Letters to Brian Edward

Nitu grew up in the capital. Her father died when she was four. Mr. kabir was only thirty nine and thats no age to die but god was cruel with him. He had a terrible accident. When he was crossing the road, he slipped off by a banana skin. And a bus ran over him. His death was not very hard for Mrs. kabir to take. They only had a marriage of five years and she wouldn’t call it a very good one.
Mrs. Kabir worked for a bank. She would be busy from 9 to 5 everyday. she came home around at 7 pm and cooked for her daughter and herself. When dinner was over by 10 pm, news and sleeping seemed to interest her more than the little girl at home. Besides her daughter never seemed to talk. Even it was impossible to find out if anything was going on except for school.
Nitu’s certificate called her Faria kabir. Being in the developing country, except for watching people everywhere and sitting in the traffic jam for hours, she did not have to endure much. She seemed to be in the best school which was only for girls. She seemed to have good clothing and good food. The only thing she would crave for was a friend who would be with her when she was at home after school. She was not allowed to go outside after being back from school. Mother would say there are dangerous people everywhere. She should come home straight and should never talk to any stranger. So after the bell rang she would get in the school bus and come straight home. She always had last night’s left over kept in the freeze. She would heat them up and eat it. They had a temporary maid named Poly. Nitu would be scared of her all the time. Poly would make her drink three glasses of water what seemed to have her stomach blown like a water popped balloon. And if she refused to have it poly would complain to her mother and mother would make the scary big eyes that scared her even more. Poly stayed for two hours and Sometimes more because of the Bengali movie that used to be played in tv . She would make nitu watch it which seemed to bore her most of the time and used to talk while watching which would confuse her every time. She would talk about how babies are born and would say how her parents mate and made her. These words would give her different feelings than usual. Her body temperature would rise up and have fried ears. Since she was alien to this, she would leave Poly and be in her room.
Poly left at 1 pm. Sometimes a little late and then the nightmare started for Nitu. She would be alone in the whole house, would try to watch tv but nothing grew any interest in her. She would go and sit in the corner of the room by the table and wait for mother to come. At first she did not know everything was more interesting than waiting. But later she did not have to know because she found thinking to be more interesting than anything. She would imagine anything and could make it happen in her thoughts. She started imagining friends who would listen to her and tell her the words she wanted to hear. Before, when it started to be dark and she was alone in the house, it would scare her to death. She would pray that god doesn’t kill her now by the ghosts and that mother would come a bit early. But after having her imaginary friends, she would imagine that they were with her. She would share the fear.
Mother always was concerned about studies. She would say Nitu should study a lot to earn money, to be in a good position in life. Mother would ask why she wasn’t standing first in the class. She studied as much as she could but she did not know why she couldn’t make it. It would make her very sad. She would feel like the only thing mother wanted was not even given because she was not smart like Oishi, the first girl in her class, because she could not remember everything to write in the exam. The time mother stayed at home, she had to sit in the table and study. And at the weekends she would study all day which would make her feeling suffocated. But she could not say anything because mother scared her the most.
One day her aunt came from Canada. And she brought many chocolates for her and hugged and adored her. That made Nitu instantly a big fan of hers. She started thinking there must be nicer people in Canada.
When Nitu was in standard six, she came to know about writing letters to pen friend. She fancied the whole idea. She started to think of having a pen friend in Canada, which she did not know how to have.
She used to go to a place sometimes, called Buddha temple (in Bengali it was Buddha mondir). There were many monks from everywhere of the world. She thought that she would get someone from Canada and would ask him to help her. But she didn’t find anyone from that country rather she found people from Belgium, china, Thailand. The monks were a bit old, all of them. When she asked Mariz Beltran( the monk from Thailand) about knowing someone in Canada, he said that he has a friend who lives in there. He has a son about of her age who could be Nitu’s pen friend. Nitu became very happy. Nothing ever excited her more than this. The monk told her to come tomorrow so that he could give her the address.

to be continued....