A Thousand Splendid Suns

on the charts today is "world women heart day" and an international Hospital here in Bangalore has urged everyone to support this cause by wearing something Red. So far so good, though I am not really sure for those who are in red today are supporting the very cause.

Anyways I am supporting the cause and have a red band on the wrist of my right hand, does it help! Yes it does for sure....

Some time back I read this book by Khaled Hossini, "Thousand Splendid Sun". The condition and environment in which I read the book was somehow giving me a chance to make a comparison. Its about life of one Mariam, a five year old Afghan girl. She is a "Haarami" i.e resultant of a wealthy man sleeping with his maid and the social rejection here-onwards for every haarami born. Its even worse for a girl to sustain in a male dominated Afghan society.

The book goes into actually walk you through her life and the reflection of all the changes that was occurring during the time in Afghanistan becoming a part of Mariam. The small girl gets the shock of her life when she escapes from her solitary hut into the town where her father lived and was not allowed to enter the mansion. She had to stay all night at the gate until the next morning a driver took her back to the hut only to find her mother hanging dead. It was just the beginning, Jalil(father) and his wives quickly arrange for her to be married away to an older widower named Rasheed, who was shoemaker in Kabul. Then comes the repeated attempts of giving birth and also the fight with her self into becoming a wife from a girl in company of Rasheed.

The story is quickly disturbed by the sudden introduction of Laila, a beautiful girl born to the ethnic Tajik couple - Hakim, a progressive-minded high school teacher. And neighbor to Mariam and Rasheed. The changing political scenario of the country started showing its colors on the entire cast of the novel. Here the story turns into more and more torturous, leading to events one after another and ending at Laila getting married to the very old Rasheed as his second wife. Rest is worth reading in Khaled's way rather than me trying to narrate it for you. Its about their struggle and sacrifice into becoming and living a friend, a wife, a mother, a woman.