4S - Love Comes Softly, Ch 1,2 -Pg 1,4

Ch 1. Of Stepmothers and Midwives

It was four years after the demise of his wife that Maan decided to remarry. The children needed a mother as well as he needed a companion.

He let the village matchmaker know about this. Since he was very particular about the kind of woman he would marry, he instructed her his preferences.

"Someone who'll love and look after my kids as her own. Someone who'll understand me and my field of work and prove to be an equal partner."

Once the meeting with the matchmaker was done, he set to the second agenda which was informing his children about the same.

He wanted to prepare them for the situation. Only he did not know how the news would be received. Still, they had to be informed.

"You'll soon get a new mother. I'm going to get married." He told his daughter in the evening when he picked her up from school.

The son was at home playing with the neighbourhood kids and he trusted the daughter to pass the message onto her brother.

"To whom?" Asmaan, his eldest asked.

"I do not know. We'll get to know soon."

"Hmm"

"You don't have a problem, do you?"

She shrugged her shoulders and remained quiet.

"Don't worry, I'll make sure she loves you like your Mumma."

Without any response, the daughter started worrying her lips.

"Will you be okay with it, my sky?"

"I cannot answer for I am not sure. I don't think I would like a new mother."

"It is okay, child. I'll do nothing that you won't like." He made a false promise. It was difficult managing farm and children together. Getting a wife was no longer a luxury but had become a necessity.

Asmaan remained reserved the whole night and the day after. When her younger brother came and invited her to play with him. She did not acknowledge him.

Tired of calling her name, again and again, he jumped on her and attaching himself to her limbs, he began dragging her to the courtyard.

That finally found her attention. She slapped him hard at his back and pushed him away from her making him cry.

Instead of appeasing her brother, she began to wail loudly herself.

Her brother immediately wiped off his crocodile tears and then brought his fingers to wipe his sister's face.

"I did not even hit you?"

"We are going to get a stepmother!"

"Stepmother?"

"Yes, like Cinderella. Like Sleeping Beauty and Like Hansel and Gretel.''

The boy not understanding the full implication of her sister's words just sat there looking at his idol.

"I'm scared. She'll be cruel. Have you not read how the stepmothers have nothing to do except for scheming against her stepchildren. I'm sure she'll throw us in the cauldron and fry us."

"But human beings cannot be fried."

"They can be. If you do it nicely, you can fry them in big cauldrons."

''But we don't have big cauldrons,'' her brother reasoned.

''She'll get it from her home. Did you not see when Dilip Bhaiya's wife came she'd got so many utensils and fridge and bed with her.''

''And sweets,'' the boy added,''She had got sweets too. Ladoos, gajas, and barfis.'' The boy had just begun to get lost in the wonderland of sweets when her sister dragged him out of it.

"She will serve us to Papa and he'll eat us without having any idea that it is us."

"But he will ask where is Asmaan, Shehar, he always asks. He never eats alone" All this talk of frying and sweets was making him hungry. He remembered the pennies in his pocket which his father had given him for having cotton candy.

''Asma, do you want to have cotton candy?''

Asmaan for a second found herself in a moral dilemma of whether to continue her brooding about life and stepmothers or to take pleasures in worldly things like candies and cotton.

After three seconds of soul searching, she decided that no girl can brood on an empty stomach. So cotton candy it was.

...

''What is it tell me? Is she...," her lips trembled not aiding her in speech.

"Yes, your suspicions were not ill grounded. Geet is with a child,'' the midwife said.

''Good Lord!'' Rano gasped.

''What are we going to do now? Her grandfather will kill her. Should we abort the child? Can you?''

'What are you saying Rano? It's wrong. How will you show your face to the Almighty after having committed such a crime? No, never.''

''Then, what do I do, Sister? Help us, please.''

''Let me think. Till then keep silent, my friend. Keep Silent.''

Ch 2- Pg 4

Ch 3 - Pg

Ch 4 - Pg