Story #3 It Ends with us

“What do you mean she killed herself? My daughter is no coward! You are lying. I need to see her. I need to see my Priya.” The man was banging his fists on the table, anger bursting through his bloodshot eyes as he demanded to see his daughter.

“She wasn’t weak,” came a voice from behind him. He looked back to see a girl, the same age as his daughter’s. Her clothes were tattered, lips swollen. There were bruises on her face and marks all over her arm.

“Do you know what happened?” the man walked over to the girl in hysteria. “Can you tell me where my Priya is?” The girl was barely holding backher own tears and rage. This man’s helplessness made her choke on her own words.

“She wasn’t weak, but this world didn’t deserve her. We were coming back from tuitions together and a few men grabbed us. They-” she stopped mid-word to let out a sob. Her hand went straight to her mouth covering it and she turned her face away.

“They tried to force themselves on us but she fought them. She tried to fight them alone and told me to run. I did. I ran straight to the police station and told them but no one would listen to me. They wanted me to describe everything and do a test or file an FIR. I told them to save her but by the time they reached it was too late.” The man was grief-struck and disgusted by the narration of the event. Who would hurt her sweet little girl? He was jerked away from his thoughts by the nurse walking past carrying bloody bandages who collided with him. He didn’t even wait, just ran to the room she had just left from. The girl followed close behind.  

“I’m so sorry. I should have helped her. I was so scared. They did bring her to the hospital and tried to save her but when she woke up; she cut herself with the scalpel.” The man could picture the horror in her eyes, the shame and the pain of being exploited like that. His only daughter, he had given the world to her and the world had clawed her to pieces.

She dreamt of becoming a police officer but even they couldn’t save her when she needed them to. The reality was creeping up on him. Every time he told her daughter to come home early, to avoid hanging out with boys and this had happened, in daytime by monsters that had no shame. What was the point?

Of having those 19 years of her memories only for them to end like this. It was a heavy burden to bear, having to bury one’s child. There was no word for agony that immense or the emotion that rises in a father when he sees his daughter’s dead corpse, lying on a hospital bed, marked with lines, red and blue when her face was pale as a ghost.

“Were they caught?” asked the man to the young girl he could not even look at. She was too big a reminder of what he had lost.

“No, they were never found.”

That is when some part of him just broke, he fell on his knees and cried with his face buried inside his hands. The sound of a man sobbing filled the halls of the hospital but no one gave it a second thought.

The scene was all too common here. One day it’s their kid and then it’s yours. How long will it go on? This cycle of pain needs to end. But it won’t disappear on its own. It will end with a voice. It will die with a shout. It will surrender after a fight.

But one thing, I know.

It ends with us.