The Advent of New Year!

 I have scribbled these lines in a hurry.Didn't have time to read them again.In Jan.I feel that I may be a bit free. I'll be visiting my favourite bloggers then.Merry christmas and joyful New Year to all.

 The Advent of New Year! 

Forget we should

 The means pessimistic

That happened in the

By-gone year, or else

Drowning we will be in

The pool of glum and gloom.

   Hark back we should

To the events that mount

Dazzling thoughts and

Gladness filling acts

 From which  emerges energy

Enabling us to walk to success.

Avoid in the Fresh Year

 Behaviour ours that

If to others is horrid,

 Haughty and hostile

And evade hurting people

With words and indeed deeds.

Unfurl the bud of help

Spreading the scent of hope

Filling in people’s life

Hap they keep a yen for

And extend let us a reception

To the year presently peeping .

Keep in mind let us warmth a lot

When members enter afresh

 Into our friendship and kinship

 Which in real is a bequest

 Handed over to us by God

 Adding vim and vigour to daily affairs.

Round the corner is seen

The onset of the New Year;

Don’t know, what in store

 In the horizon around

 Whether sullen or sweet

Or harmful or beneficial.

Bear we have to with

A sense of valor and verve,

 Whatever comes on way and

That will fill in life

Upshots of experiences

 Very pleasant and delightful.

'May you all have fruitful year of success ahead'.

The Saleswoman!

Part-2

 The loan amount though was a horrendous affair the regular payment in equal monthly installments took the weight off their minds. But their glee was short lived as the money lender quite often harassed them to clear the debt immediately. He was fully conversant that the couple couldn’t repay the amount at ease. He was one to ‘make hay while the sun shines’. So he started pestering them for clearing their debt. Many a time he threatened them to sue in the court as they had pledged a blank bank cheque for the loan.

   

 One day the money lender demanded back his amount that had expanded enormously. Despite the installments being paid by the borrowers, the interest gets compounded through some fetid means by this lender. But the innocent borrowers do not come to know about the money lender’s trap. Moreover he claims sizable amounts by intimidating them with the blank cheques, they pledge. Not only one person but many unscrupulous elements also triumphantly reside among the public. They suck poor man’s life in the form of interest resulting in suicide. Here Prakash and Ramani begged for a later date to pay back their debt. Two times they managed to get the date of clearance put off. But the avidity of the lender was proving his inhumanity. So he continued his harshness and harassment to the couple.

That day Ramani  and children had left home for their routines .Only Prakash was there, since his office time fell a little late. The money lender stormed into their house threatening to sue a case against them. Screeches and shouts from that brutal mouth had spoiled the tranquility of that little domicile. People from around didn’t fail to perform their peeping look into that house. So he, who had a good name among the neighbours, felt much disdained. Finding no means to settle up the crisis, that moment’s distress had conquered his wit and he without thinking anything sought the last solution. He swallowed the entire insecticide kept in their house for warding off the cockroaches.

Ramani and I rushed to the ICU, where the former’s beloved better half lay unconscious. Ramani’s mind became cloudy as if to shower heavily on viewing her loving husband lying out of sense. Her lips shivered, facial muscles shrunk, body numbed and words got blocked in the throat. Wiping the eyes, she had to evict herself from the ICU.

Waited Ramani mpatiently in the room allotted in hospital.  But alas! All her hope, ho! Turned into ashes. He did take leave of his affectionate partner and set off for the stay among the stars. Ramani’s grief found no bound. All her glory had vanished. She felt helpless and mourned and mourned over her dear one’s demise. She fell on her husband’s carcass violently and held it tightly, “Don’t take him from me, I will not leave him.”Their two kids-the teen and the ten-year-old- also struggled hard to stop their tears as it was their beloved father who lay there with no breath.  Ramani’s woes flowed through tears just like an outpour of rain.

