Feb 28, 2009 11:01 AM
3008 Views
I was back to Khaleid Hosseini after moving best-seller, ‘The Kite Runner’. I avoided reading the book for a long time as I was not sure whether I was ready for another heartbreaking account of human agony in the backdrop of a ravaged civilization. I was also apprehensive whether the author has exhausted his tricks in the first book itself and will flatter to deceive in an effort to create the magical twists of the earlier book.
However, my apprehensions proved unfounded and the author once again produced an epic tale of courage and sacrifice in the most deplorable circumstances imaginable.
Mariam and Laila, were born decades apart but there lives met under unusual circumstances and then bonded by one common factor – pain. One was deprived of her basic rights since childhood and then betrayed by fate when literally she lost both her parents in a single event.
Then on wards she carried within her two emotions – guilt of having caused her mother’s death and hatred towards her father who abandoned her when she needed him most. The other, for a while seemed destiny’s favored child.
A combination of beauty and brain, she was fortunate to be born in a liberal family and the most progressive city in the country. But after all they were both women living in Afghanistan – which made their initial differences meaningless and destiny similar.
A war ravaged country, poverty, sexual discrimination and destiny all played their part in creating a canvas on which the author portrayed a tragic tale of human sacrifice, courage and endurance. It is also a saga of tragedy of our times when humanity has embarked the suicidal path of valuing everything in terms of economic and political power and treating the civilization as collateral in the process.
Thus, to achieve the end of economic and political power, a selected few are ready to destroy everything – human lives, environment, knowledge, and liberty – the very factors that makes us human. One has to be incorrigible optimist if he is aware of these realities and still expects the world to survive – say, another century.
It is also a tale of war ravaged Afghanistan. War and religious extremism has ruined the country to such an extent that our worst imaginations are no match for the harsh reality. Now, it seems the same tragedy is ready to engulf our neighbour, Pakistan. Of late, we Indians welcome every tragedy that struck Pakistan with unabashed satisfaction.
However, the real tragedy is, it is the innocent people of Pakistan who suffer while their (and of course, our) political and military mastermind behind the war of terror continue to enjoy a life of security and prosperity. We should not forget that people of Pakistan have more things common with us than we have with citizens of US. Also, when people are under influence of poverty, violence and religious extremism, they are much more susceptible to accept the massage of hatred than massage of love.
Thus, may be like Mariam and Laila, people of Pakistan and India will ultimately face common challenges which would make the present differences trivial.
But ultimately the story is about two mothers. To love is to suffer and who loves more wholesomely, more unconditionally and more undeserving than a mother loves her child! So, they also suffer the most. But all their suffering finds a meaning if it results in a better future for their children.
Two mothers – did I wrote? Make it three for how can one forget the Motherland?
