The Unwanted

Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and a small town in Bengal form the backdrop of this saga of love, betrayal, loss and redemption. Maya is plagued by the horrors inflicted upon her by life. Destiny takes Maya and her mother to Bhubaneswar, where she finds her own meaning of independence.

Niltu feels unwanted and struggles with his identity and embarks on a journey in search of his roots.

Maya, Niltu, Rakesh, Parvati, Ansar, Sharmila. Multiple lives interwoven in one story, The Unwanted.

At the core of human birth, in every fabric of human civilization, there is the spirited, empowering presence of womanhood that enables the flow of life, the never- ending cascade of creation. Within the womb of this Every Woman, is the source and sustenance of the fierce energy of human birth. This quintessential feminine power of motherhood in a woman has been manifested uniquely and beautifully through the portal of love and kinship that develops between a mother and her offspring, her progeny. Nevertheless, in an aggressively patriarchal society stricken with deluded notions of male supremacy, even such awe- inspiring, powerful womb of the mother is abused and exploited, violating the rights of a woman's body, the rights of her soul and its wants, not to mention the heinous crime of killing the unborn human fetus, honoring the baseless whims of sex/gender determination.

In a world torn by numerous crisis situations, we are also ravaged by a widespread culture of gender-discrimination, the root of which lies in the skewed perception of the incompleteness/futility of the female birth. Every day, as we gulp the of gender-based violence, honor killings of women, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault and other atrocities against women, do we stop and ponder on the basis of such unparalleled depravity of patriarchy, the sub-human behaviour of 'humans'? Do we stop and think that such tormenting narratives of abuse stem from the perverse culture of annihilating female birth, nipped in the bud from the mother's womb? Woman, who is the epitome of 'shakti' (power), the origin of creation, has unfortunately been at the receiving end where the hegemonic structure of patriarchy decides that only a male offspring can carry the family lineage forward, that only male birth from the mother's womb is desirable and cherished. Throughout the course of history and across geographical boundaries and diverse cultural backgrounds, female feticide has been a recurrent phenomenon, prohibited by law in India (the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques Act. 1994). But this concerted, manipulated violence and abuse on female birth continues to be practiced in myriad ways, in many societies around us.

**Contents and Sample Pages**