lost past life tried to reconnect. She had a life with lots of promises; she had a life in a big city with a sea of homes foaming around her; she had a vision of the vastness of a sea in her tender mind; she had a dream to walk along a sea shore and connect her mental image of a sea with the real one.  It was beyond her understanding that the life her soul was really belonged to was going away miles deep down her heart. And without an answer known to her, she had to remain silent whenever she was asked to tell the reasons behind her crying.      

One fine morning, a woman from the next door visited her home. She had lately made a pilgrimage in Puri. And as soon as she started talking about how exciting it was to take the sea bathing, Neela burst into tears with a salty taste of blood in her heart.    

The Beach Tour (Part 1)

 

In Riders to the Sea, the widely acclaimed masterpiece of Irish playwright John Millington Synge, Maurya was living in Aran Island off the west coast of Ireland. The ultimate fate of the islanders is to brave and stare into the eyes of the Death every single day to snatch their livelihood out of the claws of the Wild Nature. This brutal reality has been portrayed in the play as a very usual and common event of their lives, just like the way “evening must usher night, night urges the morrow”. And with the waves of pain in the ocean of her life, Maurya gets torn apart with the death of her last two living sons after the death of three more sons and her husband: all five being drowned to death in the Sea. With no more male left to dread, Maurya spills out a challenge to the Sea for taking another life.

However, this very aspect of the oceans is limited to the particular clans like the Islanders of Aran.

In general, the sea shores are the most sought-after tourist destinations for most of the people planning a trip to Nature. But, there still remain a huge percentage of people, who don’t live anywhere near a sea; can’t afford to make a trip to the sea; and in many cases can’t even dare to dream of crossing hundreds of miles for making such a Summer Plan.  

It’s the story of a girl belonging to the later kind of people with the undiscovered images of the seas in their dreams. The story takes place in the first half on the last century in the setting of Calcutta, the capital of the Indian State, West Bengal. I am rather retelling (in a thematic translation) Manik Bandopadhyay’s Bengali short story, entitling Somudro Dekhar Shwad (The Desire to Visit a Sea).

 

The Beach Tour (Part 1)

 

Watching the vastness of a sea in her own eyes was a childhood dream of Neela. She went to school for a few years and in her geography book there was the description of the land and water bodies of the earth. But long before studying the geography lessons, she knew that water occupies the three fourth of the entire world. She was utterly surprised to learn that from her father at the age of seven! How it’s even possible! She crosses miles after miles for a whole day in her train journeys to her maternal uncle’s home. But never did she come across anything like the all-encompassing water-bodies other than rivers, canals, lakes or marshes she see in their way through. There were just grasslands in miles after miles with some forests in between. There were just trees and soils till the far end of the horizon. 

And since then the image of the majestic vastness of the sea keeps coming back to her mind in the form of dreams; in the printed words of books; or in the stories of the seas told by the neighbors. She keeps listening to the stories of the seas. Every members of the Balai family made a trip to the Puri Beach just a few days back. Not only did they enjoy the view, they bathed themselves in the waves of the sea. She also heard about the son of her father’s boss, who had gone to Britain in ship. He had to stay so many days over the sea in his way to England. The vaporized water from the sea forms the clouds over the sky and comes down on earth again as rain drops! The salt her mother uses in cooking curries or gives them in their plates of rice is from the dried-out sea water! The chilling breeze they enjoy on the rooftop at the evening after the hot summer days is directly flying in from the sea!

-Daddy, the sea is in the south, right?

-No. The seas are all over the earth. The Bay of Bengal is in the south; very close to us.     

Yes, it’s right. This is exactly how the map shows. But, seas are everywhere! The Himalayas is in the north. And then the Tibet, followed by China! I’ve got to study the map a little more attentively.

-Daddy, will you take me to the sea, please?

Father had made the same promise to Neela so many times. He did the same again.

-Yes, of course. There won’t be that much trouble in making a visit to the sea. You can walk along the sea shore, once we make a pilgrimage to the holy Puri. I have to make a plan sooner than later. It’s a long-cherished dream of your mother.

But it was really a hard job for a poorly-paid clerk to fulfill the dreams of his wife! A person from a poor income range can hardly afford, even for once in a life time, a fancy trip like that. Even, if he ever happens to make one on a very special occasion and with a lot of hardships, he has to compromise a lot other necessary things including, obviously, the dreams of the children.

During the Rath (chariot) festival, Puri becomes unbelievably crowded with millions of people from all over India. It’s not a wise thing to take children along to such a big gathering. Besides, you have to consider the extra costs involved. And if you take Neela, what are the faults of the other siblings? And who will look after the young kids, if Neela too comes along with her parents?

Neela’s mother has got other excuses too to tear through Neela’s desire to walk along a sea beach.

-No, no. I won’t feel secured to take a marriageable girl out there in the massive crowd.   

But the marriageable girl cried her eyes out like a stupid and innocent kid. Her tongue remains forgetful of other tastes other than the salty taste of tears rolling down from her eyes for the next few days. When she was supposed to receive them in tears of joy, when she was expected to wait in intense curiosity to listen to the stories of their excursion on her parents’ return from the pilgrimage, she sniffled out a single question with tears streaming out of her face.

-Did you bathe in the sea, daddy?

Neela’s father was terribly tired with all the hassles of the tour and the traveling. After entering the home, he just threw himself onto a chair.

-Yes, yes. I did take the sea bathing. Let me take some rest for a while. I am going to tell you all those stories.

-What else will you tell me? Is there really any need to tell me anything about the sea? Neela has already learned everything about the sea bathing things in Puri.

From the rooftop of the neighboring three-storied building, Neela can see the sea of houses all around her: lifeless and immobile structures reaching up to the sky at the far end of the horizon. Neela can imagine the vastness of the sea with the stagnated homes piled one after another. She can feel how the waves of the oceans, as high as the buildings around her, crash down on the beaches as white foams. The only regret is that she couldn’t see it in her own eyes. She was very dear to her father; at least the people around her think so. And instead of fulfilling the dream of her adorable daughter, he himself made the tour, visited the beach and bathed in the foamy waves. With these thoughts streaming into her mind, Neela, the marriageable girl in her early teens, fails to check her emotions and bursts into tears.   

Without wasting any time, Neela’s father made an instant promise for one more time.

-Please, don’t cry Neela. I will take you to the sea at any cost in the coming Puja festival. Even if it requires me to take a loan, I will not think otherwise. But now, for God’s sake, don’t cry anymore, please. I couldn’t sleep all night in the tiresome train journey.

 Her father fails to keep his promise again. During the Puja festival, he passed away.

To be finished in part 2...