Bena's Summer

Description

A faint noise reached the kitchen. The tenor and cadence so familiar, drifting from the streets not so far away. Women in the kitchen froze. Not one woman sobbed, not one child whimpered. This was a set of people that had seen and survived many riots before.

Qasai Tola was now silent.And sitting within this circle of women, oblivious to all that was happening as the tiny town of Sultanpur burned, was Bena, biting happily into the honey-soaked goodness of a hazaar waraq ka paratha.It was…