Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Fictional story: Syed and Gayatri didn't mean to fall in love. But love happens when you least expect it. It creeps up suddenly. When someone needs attention, care, conversation, laughter and maybe even intimacy. Love doesn't look at logic, or at backgrounds and least of all, religion.
Gayatri was from a very conservative South Indian family that went to a temple every Saturday. Syed bought goats for his family every Eid. That said it all. Their paths would never have crossed if it hadn't been for that fateful day. That day when he walked into the coffee shop. Gayatri wondered if destiny chose our loved ones for us. Did we have any role to play at all?
She looked at her watch. Syed was late. They met every Thursday at five pm to catch up. Their conversation lasted for hours. Sometimes at the cafe, sometimes in his car, sometimes in places that she could never tell her friends about. They would never understand. And yet Syed made her happy.
Suddenly her phone beeped. He had sent a message. "On my way. Have something important to tell you."
Gayatri stared at it and realised she had knots in her stomach. Thoughts flooded her mind. What did he want to tell her?
In the coffee shop, he seated at their favourite table. He looked exhausted. Gayatri knew that his tiredness was not because of any physical activity but due to stress. Which was showed in his eye(s)? Looked like he did not sleep properly last night. He fumbled to start the conversation. He gathered words to prepare sentence. After some pause and the short break, he proposed to Gayatri. Her body shakes by the sudden jolt. She did not expect this proposal. She shivers from head to toe. She left the coffee shop in disbelief.
It took two full weeks to Gayatri came to the conclusion that she liked Syed and loved him from the bottom of the heart. She conveyed her feeling for Syed on the same table in the coffee shop. Love turned upside down for Gayatri. She finds everything beautiful and attractive. Her behaviour was strange. Her mind and heart were not in sync. She felt jubilant and amazing with new stuff in life.
Syed was glad to know Gayatri positive response. So he got very excited after hearing Gayatri’s response. Their meetings were longer and they eager to know others perspective on topics they discussed. They wanted to spend more time with each other.
During their conversation’s, lots of time Syed mentioned about his Ammi and Abbu.
He had one younger sister named Reshma. Syed described his village as the beautiful fairy tale. He never got tired of describing his evergreen subject village beauty. His village Anandpur was a small town surrounded by coconut trees and one side covered by a river. His father owned three acres of land. A family earning based on farm income. The family was very religious and aesthetic. Syed came to district place to learn and earn. After college completion, he worked as insurance company employee.
Also, few times he narrated the college days, in last year of college, Syed came into Yousuf contact. They were the gang of four people. Syed was the newest entry. Syed was impressed by Yousuf ideology slowly. The way he walks, talks and conveys any thought. Syed and his friends were impressed by that. Yousuf had the opinion about everything which was based on proper ideas. Due to friendly nature, Yousuf was the apple of the eye of everyone on a college campus. On the opposite side of Yousuf was Yunus. Very shy… not in focus... very soft spoken. He was never the standout type in the crowd and possessed a hidden personality. Javed is the fourth person to the group.
Yunus met mysterious person regularly. A person with the long beard. Whitecap on a head. They discussed a lot of things. They had an agenda and both were trying to implement it as a perfect plan. But plan results enclosed in the wrapper of future events.
Love is a kind of feeling, and it can't be hidden from closed ones for a long time. Before her mother asks or gets to know from others, Gayatri told all the things about Syed and his love proposal to the family. But her mother Darshana strongly opposed love marriage.
Darshana was outraged on daughter love affair.
“Gayatri, how dare you to think about love at this phase of life and that too with a guy from another religion”.
Darshana’s angry voice made a crack in Gayatri confident.
“But she insisted... tried to explain…”
“Her mother firmly disapproved and cut her voice in the middle”.
“Gayatri looked at mother face. Her eyes were constantly focused on Gayatri. “
“She thought that her mother’s eyes will pierce her body if she said anything further.”
She committed to herself, and she will try her best to convince her mother.
Darshana repeated the story. As she always said. How they survived after her husband death. Without anybody support how she raised her daughter. They belonged to the small village in Kerala. She did odd jobs to earn income to feed Gayatri and herself.
She saw the dark side of life. Even in hardship she never expected anyone to pull their life from poverty. She was a woman of strong desire and sense. She worked eighteen hours a day to support her daughter education. In this process of earn livelihood, she lost her happiness. She was very strict in work ethics and she made sure that her daughter taught to live with dignity. Recently they shifted to this district place when Gayatri got the job as a nurse in the local hospital.
After the episode of declaring her love, Lots of restriction were imposed on Gayatri. Nowadays, she stopped visiting the temple. Only the round trip to the hospital.
Gayatri continually tried to persuade her mother for approval for their marriage.
It took Gayatri six months to convince Darshana to approve their relationship.
Gayatri missed their coffee shop meetings on Thursdays during this time.
Syed’s family did not accept their love affair in the first attempt. Syed and his friends need to do the tough task to convince his family. His family lived in a village. They accept it after too many efforts by Syed.
Lots of discussions happened over the wedding. Both families desired to follow their rituals and customs. Syed and Gayatri had respect both religion. And they took the vow, and they will not interfere with each other religion. They will respect each other religion privacy. They mutually agreed to two conditions: 1) No interference with religion. 2) Gayatri will continue to assist to her mother financially.
Finally, they got married. Their dream came true. Many times, they dream about their marriage and own home. One task accomplished. The second one remained.
But Gayatri noticed that Syed’s behaviour and attitude gradually changed and he became more aggressive on smaller things. Gayatri ignored it for first few instances.
