Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

She and her husband Sahad shared this with Sahad's younger sister Mono.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Mono was a very warm, friendly person, always cheerful, though she had suffered much hardship in her young life.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Mono's husband was a ne'er do well who had long since deserted her. He had returned to Bangladesh. This had left Mono to raise their daughter on her own.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

My connection to Tuku was not reestablished until 2005.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

But it was as if I had never been away.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Soon after she and Sahad had a baby girl.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Tuku asked me to name her baby.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

I called her Honey.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

I had missed Honey's birth, but I had the satisfaction of watching her grow.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Now Honey is ten.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Tuku had always wanted her own house, and dreamt of one with a big roof where she could teach her Bharata Natyam dance form to children.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Considering her financial circumstances, this was unachievable. But I had helped her to buy the land, and then to lay the foundations.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Five years on, I fully expected to see the house completed.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

But I will have to sell more comics, for work yet remains to be done.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Mono's daughter had also grown.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

But where was Mono?

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Mono had been running a tiny stall in the market to make ends meet. Tuku explained that a few years before, her husband had returned from Bangladesh and had taken up with Mono again. He was extremely possessive, and had convinced himself that Mono was seeing other men. So he beat her.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

One day, on a public holiday in 2013, he asked her to forgive him, and invited her to a relative's house. But the relatives were away. There in the empty house he strangled her. Afterwards, he went to Tuku's house and calmly told her

 

"I have murdered my wife."

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

So quiet! doth the change content thee?—Death, whither hath he taken thee?

To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?

The vision of which I miss,

Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee?

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail us

To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,

Unwilling, alone we embark,

And the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us.