The King’s Gambit: Chapter 2 (The Soldier)

Needs more suspense to maintain continued high interest. This segment was possibly too short to thicken the plot.

We want more...

Ras

Romair,

Great going so far. Most of your posts are longer than this, so might as well submit larger chunks of your novel.

also

Rafi Quereshi sounds like Safi Quereshi, is this intentional?

Including San Rafeal is stretching Silicon valley too far.

[``Yet this small piece of land is the engine driving the whole US economy.``]

Duh!? Did you write this before 3/2000? which is when I sold my M3 and Vinod Khosla his Lamborghini and went into hiding from his investors. Smell the coffee dude, or do you still order your groceries from Webvan?

Umair,

Cessna Citation X is quite an aircraft isn`t it... I knew you would like it... I have been eyeing it for a very long time... eventhough there

isn`t even a ghost of a chance that I`ll ever be able to buy it. It is a the fastest Business Jet Mach 0.95, that I know, but I don`t know about the `fastest plane built without government dollars.`

But where the hell are you going with your story...

This story is primarily written by Omer Rafique. I only provide some of the technical details, a few overviews, and a some ideas. It should be by Omer Rafique & Umair Raja, and not the vice-versa. So I will let Rafique answer the questions on where everything is going, and how he is pacing the story.

It is true that many of my replies are longer than each one of these chapter. However, writing an interesting chapter is twenty times as difficult as writing an uninteresting reply.

Pathan Mother?! I guess, you don`t know much about the Rajasthani (or the Rajputs) that is why this error. They don`t marry out their cast let alone marry someone outside their religion. If someone dares to defy the community norms, the person is ostracised from it. That is how staunch they are. Even in the Moghul era, they would marry their daughters to the Moghul royals but would never marry the sons for the fear of not being able to reproduce pedigree children in their family.

However, quite interesting.

Mona

MonaSehgal:``They don`t marry out their cast let alone marry someone outside their religion. If someone dares to defy the community norms, the person is ostracised from it. That is how staunch they are. ``

Me: Wow, that can`t be too good. How many generations more before this starts to adversely affect them ?

Alot of Punjabis (other communities too maybe) have this thing called watta satta, where the brother and sister marry another brother and sister set. I believe, it provides some sense of security.

Peace.

Reply Karakoram # 6

``Alot of Punjabis (other communities too maybe) have this thing called watta satta, where the brother and sister marry another brother and sister set. I believe, it provides some sense of security.``

And exchange of hostages?

Sign the Petition

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/CNN/petition.html

THis is a counter petition to India`s lies.

#: 5

monasehgal

Pathan Mother?! I

Isnt movie Zubeida ,about a prince of Rajputana marrying a divorced muslim lady ?I did not see the movie but it is one of the spate of movies showing muslim girls being wooed by Hindu hero .An obvious attempt to injure minority feelings in India

``He was all for Indian girls pursuing professions. He just did not want his wife to pursue one``

...ah, yes...the desi male psyche at its finest...

Reply Bapu #9

``Pathan Mother?! I

Isnt movie Zubeida ,about a prince of Rajputana marrying a divorced muslim lady ?I did not see the movie but it is one of the spate of movies showing muslim girls being wooed by Hindu hero .An obvious attempt to injure minority feelings in India ``

What obvious rubbish.

Karakoram #6

Can`t say when the mind set would change. One of my Rajput friend got married to a person of her choice, not from her community and her parents didn`t speak to her for over an year (that is when a child was born). Incidentally they are cut from there relatives and are finding it difficult to get their other daughter married. I sincerely hope that things should change and that too at the earliest.

As for Punjabis, yes the system of watta-satta is followed by some, esp. amongst Multanis and Jhangis, but amongst the other Punjabis, it is not considered the right thing to do - Jes ghar to kudi lende hain, oos ghar che dende nahin, kinds.

Mona

Shatru Sinha #9

Yes, in Zubeida, the king did marry the Muslim divorcee. But that was his second marraige, that too when he already had children from the earlier one. You know, the elder son being the pedigree.

