(Note: Read parts1 & 2 before proceeding. Part3 is the final part and the climax of the story. Thank you.)







No, he had to find a way.



Safiz entered the cottage.



At one corner sat his wife Begum with tiny Aman on her lap, who was playing with her long unkempt curls.



Amina lay in another more shaded corner, fast asleep, unaware of the dire future she would have to, may be, face in that totally exasperating hour of hopeless poverty.





Presently Begum noticed him.



'Ki hoyechhe? (What has happened?)' she asked in her accent. 'I told you the rice is only for Aman tonight.'






'Begum, I love you,' four words escaped his lips before he had realised it and Begum, startled, looked at him, as if she had received an electric shock.


'I love Aman. I love Amina. I love you all. But right now I hate myself. I hate myself for being responsible for all we are going through.'






'Don't blame yourself ... if there had been no Amphan, ...'






'If there had been no Amphan ... we would have still been the same. Begum, I'm going to Kolkata. Let's see how much I can earn a day begging on the streets.'






'But there will be no cars on the streets because of the lockdown,' said Begum.






'I will go and I will beg. I will bring back money. I will!' said Safiz fiercely, waking up Amina with a start.
'What will happen? Right now we have no money, no food to eat. Then at least we will be able to feed our children, right?'





The next morning Safiz left for Kolkata, barefoot, wearing nothing but his regular faded dhoti and gamchha, without even wishing his family goodbye.




***************************





And since then five months passed, but the news of Safiz's death in a freak car accident in the area around Park Circus never reached his family.








________THE END________



(A semifictional story based on the acute destruction, damage caused in the Sunderbans, West Bengal by the supercyclone Amphan.)