The Unimaginable Power of FORGIVENESS (14)
Chapter -14 ( The Unimaginable Power of FORGIVENESS)
The workload of the past few days didn’t really allow me to put pen to paper. But then I owe it to my Sis to complete this novel before the year paves way to another. So here I am trying to put together some thoughts, some beliefs, some entreaties relating to my sister. While doing so, I am constantly overcome with a phobia of sort, the phobia that the people who all are connected to my Sis or me, may be, pained by something I write or have already written. So before I continue with my narration, let me ask for forgiveness from anyone my novel might have hurt. Let me also tell you all that despite my immaturity, my senselessness and a host of other weaknesses that characterise me, I truly love you all and through this novel, want to express my sincere gratitude to you folks for the wonderful times and memories credited in my account due to your forgiveness and generosity.
To cone back to my Sis, I have very often wondered what made my sister undergo such pangs of separation and heartbreaks at a time when she should be enjoying Life to the fullest. Quite often I asked her to step into our late Ma’s footsteps, her incredible example. Ma was a different kettle of fish and her life story needs no telling. Her life was a tale of Love, Suffering, Sacrifice and Forgiveness.
I’d tell my Sis to forgive the man who turned her life topsy-turvy, knowing full well that the man was simply not that type. I have heard it from others that both my Bro-in-law and my Sis are very egoistic. In a way, probably we all are. We think stooping to others, despite their as well as our faults, is below our dignity.I’d remind Sis of Ma. How she kept her cool when the family was passing through a storm after Baba’s padoskhalon, descent to defamation and ignominy (I adore my late Baba though. With his own faulty step, he taught all his sons never to deviate from the sworn duty of loving and being faithful to their spouses).
“I ain’t Ma, Bappa. Besides, those days ( when women had to bear with the brunt of the family, inspite of no apparent fault of their own) are gone.” But then she would take me aback by remarking:”Would I ever leave a safe haven, such affluence and security behind if nothing was the matter? Which woman would do that? Leave it, Bappa. Let’s switch the topic..”
I don’t know what the Future holds for my Sis or even for my bro-in-law, nor am I convinced that, as they say, criticising others is quite easy until you put yourself in the shoe of the person being criticised. But what I do know is this that Life is too short and precious to be spent on being grief-striken, mud-slinging, ruing one’s fate and letting go of the Spring. The one who tries to play God is the greatest of all fools.
Anyway, what has to happen, will happen and no one can do anything about it.
Let me conclude this chapter with a Lesson on Forgiveness that I grasped in the wee hours of the morning today. The time was around 3 at that time. The story goes like this:
Sanaubar was a beauty. Her dimpled smile, her walking-style was the envy of the town. Unfortunately, she was married off to Ali, a very ordinary man by any standards. The marriage was a total mismatch. When a baby was born to them, Sanaubar took a look, found the baby with the same cleft lip like that of his father and didn’t even feel like holding the child in her arms. She ran away a couple of days later with a band of singers and dancers. The father had to play the double role of father cum mother. He thought it best never to talk to the child about his erring mother after her elopement.
Time didn’t stand still. The boy, named Hassan, grew up and shifted to some place called Hazarajat, got married and was surprised greatly when, out of the blue, Rahim Khan, a fatherly figure visited him. The memories of his childhood spent in the luscious Kabul, made him request Rahima Khan to take him and his expectant wife, Farzana, along with him back to his birthplace.
They didn’t stay with Rahim khan though in the palatial building Hassan had grown up in but devoted themselves solely to revamping the house.
One day, months later, a woman knocked on the door. She seemed weak and haggard. Rahim Khan asked Hassan to help him take the woman inside as she had fainted. When she came to, she asked to have a closer look at Hassan by removing her burqua (the veil). She had the most grotesque face, toothless with scars of slashes crisscrossing all over. One went from the cheekbone to the forehead, not sparing the left eye in the process. It took Rahim Khan sometime to realize that she was none other the once beautiful Sanaubar. Hassan ran out of the house finding the woman holding his hand, was the same woman, who once refused to hold him in her arms after he had come out of her womb!
He came back the next day all right, weary and puffy eyed and told the woman to cry, if she wanted to, and asked her to take them as family.
With their love and care, Sanaubar regained her health. The mother and son would work in the garden and talk to one another to make up for the lost time. When a child was born to Hassan, he became her world. She made things of rags and grasses, fasted and prayed like mad, when the boy fell sick and slept with her grandson nuzzled to her chest till he was four. And then, then, one morning she didn’t get up from her sleep at all…….
If I could have summarized and reproduced one percent of this heart-wrenching story from “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, I’ll consider myself lucky. The message is there for all to see. Beauty, Ego, Pride, Power are all ethereal and soon forgotten with the passage of time. But there is something eternal, something divine about Love, Forgiveness, Sacrifice as these are the qualities that make winners of sure, certain losers.
