Along Came Bonny Meghali Barua
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Everybody wanted a piece of her. Today, any station you tune in on the idiot box, you can hear the universal intoning, excitement building almost a crescendo, ‘we want her…we need her.’
Fools!
She wanted to scream.
If she could, she would definitely have curled her cold, icy lips to mock the almost catatonic mob of people passionately chanting her name, in unison, almost as if in a deep trance. She wished for a way, quite desperately, to show her intense disdain towards all the expendable melodrama happening almost every day across the country, and that too, under the pretext of winning her.
These heart’s-in-the-right-place yet very ignorant denizens were doing more damage to her reputation than good. Because you see, she had been sold, several times over, like a common trollop, by these very people in all their supposed naiveté. Bureaucrats, officers of the courts, guardians of the law and order, businessmen, government officers, the junta – nobody had spared her. She had been pimped over and over again until she became the statue that she was today. Stiff, blindfolded and placed on a tall, difficult-to-get-to pedestal – where she could not see anything or anybody who really needed her.
But there were, in all honesty, quite a few, who had tried seeking her earnestly. Then again, the same people, her so-called champions worked hard to make sure that she was always kept out of reach. You see because if she was given the chance to prevail over what was happening in the country, it would disrupt a lot of things, things that these people have worked on for almost ages. They were scared witless…they would lose control on what they wanted to keep a tight rein on if she ever prevailed. No, it was better like this, to keep her in an inaccessible place where people can see her but not touch her; where she can, too, hear the plaintive cries but was helpless to do anything but return a stoical glance. For she was that cold, blindfolded woman…a mythical, feel-good fairytale that has had already meteorized and vanished into nothingness a long while ago.
It was stifling hot that day. Not that she could feel anything herself but she could sense the wind of the hostile atmosphere in the stiflingly hot courtroom. It seemed to come from the people who had positioned themselves near her, complaining in loud, careless sighs. The day has not even begun and she could already pick up a babble of impatient voices. The indignant ruffling of papers, stomping of feet…it was as if a wild fete was going on around her, unmindful of her presence. And this was just an ordinary day unfurling, a common day in the most hallowed institution of any the social order, the Court.
Every single day, greatly distressed people of any rank and file come and stand before her to tell their sordid tales. Stiff and solemn, she would hear a cacophony of indistinguishable quivering voices, desperate to narrate their saga. A few were barely able to get a word out but some, perhaps, because of the wretchedness of their situation, held on resolutely to the sole purpose of finding her. She stood there, listening intently to their tragedies, to every uttered word, to every stammer woven in with the cheerless tales. Every story had a different flavor…while some were about shocking betrayals, some were about violent transgressions of one’s honor, some were about common legal trickery and some were…well, many more and many more. It was tiring really. At the end of the day, she would stand all alone, beaten and listless, trying to digest what she had heard. Revulsion…anger…helplessness would wash over her, her soul. But all she could do, even then, was to listen.
People in masses would travel miles, just to narrate their woes to her, expecting some kind of relief…some kind of a magical balm to placate their burning hearts. For it was certain that whatever acts of injustice had occurred had indeed killed their spirits, had shattered their illusions about the wholesomeness of their lives and they needed someone, anybody really, to reinstate it again. And the responsibility was on her brittle, already heavy, shoulders…
And today she waited, with bated breath, for her first seeker. She could not wait to hear the story…
If you look around, just near the doorway, you will see a tiny frail girl peeping furtively into the colossal courtroom, almost as she was scared of where she was. Going by her appearance, you can easily gather that she’s really a child, probably around her late teens. Timid, shy would be your first impression of her if you look at her terrified countenance.
The girl again peeped into the gigantic, musty smelling room. The courtroom looked ancient, almost from the dark ages and it suddenly struck her that many, thousands in all probability, had stood in it, just as she was doing now. Awaiting…
There was a tall, raised platform, an oddity of a bench, made of some kind of dark wood, probably mahogany, almost touching the ends of the room. A wooden stage, broken chairs, and benches were placed neatly in rows before it. For the spectators, the girl wryly assumed.
And then she saw it, the witness stand. She has seen it in the movies before and now there was one right before her eyes. An icy chill suddenly wrapped around her heart as comprehension dawned in her mind that she will have to stand on it soon, in fact, in a matter of a few minutes.
