"A Thousand Splendid Suns", a wonderful story

The last book of Khaled Hosseini ‘The kite runner’ had brought lumps on my throat while his ‘A thousand splendid suns’ gave the final stroke. Last evening sitting in my low bed with one hand holding the book, I saw the papers wet, it had brought tears. I had felt the pain a little earlier but when I finally couldn’t stop I didn’t know. I didn’t know when did the tears roll but there they were in the book. I realized the cup of tea which had been brought earlier had become cold, it had entered my room an hour earlier. I do not remember who had brought it, I only remembered I had asked him/her to put the tea in the table near by. I had been reading the book from Wednesday morning and couldn’t postpone the pages to be turned; I had finished it in two days.
I hadn’t picked the book intentionally. I had in fact gone in search of another book and when the seller said he didn’t have that book, I just took a walk in the store to fall upon something interesting where I picked Khaled Hosseini. I read the reviews and it was probably the book I had yearned to read.
The book is about an Afgani child Mariam, who grows into a girl and a woman, its story of her struggle, of her hardships. She establishes a special relationship with another girl Laila. The story is also about Laila and her hardships. It shows the picture of a country battered in war against the monarch, then against the Russians, against the Mujahiddins and finally against the Taliban. It tells a story of country where the life has no value, right has no value and where women are cursed and loathed. How in the name of religion, the Sharia law forbids women to get education, to walk freely, to get a job even to speak in public and to talk with strangers.
Had I been a woman I might have cried lot earlier but it was towards the end I broke. The exploitation of women, her treatment like an animal is painful. When one thinks it might be the last incident where the heart moans and pains, the incidents that come later become harder and more painful. The sacrifices a woman makes will leave the reader appreciating the greatness of woman being. “How much can she tolerate?” we keep on asking. “How low can a man go?” to worsen the life of his wife or any other female part leaves us torn apart.
After reading the book, the face of Mariam, her sacrifices denied to leave me. I sat almost an hour, staring the ceiling of my room as I lied on my back in my bed. I believe the women still live in situations worse than described in the novel, her greatness is more than shown in the book. Mariam will be with me for a real long time with me. I wouldn’t have regretted if this book had cost me more than thousand. A thousand splendid suns is a splendid story. Those who like reading will love this and for those who do not like reading it will spring love for books and to read more.

Why did it rain?

I came out of the office in hurry. Hurrying for nothing other than avoiding rain. When I was in the courtyard a woman was smiling to a colleague. When she smiles her face shrinks as if someone had pulled her facial skin at nose. All of a sudden uncountable folds appear in her face, first time I saw her I thought she was crying.
The sky was almost expressionless, the clouds were heavy as if they were theatre artists behind the curtain whose turn was next and the act before theirs had just ended. I only said heavy, they were not black. It looked as if it was a face of a child who had stopped crying a little earlier and the tears had dried on her cheek. Everyone was hurrying in the streets except for the street children who didn’t even care if it was already raining.
I saw a small ripple disturbing the sleeping puddle. It was raining but then there were no further drops. In a matter of minutes I was inside a bus holding the novel I am reading these days. Soon the bus was crowded and a woman stood behind me holding the longitudinal bar on the ceiling. She kept pushing her handbag behind me i.e. between my back and the seat. I thought she was having problem holding the bag while holding the bar as well yet I wondered why didn’t she slid its ears through her arm. It would have been much easier but for some reasons she didn’t. I was feeling awkward and uncomfortable with her bag cushioning me. Then again she kept working on her bags, sometime she kept something inside it and sometime she was taking something out. I didn’t know what she was doing but didn’t like it either, she was disturbing me. I wanted to look at her but I was so involved in the book that I didn’t want to take my eyes off it. Then I remembered something rather silly. When I was a child, my grandmother used to tell me and my brother story of a witch who used to poke young men from behind so that they would turn around and see into her eyes. The witch will then hypnotize the young men and killed them. It was so funny that I remembered this story there at that situation and coincidentally I didn’t turn around to look at her, though I was so irritated. The rain had already started but I thought I could still get home without opening the umbrella until I actually got down at my station.
When it rains I spoil my clothes like a child. I always end up painting my trousers with tiny dots of mud. My friends say I walk fast and I raise my foot too high which make my trousers suffer during rain and ultimately mummy has to suffer cleaning them.
An old man was walking on his bare foot in the disgusting street which looked like a field being prepared for planting the paddy saplings. The old man was completely wet from top to bottom. The old man stooped and he supported himself from falling face first with a stick. The stick was made up of fir wood and had a handle tilted against its length so that it was easy to hold. The old man was mumbling something, talking to himself. I wanted to over take him but I wanted to listen what he was talking. He was saying God must have been angry with him for it rained only when he was in the street and had forgotten the umbrella. He said he was sure of this and believed someday gods will be happy with him again but he worried by the time god becomes happy he might die. He stopped at a point and looked at the sky which was clear now. He said “Are you satisfied now? See I am completely wet and I have also lost my slippers”. He complained to himself that it rains once he is out on the street and stops soon after he is completely wet. He wondered what had he done to displease the rain god. At one corner we parted ways. I thought I had an expression of a dim smile without any change in my lips but only a little brightness in my eyes. I wondered how many people would have thought that it rained just to drench them.

