(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.