Nowadays Syed spends lots of time with his friend’s. Gayatri sometimes gets irritated with this. She wants to spend more time with her husband. The trouble started when Syed told her to discontinue her temple visits. Gayatri was shocked and did not believe her ears. Syed gave another name Asma to Gayatri. Earlier whenever Syed was in the funny mood. He used to call her Asma. But nowadays he used ‘Asma’ name regularly. That was frustrating for Gayatri. For the first few days, she ignored it. But after that, she firmly opposed her new name. But instead of a solution to any problem, her worries deepened. As per his plan, Syed slowly destroyed Gayatri religious identity. Gayatri strongly reacted to this kind of treatment.
Gayatri got confused by Syed behaviour. His reaction was entirely different before their marriage. Earlier, he believed in religious freedom. Now his thoughts and action were ultimately frustrating and aggressive.
She started a watch on her husband. She found some serious documents. She started spying on Syed calls on mobile.
She gets nothing for first few days. After the detailed searching, she found few inconsequential document. The document contains all her details. She had her doubts that Syed was involved in some suspicious activity. She started to put more efforts to uncover the mystery of Syed activity.
One fine day, she saw Syed in a hurry. She saw and followed him. He travelled to some remote location of the city. It’s looked like Syed came to meet someone. She saw Syed chatting with someone. From long distance, she could see that they were discussing some serious matter. That person tried to convince some things to Syed. But it looks like Syed wasn’t happy with that. She was unable to hear their voices but could see their facial expressions. She was not able to recognise the unknown person face.
She went home and tried to identify that person in memory. She searched their marriage photo album. It was a court marriage that few people attended. She searched for the in Syed’s college photo album and found that unknown person was none other than Syed’s friend. She tried to establish Syed’s past connection to her marriage. And she got more questions than the answer.
Next day After Syed left to an office, She again goes to that place where she visited yesterday to get some clue or lead in investigate. Gayatri observed the mysterious house from a distance. There was no activity in the home. Suddenly Yousuf came in front of Gayatri. She got terrified about the turn of this event. Soon, Yousuf identified Gayatri and ask her lots of question about her suspicious presence in the remote location. She gets relaxed when she find out that person will not harm her. Yousuf has the well-built body. His eyes were greyish and mysterious. His body language had full of confident. He makes a good impression on any person in his first meeting. His movement was flawless. Initially, she didn't trust him. He told her to follow him else he will tell this incident to Syed. They went to the nearby hotel.
“What were you doing here, Gayatri”?
“Gayatri surprised and said just passing from this place.”
“Were you doing some investigation”?
“No”.
“Then what were you doing here”?
After too much pressure, she introduced herself and explained about the clue. Also showed printed paper to Yousuf.
It was Yousuf turns to get shocked. Lots of things happened in last few months.
He explains that how he gathered all information about Gayatri before she started a courtship with Syed. Yousuf knew every detail about Gayatri - how many members were there in Gayatri’s family, the time when they left their village, how she completed the degree and how hard her mother had worked to support her education.
He knew that Syed used this information to impress Gayatri and marry her. But it's looked like a different story by Gayatri.
Yousuf told her, his friend wife Sanyukta was missing from few days. Yesterday he met Syed to discuss this issue.
He also tried to link all stories. Is there any connection between the stories of Sanyukta and Gayatri? He had gathered information for both of them. For both of them, he gathered all information. Will Gayatri also disappear?
His brain bowled by all these scouts. His brain signalled him there was a conspiracy in all these stories.
He warned Gayatri about this threat and told her she will be in extreme danger if it were true as he thought.
They promised to meet for next few days and exchange mobile number. They left the hotel.
Next few days they met and also Yousuf tried to find out some details about Sanyukta.
And Yousuf succeeded. Sanyukta was pregnant and imprison by Yunus in the remote house in the Syed village. He informed the Gayatri. They raided that place and rescued her from the remote place with the help of few friend’s.
Sanyukta, the wife of Yunus. In her shocking revelation, Yunus did injustice to their marriage. He victimised his wife. After, one year of courtship, they got married. Yunus started an unrighteous activity after three months. A number of attempts made to change her religion, name, identity and personality. She survived all these attempts and firmly said no to religion conversion. After that, Yunus kept her in the secluded place. He strenuously beat, harasses, torture Sanyukta lots of times. Also, two-three people involved in this activity. Syed was one of them, who torture her to convert to another religion. After the rescue, Yousuf and Gayatri assisted Sanyukta to complain to the police for harassment and forceful religious conversion attempts. Also, Sanyukta filed divorce complaint in court.
Since Sanyukta didn't have any family relative, She stayed at Darshana’s house. Gayatri immediately shifted to mother house. First few days she unable to digest the Syed real truth and plan. After few weeks, she applied for divorce in court from Syed.
In court, Syed and Yunus revealed lots of information and confirmed that how they develop a plan, target, profiling against women’s for religion conversion. How one of powerful local pro-religious leader involved in this wicked activity.
Till the case ends, lots of problems surfaced on the table for the community. The court said these were individual cases and there was no proof of criminal activity involved in this cases. Also, the Gayatri layer not able to prove any charges against pro-religious leader involvement. Gayatri wanted to know why Syed planned the conspiracy against her. Gayatri tried to meet Syed in prison. But he was not able to answer none of her questions. Syed and his friend’s get out of prison after minor imprisonment. Sanyukta and Gayatri got a divorce from their husband’s. Both of them looked forward to living and started afresh.
