Rehtaf - Father of the Fatherless

Manoj Joy

Description

In this poignant story, a chain of events unfolds that leads a mother and her son on unexpected journeys during different timeframes where fate determines the outcome.
It is the 1970s when fourteen-year-old Leela leaves everything behind in her rural town and boards the Malabar train for Adakam in Kasaragod, India. She mistakenly believes she is heading to attend a church feast, but when she arrives, she is horrified to learn that she is about to become the wife of Yacob, a young man who had visited her house a year earlier with his overbearing mother.

Naturally devastated, Leela reluctantly prepares for the ceremony. Ordered to give up her education and the remainder of her childhood, Leela is now a wingless butterfly unable to chase her dreams. After she and Yacob marry, Leela attempts to settle into her new life as a housemaid without consummating her marriage. But one night after someone sneaks into her room, disguising as Yacob, to share her bed, Leela soon realises she is pregnant. But who is the father? As she faces many challenges that ultimately will lead to tragedy, Leela has no idea that years later, her son will endure unthinkable abuse as he struggles to find his own destiny and the true identity of his father.

In this poignant story, a chain of events unfolds that leads a mother and her son on unexpected journeys during different timeframes where fate determines the outcome.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Balboa Press AU
• Date de parution: 23 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781982297633
• Langue: English

Extrait

REHTAF- Father of the Fatherless
 
 
 
MANOJ JOY
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright © 2023 Manoj Joy.
 
[e-mail]
www.manojoy.com
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
Balboa Press
A Division of Hay House
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.balboapress.com.au
AU TFN: 1 800 844 925 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well- being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Cover photo courtesy: Cinjo K Raghavan and Master Niranjan Cinjo
 
 
 
ISBN: 978-1-9822-9762-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-9822-9763-3 (e)
 
Balboa Press rev. date: 09/12/2023
This book is a tribute to my ever-loving mo ther,
LEELA JOY.
 
