part 02

Genesis









ChapterOne









September.The fifth day of the month is a Monday. Not exactly the time of the year whenyou would expect it to drizzle. But it’s pouring actually, punctuated by 100K gusts and all-illuminating sears of lightning. Funnily enough, it’s raining only in Chittagong, the commercial hub of the country. It’s also the city where this story starts. It’s the early 80s; the culture of embracing the nightlife all-out hasn’t spread yet. Even most some of the streetlights are out, thanks to the routine of the ever-efficient servants of the City Corporation. Except for the 8-storied monstrosity that is the City Medical College and Hospital and the five-storied hotel City Inn, there’s almost no other light burning away in a 2-mile radius. Hence hardly any curtained windows reflecting the wet, seedy, orange glitter of the street lamps, which could have been a part of a quaint little photo titled “The Rain Soaked city”.



And there’s this blasted weather. You can hear the howling of the wind, through the foliage of the numerous well-pruned trees that line both sides of the

Nizam Avenue

that runs through the Circle. You won’t have to strain your ears to listen to the heavy raindrops beating down on the pavements and the few billboards there are.




Hence not a soul around, not even a single wheeled machine occupying the vast stretches of the Circle- except for a blood-red brand new Toyota Corolla parked at the entrance to a narrow, bricked lane. The proud owner, one Fazal Mahmud, is within the shielded comfort of a long balcony on the fourth floor of the Port City Maternity Care clinic at the end of that lane. His world, quite unlike the weather now, is ringing with sheer joy and relief. The reasons of his ecstasy are currently more comfortably lodged inside room 405, where his better half, Shireen Siddiqui Ali, has just given birth to their big bundle of joy – our protagonist.















ChapterTwo










Fazal Mahmud heaved out a sigh of relief; then a broad grin lit up his handsomely cut face. It made him look rather classier than average and helped cover his age a bit. Fazal was in his fiftieth year, yet unlike his contemporaries, most of whom had developed 48-inch waists and double chins and blotched darkened cheeks, he was a lot leaner – lean enough to wear safari suits and look down at his rather flat stomach. The looks piled on with his deep resonating voice and almost the perfect height of five feet ten inches.

 
His grin belied the tortured times in the recent years, the trouble that his wife of three years and he himself had to endure – trouble with sharing accommodation with Fazal’s extended family. “Allah, this is more than whatever I could have ever asked for!” sang his heart. Not a pious man per se, that was how he’d express his heartfelt gratitude to The Almighty – apart from the Friday visits to the local mosque. He almost uttered them out loud, but checked himself at the last moment, because that’s when the duty doctor came out of 405 and smiled at him. She said nothing yet he understood that he should scrub himself right now and should see the two souls that matter to him most.


  
Shireen Siddiqui Ali was comfortably propped up with three pillows behind her. She was looking down at the big reddish chubby-cheeked bundle that was lost in deep sleep in her lap, all wrapped up in comfy cotton towels. A smile slowly spread across her face, and it stayed there like a star lit up by that infinite becalming feeling of ultimate fulfilment and happiness. The thunderstorm outside hardly dented her feelings, as she surveyed, with supreme gratefulness to the Almighty ringing in her heart, her baby.


  
“Aren’t you the greatest little bunny, babu! Sleep my baby, sleep. And let mommy look at you, for you are the one she’ll live for now – don’t you know thatalready darling??” and all other sorts of fluffy warm feelings flew and swamped through her heart and her entire physique, like the untamed currents of theYamuna in monsoon. Her joy didn’t bring tears to her dark brown eyes, yet she was on the verge of shedding some drops, and she didn’t know if that would be anoutlet enough to calm down the torrents in her heart and soul.