Travails of LOVE

The book tells an intense love story between the daughter of a clever villager and the scholarly boy of a deprived widow. The widow was in fact the daughter-in-law of village’s influential Zamindar family but was evicted from the family, branded as a bad-omen because her husband expired on the very next day of their first conjugal night. The pregnant widow was living in a cottage at the edge of the village depending on her meager earning working as housemaid in villagers’ households; and later years, as tutor, a skill that got recognized after her son exhibited exceptional performance in his school study. The child was branded a sonofabitch by the Zamindar who questioned the woman’s pregnancy in one night bed-sharing with her husband. Although the boy loved the girl, yet he wasn’t sure that their love would be sustained in view of his by default social status. He tried to dissuade the girl but in vain; the girl was so stubborn. The love-locked pair had an obsession – they were not happy with their village poor image among the community of villages in the locality because of educational and economical backwardness which they understood was forced on the village by Zamindar family, as the family had a vested interest, propagating the modern co-education would destroy the village’s age-old social order – to work with their mentor, who was equally disturbed and had seen in the love-locked duos the character to rescue his village from the evil clutches of Zamindar family. As the story progress, the boy and girl – the girl against the wishes of her mother, who was frightened of the mingling of her grown up daughter with a socially maligned boy but was forced by her ambitious husband, who wanted to get his daughter graduated with help of the boy, he believed an honest one, to agree - got admitted in the district’s premier college where they got close with their class-mate, a smart and funny city girl from a distance city who was in exile because of her fault of failing in love with the son of her corrupt and ambitious father’s boss in a public sector enterprise. And, her love was an impediment to her father’s promotion. The girl won the college’s beauty title, although there was no beauty pageant, an unofficial venture of college bad characters, and there were some humour related to the issue. Another boy, who was their class-mate since their school days, tried to entice the girl but got rejected. In-between, there are narrations of fun, comic, love, romance, characteristic, etc. In the college, the boy excelled in all the activities, and combined with his personality and physical look, was the centre of attraction of the daughters of rich and powerful families of the city who tried to lure him but got thwarted with active cooperation of the exiled girl and canteen contractor, the man who later turned to be the trios’ God-father as he helped rescuing the exiled girl kidnapped by city’s underworld engaged by the city’s rich family in its bid to coerce the boy to accept the love offer. The trios completed their Intermediate with distinction and joined their Graduation Course. But, here the boy chose different stream, which weren’t mark-fetching, against the girl’s wishes. She was persuaded by their mentors to accept the formula as that would be useful to accomplish the boy and villagers’ dream job – Indian Civil Service, which would help their beloved village’s got an image makeover and brought developments. In the first year of their Graduation, the situation in the collage forced the boy to think to contest college students’ union election. Although he was keen; however, in the last moment, he withdrew. There are narrations with illustration of prevailing political practices. Also, there was talk on evolution of an India specific new system of governance and political fraud cleverly designed to exploit gullible masses in the name of democracy, which was nothing but fuedocracy that their God-father explained. In the graduation result chart, the girl was the Best Graduation of college reversing earlier trend of the boy at the top. As if the girl’s father was waiting for this opportunity, he made a sudden U-turn and forced his daughter to forget the boy arguing, “How a Best Graduate of district premier college hang around with a trailer? Enough is enough!” But, the girl was stubborn. The frustrated father, to get rid of the boy, joined hand with Zamindar elder, his bête noire in village politics and conspire a mid-night fire of the cottage to eliminate mother-son duos. But, the conspiracy was known to the mentor who rescued the hapless, unknown to anyone in the village. The girl turned mad. The boy got selected to Civil Services preparing for the same along with the exiled girl, staying away from the village. With passing of days, months and years, the girl’s health deteriorated which was unbearable to the mentor and he disclosed the secret, “The boy and her mother are safe and the boy has been selected for the villagers’ dreamed Civil Services.” The villagers, who were dreaming for a bright future for their village with the exceptional educational performance of love-locked duos and was literally crying in the sudden eclipse of mother-son duos, got a new lease of life. To keep their hero’s love happy and recover fast, the villagers resorted to all they could do. They too rebuilt the cottage with enthusiasm. With the court intervention, the boy got conducted a DNA test and proved to his maligners, he was borne to Zamindar gene. He returned to village and to the surprise of the villagers, he was found highly regarded among the neighbouring villagers. He laid down the foundation to set up a High School which was burnt by none other than his own blood decades ago and rescued his love. The book is packed with tales of love, romance, tragedy, frustration, struggle, humour, comic, exploitation, corruption, nasty politics, hypocrisy and fuedocracy, and the most importantly, the spirit of the sonofthesoil.