EVERLASTING LOVE Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Ali was now 14 years old. Nargis was also of the same age. His love had only deepened for Nargis over the years.He liked her and Nargis had also a soft corner for him.He was in his 9th standard at HILLWAY SCHOOL.It was the best school in Shimla at that time. Ali and Nargis used to meet during the lunch break and as there were no classes that day for about one hour, they decided to sit and talk to each other. Ali asked Nargis about her parents. Nargis told that her father was a person in military in Kashmir border. He used to regularly go and fight on the border with Pakistani troops. She said that her father had once been wounded during an encounter when she was only 3 years old. Then he had been rescued by a local band of people and his mother used to come often to meet him. His mother on seeing her father’ s condition had been paralysed in one side of the upper body. So those local band people had shifted both her parents to Shimla and she had been brought up by her mother alone. Her mother had been treated for paralysis in Shimla hospital and as Nargis was 6 years old she had recovered from the shock of her bed ridden husband. Nargis’s father was on a wheel chair and her father’s condition was now stable.Ali asked her as to who was bringing and taking her to school and she said that her mother had employed some local people to take her in a gypsy van and bring her back from there. The gypsy van was owned by her mother and she used to often use it with the driver who was given a handsome some of money.Ali asked Nargis what her mother was doing because she was earning a lot of money. She said that her mother used to paint bed sheets, table linen and carpets and also sell jewellery designs. She used to sell the designs abroad and in Shimla and outside Shimla.She used to earn a lot of money by that. It was a sedentary work and she used to do it.