In real live, the son that he had from Zubeida was killed. And many people still don`t consider that he actually married her.

Incidentally, the children from such marraiges or the illegitimate children of the royals form a second grade royalties and are not considered equal to the legitimate ones.

Mona

My previous reply didn`t make it. So I will repeat it here.

I want to thank the Chowk editors for publishing the second chapter. You have been very kind, as have the interactors.

Ras 1; These are abridged versions of the actual chapters. The actual chapters would be too long to publish here. I am having some difficulty in reducing the size of the chapters, without losing the theme of the story.

The first five or so chapters deal with introductions to characters. The story will move one step, while the characters move five or six steps. After that, the story will start moving at a faster pace. So a bit of patience...

ali1 2; Rafi Qureshi has so far been compared to Mansoor Ejaz and Safi Qureshi. I will leave the answer to your imagination on whom he is modeled after.

On a lighter not, dare I say, Umair has modeled Captain Vijay Chauhan after himself:-) Both have a common family background. Umair is a little shorter. And his wife`s name isn`t Pooja.

San Rafael/Marin area is the biggest center of Multimedia in Silicon Valley, and maybe in the whole world. George Lucas`s ILM studios is located there.

Stock prices will go up and go down, but Silicon Valley will continue being the engine of the US economy. Sellling stocks at the right time is what separates people like Safi (sorry, I mean Rafi) Qureshi from the rest of us (who are usually left holding the bag).

ylh 3; The only aircraft that are faster than the Citation X are military aircraft and passenger aircraft like Tupolev 144 and Concorde. All these aircraft were built with joint funding from private enterprise and the govt. Some were built completely with govt. funding. Citation X was built by Cessna without any government funding.

The story is only two small chapters old. Patience...

monasehgal 5; The Pathan lady is a Hindu descendant of Pathans.

You have caught a point which I pondered over for a while. This one, alongwith the terrain northwest of Jaipur, and the cermonial dress of the 2nd Rajput.

I made a slight leap of faith on the Pathan marraige. Here are the reasons:

Rajput or Raja-putra (son of kings) is a term common to India and Pakistan. Many Pakistanis, with the name Raja, trace their ancestory back within a few centuries to Hindu Rajputs. Many of them trace their heritage back to Rajasthan. From this, it can be seen that Rajputs did change their religion (either voluntarily or forcefully), and they do migrate to various areas outside their initial area of origin.

The Rajput descendants in Pakistan do marry outside their casts. They however seem to be very conscious of the, ``equalness`` of the castes they are marrying into. Also, they seem to follow many of the social customs of their Hindu ancestors. I have been to marraiges where the only Muslim custom was the actual Nikah signatures.

Based on that, I am assuming Indian Rajputs marry outside their caste also. Added to this is the fact that Vijay`s father spent his whole life in the Army, and travelled all over India. His chances of meeting someone outside his caste greatly increased.

South Asian Pathans were originally Buddhists or Zoroastrians. I am assuming there must be Hindu descendants of Pathans in India also. Perhaps Krishma Kapoor is one? So possibly Gen. Mahesh ended up marrying a relative of hers.

As a final, ``out,`` while it maybe extremely rare, as you have pointed out, but there is nothing biologically stopping a Rajput from marrying a Pathan lady. He will not explode or turn into a goblin.

What do you think?

Hey Rafique!

Cut to the chase willya?

The elaborate descriptions are getting to be boring. They are show-offish and read as if you tore pages off airport pulp thrillers at random and blended them.

Awright, you`re writing for fun & i`m being harsh..

I have a more fundamental problem tho..

I don`t think it is EVER possible for someone to be so thoroughly immersed in an alien culture and simultaneously be wedded strongly to a hostile ideology. Know what i mean?

I happen to know some very observant orthodox jews - skull caps, modest dresses and the whole bit. These folks are lawyers, profs, what have you and certainly have the means but live simply. That i can understand. Anything else would be going over to the ``other side``. Your protoganist is a severely artificial construct like something from science fiction.