ETI TOMAR , yours truly

Life can’t control destiny.
During the 2nd world war, the whole world suffered. Its effects even swallowed up those lands that
didn’t turn into battlegrounds.
In Assam, India’s Far East, a baby was born in a school teacher’s family around that time. Poverty
overwhelmed the whole family. They ended their lives…
The baby was forgotten and left behind in that commotion. That baby survived the passage of death.
He is Amar Hazarika who lived to see the ever-changing world thereafter.
Amar Hazarika, a retired man in his late seventies lives with his wife in a loveless marriage in the
The USA. One day he decides to travel to his birthplace Assam hoping to see the long-lost love of his
life one last time.
Reminiscence takes Amar Hazarika to his younger days back in 1950s Guwahati, Assam.
Amar was raised by his maternal grandparents and turned into parents in real life. His father worked in the
district court. His mother was a housewife. He had two elder brothers. His father somehow managed
their livelihood with his meager income.
One day a young girl around ten years old arrived with her widowed mother in his wealthy but
friendly neighbor’s house. Her name was Manasi
Soon Amar and Manasi started to interact and venture into the neighborhood and on the banks of the
Brahmaputra together.
Manasi’s mother used to take Amar along for a ride in a cycle rickshaw when she took her daughter
for her music class or to go to a movie.
Amar was brilliant in academics. He used to help Manasi with her studies.
Around this time Amar’s immediate elder brother had to leave home forever because he married a
tribal girl supposedly of lower class. Their elder brother vehemently opposed this marriage.
Before walking out of the house with his newly married wife he asked Amar to break all these
shackles of the society once he becomes an adult.
Soon after this incident, Amar loses his father…now it’s his other elder brother and his mother who
take care of him with love and affection.…
By the time Amar and Manasi reach college in the early 1960s, their childhood friendship turns into a deep
love and they gave their hearts to each other.
Amar becomes the college topper and applies to universities in the USA.
He receives the admission letter from a US university but his family could not afford the cost of his
higher studies and that too in a far-away foreign land.
Amar had a great set of close friends, who contributed towards the expenditures. Amar accepted it
as a loan.
His best friend advised Amar to get married to Manasi before leaving for the USA. He offered
accommodation for Amar and Mansi in his uncle’s house in the USA until Amar could find his
foothold.
But their marriage was not to be, not because Amar’s family was poor. The caste barrier was too hard
to break through. Amar ended up marrying a stranger to appease his dying mother who had practically
sacrificed her life for him. And Manasi’s widowed mother too soon found a young Brahmin man and
Manasi too got married to a stranger. Two lives went their separate ways only to meet once again at
the tail end of their lives reminiscing about their love that was forbidden by society.