A Bastard

Prologue – “Born Without a Name”

Rain fell like needles that night — a wild monsoon that swallowed the village of Nandipur in its darkness. The storm howled through the bamboo groves, rattling the tin roofs, and washing away the footprints of the living. In that chaos, beneath a half-broken banyan tree beside the river embankment, a cry pierced the night — faint, fragile, human.

It was the cry of a newborn.

No one knew where the woman came from. Some said she was a beggar from the next district, some whispered she was a prostitute who had wandered too far from the highway. Others said nothing — because in a village like Nandipur, silence was safer than curiosity.

When the old sweeper woman, Kaveri, found her the next morning, the woman was dead — her body pale, drenched, and covered in the muddy embrace of the storm. But the baby was alive — barely breathing, wrapped in her torn sari.
Kaveri lifted him, looked at his face, and muttered, “Poor thing… born with sin, before even knowing what sin means.”

She took him to the village headman’s courtyard. People gathered — men with gamchas around their necks, women whispering behind the veil of their sarees.
“Whose child is this?” someone shouted.
“Whore’s baby,” another spat, “Throw him in the river before he curses us.”

But Kaveri stood firm. She was a widow, living on scraps, yet her spine was stronger than any man’s pride.
“If the river takes him,” she said, “it’ll take our humanity first.”

That day, the headman reluctantly allowed her to keep the child. She raised him in her hut at the edge of the cremation ground, among ashes and stray dogs, feeding him milk borrowed from goats and kindness borrowed from strangers.

The villagers called him many names — “Najaayaz” (illegitimate), “Bhoot ka beta” (ghost’s child), and “Bastard.”
But Kaveri gave him one name — Raju.

Raju never knew who his parents were, or where he came from. But the label “bastard” followed him like a shadow — sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted. Yet, every time he asked Kaveri why people hated him, she would smile and say, “Because they fear what doesn’t fit in their box, Raju. You weren’t born in a house. You were born in a storm.”

And somehow, those words became his truth.

Content:

1. Prologue – Born Without a Name
2. Chapter 1 – The Dust of Nandipur
3. Chapter 2 – A Ray in the Mud
4. Chapter 3 – Shadows in the Field
5. Chapter 4 – When Dreams Bleed
6. Chapter 5 – Fire in the Belly
7. Chapter 6 – The Return of the Bastard
8. Chapter 7 – Blood, Betrayal, and the River
9. Epilogue – The Boy Who Wouldn’t Die

Title: A Bastard

Genre: Fiction Emotional Drama

Language: English

Format: Mp3

Duration: 45 Min

Audiobook Written, Narrated and Published by: Sweet Audible (2025)

Download our Audiobooks from: Sweet Audible