A promise to my daughter

The rain has stopped drumming the roof. The cacophony is back in the street. The day was just regular, boring and hot. I mother of two watches the street with indifference. The street has been same except there are new shops, new buildings and new structures on its side. The sun is same, it still rises in the east completes a semi-circle every day and vanishes to the west. The sky has been same, the drops of rain are same in all these years but still they appear so different. I have come to terms with a life of a housewife now. When I see my daughter cackle and recite her little innocent dreams I feel pity, my childhood has passed to my daughter. I see her living my childhood, the experience of living a life and being a mere spectator to it is a different experience altogether. I have long forgotten the excitement, the curiosity, the dreams of a girl in her early teens but I know they exist. I cannot feel them but I can identify them. My ambition was never expensive in the shallow life of my village. I just wanted to be a teacher, a school teacher because when I was growing up that was the only thing an educated human could do. They said there are doctors and engineers but by the time I saw one the dream of becoming a teacher had grown its root deep and wide. Every day when Sabitri miss came to our class I would place myself in her position, scribbling words in the blackboard, walking across the classroom holding books in hand, telling stories and explaining poems. I felt excited when I would see myself checking the home-works of the students and threatening them with sticks. In home we played school-school and I either had to be teacher otherwise I wouldn’t play. My friends used to get agitated by my stubbornness, so did my brother who also wanted to be a teacher in those games but I would never let anyone steal my role. Finally I started depicting the character and body language of the teacher so well that I never required to quarrel anymore to get my beloved role. Whenever the children played school-school, they would look for me. Knowing I was irreplaceable I would throw tantrums, tell them I have no mood or I have some other works to do and they would frown at me, call me arrogant but still did everything to persuade me. In those games I was living my dreams. I believed a day will come when I will be inside a real class, among my real students giving the real lessons. In those games I was actually practicing for that day. When I played the role of a teacher I forgot I was in a game and assumed it was all real, my friends used to get surprised. They said I might be taken by the rebelling groups for staging the programs they called ‘awareness campaign’ but that would not hold me back. Back then Sabitri miss had started using glasses which meant I had to have one as well. My Grandfather found me one from his old wooden box, it was only frame but I was fine with it.
To be a teacher one had to study get to bigger classes so I labored hard and I was a bright student. Those were similar days except I lived in village and I didn’t know one can choose from so many career options. When I passed the SLC(tenth standard) I was seventeen and I had topped my school. When the results were announced I was very happy, though the school-school game had stopped lot earlier, I still cherished the dream of becoming a teacher. I came home soaked in excitement after hearing the results. Everyone who met me on my way home was surprised and wanted to know what made me so happy but I wanted to tell my parents first. I thought my parents will be delighted with the news. At home I found my parents already in a happy mood I thought somebody else had already told them and cursed that person. Even then I told my father in no lesser excitement but it had little effect on him. He told me he had one another good news. I was married to the son of a local landlord, two months later. They never let me work, they said women from good background didn’t work. I knew it was not a matter of honor, it was the matter of doubt over women. Generations after generations after serving the family, after raising the children, after devoting herself to the dominant husband, after abiding by his unjust regulations women are still under strict scrutiny of the society. Its not the matter of honor, they fear their wives, their daughter-in-law might run away with somebody else or sleep with a stranger. They said people will have a subject for gossip, I knew they felt insecure themselves.
I remember my own growing up, the day when I had come home running to tell about my results. I can see an innocent, delighted girl in sky colored shirt and navy blue skirts with red ribbons tying her hair, hopping through the mustard fields to reach home as fast as she could. I can see the pieces of shattered dreams when her father told her about the marriage. When I was running home, I didn’t have the picture of my mother in my head. She never existed for us, we (me and my brother) were never given to her, she was never a family member of our huge joint family of uncles, cousins, and grandparents her position was no better than servants. I grew up without knowing what the dreams of my mother were when she was a child herself, I grew up without bothering if she had had the meal, if her health was fine. I never felt it was necessary to tell my mother about my success and failure but that day I had cried on her lap. She had said generation after generation women lived the same life and faced similar hardships.
Life is not fair always but for women like us its always unfair. I hope my daughter need not share my fate but I still worry. The children who had hidden inside the small shops, under the verandah and roofs of the houses to protect themselves from rain are back to street. Among those kids I see my Shraddha holding the hand of her brother; I can see her waving the other hand to me. I wave back to her. I used to play teacher in my childhood games, she plays nurse and I hope unlike mine she becomes a real nurse one day and for that I will fight the family, the society if necessary. Though my father crushed my dreams he did one good thing, he didn’t stop me from going to school due to which I could complete the ten class. The education has given me courage to raise my voice for my daughter. One day my Shraddha will be a nurse, I am sure because I her mother promise that.