Very mechanically she followed the instructions given by others during the funeral. And so also the young ones two. Slowly she rose to the reality as she had to nurture her children. It took a month for her to resume the routine. But the female in her, once dependant on her spouse for everything, broke the chain of timidity forever. Her body language attained a stature of audacity. She took the decision to fight for justice, “I will not leave him like that; I will go to any extent. I want him to be punished. Husband’s suicidal note will help me. If a few can escape from this peril, I will be happy."

Ramani remained not tight-lipped, but she did take the required steps. In a time of half-a-decade Ramani’s determination lit the lamp of stirring the society to speak and act against the beastly money lenders including the one indulged in Prakash’s case. Many a one was captured and legally punished. And a money lending act was also passed by the Government to curb the unlawful rise of the interest. People slowly have understood the noose that tightens their neck from free movement. And now Ramani has become a social figure fighting against the illegal activities exploiting the common man’s ignorance.  

The Saleswoman!

This story will loom as two fragments as it is slightly lengthy.

Part-1

A couple of months darted away from the view of the remaining ten. I dropped into Ramani’s dwelling to have a glimpse at her present juncture. She was totally a new female ready to daringly face every set back. Her visage was proclaiming that she was not going to let the villain be triumphant in the society.  I just rewound the incidents.

Once I was waiting for a bus in the shelter. Ramani, a quadragenarian woman scurried to the bus stop instituting a sort of uneasiness looking at the watch and then to the bus direction. She didn’t notice me as her fret-plated visage was expressing some agony.

 I just silently watched her doings, without disturbing her. She is known to me. I felt if I uttered a word even, it would dig a channel for her tears to surge over there. Even then my anxiety to know about her anguish let my tongue come out with some words without my okay.

“What happened? If I can help you, Ramani…..”

“O!  Sushma,I want to go to the hospital urgently. My husband is not well,” half-crying she uttered.

“Can’t you hire an auto, if you are in a hurry?”

“This is no taxi stand, Sushma, nor an auto stand.”

“O! I forgot that.”

Right then God appeared there in the form of one of my cousins in a car. No sooner did he stop the car in front of me than I ran to him and turned him altruistic. Since my destination was only a tailoring shop to obtain my new dress, I nodded for my cousin’s invite to go with them. I seated myself in the front and turned back to Ramani with the question in my eyes.

“My husband is admitted in the hospital. My neighbour informed me about it. That is why I am rushing. I don’t know anything more.”

Ramani is a saleswoman of a textile shop. Her better-half, Prakash served a company in billing process. And their two daughters-elder in the ninth grade and younger in sixth-were reading in a reputed school.

 From morning to gloaming Ramani entertains the customers forgetting all her personal chores.  Diwali-purchase was in progress and therefore the shop was crowded with customers. New arrivals of garbs and fabrics glittered fully attracting the sights of customers. That day as soon as she reached the shop she got engrossed in satiating the customers’ demands. Always an appeasing grin dwells on her pleasant face. And then suddenly out of the blue a phone call interrupted her work. Prakash, Ramani’s husband got admitted in the central hospital with the help of his childhood buddy who stays next door. Ramani and I are travel-mates i.e. we share the same bus stop for the journey towards our offices. Before the appearance of the bus we get a few minutes to do chit-chat. Persistent journey had sowed the seeds of friendship too in us. Today is a holiday for me.

Prakash and Ramani have shaped their desires and dreams of owning a house into reality and thus a two bed-room building arose in their five cents of land. A bank loan was the source of revenue. But at the final stage they had to borrow a small sum of money from a money lender. He had camouflaged the interest of the loan as ten percent which was actually for one month. Anyway the construction met its completion after much struggles and all. The completion of the building brought an unfathomable gleam of ecstasy in the couple’s eyes. They arranged for an affordable house-warming with great enthusiasm. Amidst all the kith and kin the warming ceremony moved on smoothly.

                                                                                                                                           [To be contd.]