(2) Mother's Cries

Story: of a helpless mother
Location:-Bhimavaram, town located in the West Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh,India.
Narrated by:- Author

A middle aged woman went to the market to buy some vegetables. Her cute little daughter was along with her. It started raining heavily in this city where she was hardly a month old, and the  traffic made a mess all around. It was difficult to find any transportation back home. They struggled for an hour and still could not find anything. Lastly the woman saw a taxi at some distance from where they were standing. She waved her hand, called aloud and did other efforts to draw driver’s attention onto them, but it did not work. Then she decided to walk down that distance and hire the vehicle. She urged her daughter to start walking, but the child was so tired that she denied to walk a single step. Mother tried to convince her but failed. Then she asked her daughter to stand and wait in the same place for 5 minutes and told her that she will be back with that taxi so that they could go home. Child was ok with waiting there. The woman asked her not to move even a bit from where she was and having said that ,she started walking fast towards the taxi, turning back every two seconds to check if her daughter was ok. Mother was too scared of leaving her alone but they hardly had any choice. When she reached there, she checked with the driver if he was ok with taking them where they wanted. The driver agreed and permitted her to get in. She pointed him to drive in the direction where her daughter was and saying thus she sat in the vehicle.

                To her shock and agony, driver drove straight into the direction opposite to what he was instructed. Woman yelled at him in anger and asked him to correct his direction. Instead, he accelerated the taxi and with some unknown and devilish intention, did not pay any heed to her and kept driving fast. Woman got scared of many things together. She was not able to concentrate on the roads he was rushing through, was worried about her daughter  and could not even imagine what was going to happen to her.  Gathering all the force of the mind and body, she flung opened the taxi door and jumped out of it. She got hurt all over but was least worried about herself. She gathered herself and started running in all the directions she thought could lead her back to her daughter. She kept falling, running on the roads she could not recognize. She was asking every other person to guide her back to the vegetable market where she had left her daughter. People were very less helpful in this new city. She was tumbling down on every step, sobbing and shouting for help. She appeared like a mad woman crazily roaming around.

                All bad thoughts appeared to her mind, she started cursing herself for her decision of leaving the child alone. She was praying every second to God to help her daughter and keep her safe. After many efforts she reached the place she had left her daughter, but was taken by shock when she could not find her child there. She started crying and called her daughter’s name repeatedly loud enough to make others cry. She fell on the ground and hit her head on the road several times in regret of what she had done. But her love could not allow her to give up. She stood up, went to the nearest police station, filed a missing complaint and then started again the search for her child on her own. She roamed around all the nearby vicinities but could not find anything. Then she saw a group of  young college students doing some charity work. She walked upto them and asked for their help to find her daughter. They agreed and 5 of them set ahead with her on their bikes to help her. After wandering around the city for about two- three hours, it clicked to one of them that the child could have become the victim of the gang which was very prevalent in the city in children kidnapping. They tried their luck by driving straight into the area of those goons, known to one of the girls in that group. They reached there and found no strict security  and hence breached the boundaries and went inside the old factory which was being used as the workplace by that gang. They all started searching for her daughter. They came across many young children who had been physically abused and were being prepared for some gruesome operation. That woman was petrified at the sight and only prayed for her child’s safety. Her tears and cries were endless, until she saw a glimpse of the dress her daughter was wearing on that day. She ran towards the iron stand where her daughter was lying asleep. She broke out in cries at the sight of her daughter. She held her in arms, hugged her tight , kissed her several times and started calling her name to wake her up. She did it many times but there was no movement in child’s body. She shook her, moved her face, pour water into her face, but all went in vain. The woman was aghast to see this, she begged her daughter endlessly to speak up , open her eyes and come back to her.

                Few minutes passed away, and then the child who was wrapped in mother’s arm, opened her eyes, smiled at her mother and said….”its a circle mamma, please don’t cry , I will come back”. And then she slept forever.

(1) Girl in Sopore

Story:- Of a girl aged 21 years

Location:-  Sopore,the apple town of asia, the terror zone of Kashmir, located in Baramulla district, 35km north-west of Srinagar,India.

Narrated by:-Author

Given the place she lived in, life was not easy on any single day. That morning chose to be no different, and came with worse in store for her. She was striding down the curvy roads to get to her home, after she was done with her teaching job at school that day. She had heard of some reprobated activities taken place in nearby vicinity, the previous day. With thoughts running her mind crazy and feet driving her fast towards home, she almost lost the track of observing things developing around her. Two men, had started following her from midway and were seeking the safest angle to get her in clutch without making any alarm. And they were successful in doing that in next few minutes. She tried her best to pull herself out of their arms, but to avail no gains. She was dragged to a nearby cave looking passage between adjacent hills and was kept there blindfolded for about an hour since then.

They dragged her back to the road after the pause and made her sit in the open back space of the truck,with them, which had halted there to take all ahead.

She could not help but cry fiercely all the while, imagining the fate which was in the following. She would think of the worse and get shivers and then cry again. Those men were immovable by her cries. They would in return give her some physical abuse and torture making it more horrible to await the next turn of incident. Eight long hours passed by and the truck halted at some deserted looking road-restaurant. One of the men, untied her blind fold and asked her to have a close look at the face of the man, himself, who was soon going to make her life miserable. She kept weeping and shaking all through. Those two got down from the truck, and started walking towards the restaurant. One of them halted, turned back and asked her if she wanted to use the washroom, if she was willing to freshen herself. She was too scared to say yes. But she had to, because it had been a long long day and she could not , but think only worse coming out of every minute, and she decided to get down and mug whatever was in facing. They directed her towards the back side of the abandoned shed next to the restaurant and warned her to be back there again in two minutes. Hesitatingly, she moved her trembling feet towards the directed path, with her mind racing on mixed thoughts. She hoped this time to prove as an opportunity to escape. When she reached the backside of the shed, she was taken by another shock of her life that day. Numerous girls like her were being made to do things forcibly by men like those she was travelling with. To her, it seemed like a brothel, where the masters were men. She gathered all her strength and ran back-steps to get out of that place, before anyone could notice her. When she reached out of the vicinity of the hell she had just visited, she chose to stop for a minute and breathe easy. When she returned back to the normal pace of air going in and out, her eyes fell on the green bushes which laid between the two hell she had been in some-while ago. As she had already accepted the worst outcomes to come, she did not give a second thought to her instinct of breaking out of that trap. She headed fast towards the seemingly endless jungle, hoping that she could save herself.

Nobody saw her ever again…

It was believed that, that jungle was in real, the hiding shelter and working mine for the radicals, who ran the churning machines for various illegal drugs and weapons. For those purposes , they kidnapped and kept young girls from the nearby villages who were used for both, making those drugs and fulfilling the physical needs of those ruthless animals living  in skin of men.

Difficult to judge, which decision would have proved lesser disastrous….to enter into the bushes or to get back to those men waiting for her at the truck.