Lest I forget you. You shall grow not old, as I am left to grow old.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
PART ONE
1     Journey to Malabar
2    A Malabar Wedding
3    First Night with Mother-in-Law
4    The Darkest Night
5    A New Proposal for Yacob
6    The Plot
7    God’s Hand Is Not Shortened
8    The Satanic Verses
9    The Betrayal and the Magical Escape
10   Birth of the Child Mai
11   The Hunt
12   At Kalari
13   A Home in Hell
14   Death of Leela
15   Back to Malabar
16   The Way to the Orphanage
17   Little Flower Boys’ Home
18   Life in a Cage
19   The Valley of Death
20   Meeting with Dineshan
21   Reign of Kambi Lali
22   Leaving Little Flower Boys’ Home
23   An Attempt to Prove Myself Deserving
24   Back Home
25   Journey of a Destitute Person
26   The Agreement
27   Back to the Orphanage
PART TWO
28   The Wake-Up Call
29   Peace with Brother Ihdub
30   Lifting the Unliftable Yoke
31   The Stranger
32   The Engraved Rock
33   The Golden Land
34   Finding Dnim
35   Leela—the Divine Dance
36   Return to the Homeland
FOREWORD
Please, sir, I want some more.
This line from Charles Dickens is undoubtedly the most famous sentence from his novel Oliver Twist , where the boy hero—an orphan who labours in a church workhouse—asks for more food, which, he is told, makes him a sinner and a criminal. The torture and the starvation to which the little boy is subjected causes many readers to cry. At least that is how I feel when I read Rehtaf, Father of the Fatherless , especially scenes set in the orphanage.
Child marriage was prevalent in India until the 1980s, although initiatives prohibiting it date back to colonial rule, when the first law restricting child marriage was passed in 1929, known as the Sarda Act, which prohibited marriage of girls younger than fifteen and of boys younger than eighteen. That means the boy hero’s mother in Rehtaf, Father of the Fatherless was only a child of fourteen when she was married, in violation of the act. The boy knows the fact that Leela is his mother, but who is his father? The quest for a father, in an orthodox Christian family, is the pivot point around which all the action herein revolves. The boy is totally unaware of his father, and the riddle of who his father is remains unanswered in his troubled mind until the end.
The saying “Maternity is a matter of fact, whereas paternity is a matter of opinion” seems 100 per cent true in this case. The father is the one whom the mother points to. Making the drama more complex, the teenaged mother does not know with which, amongst the number of male figures in the haunted house, she shared her bed in pitch-darkness that night, which is an unforgettable night to her, one that is cursed and nightmarish. Until taking her dying breath, Leela is unaware that the man she pointed to as her son’s father isn’t actually his father.
The boy’s search for a father figure leads him into trouble as he goes from the frying pan into fire. Like a plaything in the hands of destiny, he is tossed up and down.
Rehtaf is a character used in the analogical part of this story to convey the idea of the boy’s ideal father to the reader’s mind. Some of the characters remain as engraved in rock. The teenaged mother, another ill-fated character, disappears midway. The devilish mother-in-law and her cruel husband, scheming to put an end to Leela with the help of her diabolic brother Ouseph, are unforgettable characters who are satanic in nature. Ouseph is a Shylock-like wolfish villain who, with poisonous instigation—“Learn how to fail first, if you want a final win”—makes his sister commit a crime. The advice he gives is like Satan quoting scriptures. To counter the actions of these evil characters, the author has created Chandy, an archangel saviour who inspires the boy Yacob by saying, “Having a moustache alone won’t make you a man,” reminding him to perform right action at the right time.
The inhuman torture receives from his foster father, and the heartless abuse and victimisation he experiences at the orphanage, along with all the other bitter experiences from all quarters of life, confirm that the hero is unwanted everywhere. The bitter dance of destiny is so cruel that the hero, who represents the author himself, wants to run away from reality to enter a world of fantasy.
The author, a teacher at present in Australia, narrates the events and emotions in a straightforward and honest way, like the Indo-Anglian author Madhavikutty (Kamala Surayya), who in her Ente Katha (My Story) unveils things about a woman’s sexuality that many women would hesitate to share with readers. Likewise, the author unpacks his personal story of suffocation and suppression truthfully and honestly in this, his maiden attempt at a novel, creating sheer empathy within the reader. I sure hope that Manoj Joy will be welcomed wholeheartedly like another Indo-Anglian author, Arundhati Roy (author of The God of Small Things , 1997).
—Chacko Kakkassery, author, retired professor of English at St. Thomas College, Thrissur
*   *   *
The instinct for survival is a natural characteristic of most living things, and the intensity of that instinct is different for different beings.
It is seen in nature that a deer, having been caught by a predator despite having run for a long time, surrenders to death without reacting and ends up as food because it realises that it is no longer capable of anything.
This realisation that one is destined to become a victim is behind the philosophy of surrender. Nevertheless, some creatures, until their last breath, will keep on trying to break free.
The rate of survival is greater or lower according to the degree of luck and misfortune. We can see that in most cases the victims are weak and vulnerable, which is natural.
Rehtaf, Father of the Fatherless is a narrative that unfurls like a retelling of this law of nature.
Women and children are most often exploited and victimised in human society.
A mother who is not blessed with strength and/or luck; a sister who is lost midway; a boy who is uncertain about who begat him, who yearns for a father’s affection—the first part of Rehtaf, Father of the Fatherless is about them. The realisation that this is a direct testimony of the reality of life distresses the soul.
With the self-satisfaction gained after having survived the worst, the reader encounters the second part of the novel, which is the author’s attempt to instil certain ideas in others by way of allegory. This part, organised in such a way to inspire people to fight for their survival, will undoubtedly stimulate the imaginations of the readers. Rehtaf , Father of the Fatherless is an exceptional work that provides a good reading experience.
Shaju Francis, author, Perth.
PREFACE
R ehtaf, Father of the Fatherless is the product of my strong desire to do some justice to my mum, Leela Joy, who was brutally tormented and finally killed by a violent family tradition, the custom where she was given in marriage at a very early age. She was never informed that she was going to be given in marriage; instead she was sold in the marriage marketplace like cattle sold on the cattle market for butchering. The only difference being that when cattle are sold, the owner receives money, but when Leela was sold, the owner had to pay the buyer two thousand rupees and ten pavan of gold to get rid of her (one pavan is eight grams). Her value was seven hundred thousand rupees fewer than cattle in the current