Nia left Rhianna's birthday party at nine- thirty in the evening, excusing herself to be tired. She did not want to linger in a place where even the shadow of that man could be seen. He was a close friend of Nicholas. But in the past few years she had known Rhianna and Nicholas she did not run in the bad luck of bumping into this man. Now it looked like she would be crossing paths with him from time to time in the future. But she did not want to be around him.
Never in the past she had wanted that man, nor in her future would she want him. Nirvana Sonowal might be thrown in the way of the Devil again but she would not let bad luck to disrupt her life. She was someone who had arisen from the abyss where she had been pushed into by that man. The young man who grandpa loved to refer to as Glowing star, had turned into a black hole.
That man fell into the abyss of deception and selfishness, like the angels had once fallen from the paradise. Lucifer was a better man than this modern day devil. Lucifer was proud and craved for freedom. He was courageous enough to voice his desire, was courageous to rebel. Yougal Lucas wore a cloak of filial piety and proved to be a deceptive coward at the end.
Lucifer was magnificent even in his fall, whereas the glowing star turned black hole Yougal Lucas sucked everything good in him into abyss. Yougal Lucas Sinha caused more than enough damage to last one lifetime. She left the party early not wanting to give Rhianna any idea by her hard to conceal foul mood around that man. Moreover the next day being Saturday she would have to wake up early in the morning.
*******
Next morning Nia was up early. Soon she was on the road, driving home. Every weekend she went home which was at one hour distance from the city where she worked. Nia loved her time at home, she basked in the love showered on her and enjoyed the food her mother, grandma and Sarita mai prepared for her. Her spending the weekends at home served two purposes.
One was to spend time with her mom and grandma, the other was to supervise the works of the NGO to give to the two ladies the much needed break from the work of the week days. Though she was away in the city during the week days, most of the works of the NGO and their big agricultural farm was monitored by her.
She opened the NGO four and a half years ago when she was twenty-three, for women and young girls, who were victims of abuses and were abandoned. And her mom and grandma helped her to manage the work. There were also other people who had helped her in the matter of the NGO. Her colleague Maya Saikia's husband who was the director of the state welfare board for women, was one of them.
It was not an NGO merely for providing short term solution to victimized women, which only afforded temporary shelter and counselling. It was more like an organization for rehabilitation, helping them to earn an income and to live a secured, independent life when they leave. The women here were given training on different fields that they were interested in, like dress making, embroidery, cooking, baking, repairing electronic gadgets and even training to work as bodyguards.
The girls were provided with an education and all of them, girls and women included, were trained in martial arts. After her own hellish experience Nia regarded that training them in the martial arts was as much a necessity as giving them an education or vocational training. She herself earned a black belt in both karate and taekwondo. After the intense training for more than five years she was now a fierce fighter. But very few people knew that.
In the harsh reality of the world the women were not worshipped as goddesses. They were treated either as objects of adoration or as the target of abuses. Those in this shelter were either abused or discarded as unnecessary things by the very people they had trusted and looked up to. These women and girls were not from rich families and were never treated as some princesses. Their lives were not simple and most of them had forgotten about the word happiness.
Even the princesses in the fairy tales were taken advantage of because they were not strong, because their supposedly true love found them at a time when they were vulnerable. The girls and the women at the shelter did not ever heard of the stories of the Sleeping Beauty or of Snow White. But they were told hordes of stories about obedient daughters and submissive wives from religious texts and folklores.
They learned early that they were a burden to their parents and husbands, because they were born females. Females, for those people were born to obey and serve. Only those lucky ones were treated as assets. Nia's own experience had taught that women needed to learn to defend themselves, even against that ostentatious sexual offender popularly known as The Prince Charming.
When she reached their small town it was still early. The shop owners were opening the shops; lifting up the shutters, sprinkling water on the threshold, lighting incense sticks. She cast glance at the familiar scene as she drove along the road at a slow speed.
As her car left their small town and drove on the road to the outskirt of the town that had almost no traffic at that hour of the morning, Nia inhaled the familiar comfort of her home town. It was spring, with half golden half green summer paddy fields on either side of the road. Soon it would be time for gathering the harvest in their firm. A feeling of happy tranquility wrapped around her, warming up her heart and soul. She was almost home, among her family.
Nia imagined the eager faces and the happy smiles of everyone at home, the endless chattering surrounding her, while her mom and grandma waiting patiently till others were done welcoming her. Sarita mai would chase all away, saying Nia was tired. Her mom and grandma would be relieved to have her to themselves for a while before Nia disappear into the office room. This happened every weekend. A happy smile spread on her face.
Nia thought that if fairy tales were to be told at all, then little girls should be taught to be brave like Merida and Moana or Mulan. Actually they should be told stories of real life princesses, queens, modern day women rulers; who ruled kingdoms, states, countries, and of women who were scientists, explorers, writers and innovators.
She told her little girls in the shelter home such stories of brave, intelligent women in the evening in the Sundays when they sat in the garden eating snacks and drinking tea. It would not do the girls any good by feeding them with stories of naive, submissive doll like princesses and of sexual offenders in the name of Charming Princes.
Why a girl should be taught that her happiness lay with a man and in marriage? Nia saw no logic in such thoughts. If a girl wanted a man, she would seek one when she grew up. There was no point brainwashing from a young age about a Prince Charming or a knight in shining armor. 'Ha ha ha...' Nia laughed loudly as a thought popped up in her head. She drove the car in high speed. A few male drivers on the road tried to compete with her.
Perhaps they were taken in by her free spirited laughter or felt challenged by the fast driving beautiful woman. She was not interested. She was still deep in thought, 'It seems a girl looks more appealing and is the perfect prize for the knights and princes, or should I correct it to the more modern terms like CEOs and billioners, if she appears to be a damsel in distress.'
Maybe that was why girls were taught to be subservient. Look at her own self, Nia thought, the man who was arranged to make her happy only brought bitterness even before he stepped into her life. She remembered what her grandfather had told her when she refused to get engaged to that man and insisted on pursuing a career.
"A girl's real happiness lies with her husband and in her marriage. Even at the end of achieving success in professional life a woman will have to have a man to protect her."
Nia started laughing again as she processed the irony of those words. They were some very irrelevant words to her and to those abandoned women in the shelter. God bless her dear grandfather's soul but his way of fixing happiness for her proved fatal even to himself. Nia would always teach girls and even the women that they need not search for a man to make them happy.
They could take care of themselves, protect themselves and even others. Nia used to tell Mahua and the others,
"Love is in your life not only when there is a man to love you. Love is also there when you love yourself. You may or may not have a man to tell you that he loves you. But you can always tell yourself that you are in love with you, so feel loved and be happy."
She would always tell them that as women their happiness should not be like the meatless bones thrown at dogs. Their happiness should not be mortgaged to a man, who played with their vulnerability. Nia encouraged self love, and told them that it was never selfish to love oneself. She taught them that love begun with loving the self.
She collected stories of those women from across the world who braved hardships and never bowed down to the demons that tormented them. They were common women from ordinary walks of life, just like those in the shelter. They were women who fought back to survive.
Through their life sagas Nia attempted to instill hopes in the women who were scared to start their lives anew, almost from the scratch and encouraged them to be able to stand alone when the time came for them to do so.