Her equally terrified mother was standing in the crowded, suffocating lobby with their lawyer. She could see her lawyer’s head bobbing up and down as he tried hard to explain something to her wide-eyed mother. Her mother looked bedraggled as if she had forgotten to comb her wiry, greying hair. Her mother had, in all possibility, forgotten to dress her hair in her hurry to reach the court in time, the girl deduced, with a sudden ache in her heart. But all she could keenly perceive, amidst all the commotion, was her mother’s teary, panic-stricken eyes. Nothing but great sadness and heartbreak were mirroring in them. She quickly averted her eyes; she could not bear to see what she saw in her mother’s eyes. If only…
It was her first court appearance after the incident. The incident…it could have killed her…but it somehow didn’t. She cannot fathom why she was not left for the dead, it would have been better that way. But her crying parents had whispered to her, that she had to live for them when she was lying lifeless on the stone-cold, rubber-sheeted hospital bed. And perhaps that was the reason that she did not die…maybe she was spared because of her parents, their muffled cries coming straight out from their splintered souls. What had happened had torn her adolescent soul apart…she was now only a befuddled apparition of a lost herself.
Today she would have to relive every moment of that shameful day, to enumerate in minute details how her being was crushed into emptiness, to expose her carefully hidden wounds for the world to gape and pity. But this was the right path…she had to do it. Why? Because she did not want anybody to go through what she had gone through…Because this was the right thing to do…for justice.
The whole court was packed to the tee with people, busy-as-a-bee lawyers in starched black and white uniforms and their clientele. The lawyers were speaking to their clients quite urgently, and the poor sods looked rather stunned and scared out their wits to be present in the somewhat frightening courtroom. The posse of lawyers almost looked like a flock of incensed, raucous birds, busy in their own harangue but keeping a crafty eye on their warring opponents, the defense lawyers. The whole atmosphere felt like being part of an invisible battle. But in all honesty, for the attorneys, this was what they did every single day… For most, that morning was like any other morning at the court…just a routine, but for the seeker like the thin, frail girl, that moment was epochal. It was her last stand to protect her honor, to bring to the light of what had happened to her.
All of a sudden, a bailiff appeared out of nowhere. Stiff and haggard, he announced to those seated that the judge was about to enter the court. The thin, frail girl turned right away towards the massive chair. She spotted a man, the judge, settling on the gigantic specimen of a chair.
Riffling through the disorganized piles of papers before him, he nodded to the nervous clerk seated on a rickety desk with equal heaps of paper scattered before him. Suddenly the girl’s lawyer grabbed her trembling hand and pulled her ahead. Her vision blurred, for a mad moment, she thought that she was going blind. She could almost hear her wildly palpitating heart thumping against her chest as she heard her name being called out from somewhere. ‘Don’t worry,’ the lawyer said as he pushed her on the witness stand. ‘Just tell the Hon’ Judge about what had happened,’ he implored. Like a thrashing insect caught unwittingly in a spider’s carefully woven web, she looked around agitated…her burning eyes were searching for her mother. She caught the sight of her mother standing in the corner, near the entrance, hands folded in prayers. She tried to look at her mother’s half-hidden face…she had to know what she was thinking…she had to know…
The judge banged his gravel abruptly and a sudden hush fell upon, just like a flickering candle whose light had suddenly been snuffed out leaving an odd burning smell in the air. Daring herself, she looked at the judge. Had she imagined it all? Disquietude now robbing of her calm self, she felt as if every single pair of eyes present in that room were on her, measuring her, tearing her defiant stance apart.
Try as she might, sharp, hot tears were threatening to break out, and all she could do was breathe a few gulps of air, like a fish out of water who knew that death was imminent and yet was trying obstinately to coax a few moments of life into the already departing soul. A court registrar asked her to swear that she was going to utter only the truth, the whole truth and nothing else and that she did…slowly…with deliberation, mulling over every single word. Somehow it calmed her mind. Truth. The whole truth. She had to get it out…she had to let the people know the truth…indisputable…inescapable…undeniable.
And thus she began her story…
She hated going for tuitions…but then her dismal performance in the last Maths examination, her arch nemesis had forced her hand to accept her parents’ decision of home tutoring. There were only a few months left for the twelfth-board finals and she was nowhere prepared to appear in it.
Distressed at her abysmally poor performance in the half-yearly examination, her mother had insisted that she should get extra lessons at home. After much protests and dramatic, teary fights, she had reluctantly given in. After all, her well-meaning parents only wanted her to fare well in life and if she were to slip and fall at the very first step, their ‘dreams’ for her would crumble into fairy-dust. An only child to doting parents, she had a lot to measure up to…her father was a senior engineer who worked in one of the remotest parts of the country for an oil drilling company and her mother was a professor in the City College, a very popular teacher among her students known for her spellbinding lectures.
Like every other Indian family, her parents too believed, with all sincerity, that education was the Aladdin’s magic lamp and it could open up unthought-of, unheard avenues for their daughter tomorrow. And quite expectedly, this was harped into her from the moment she had been born.
The parents felt that a home tutor would be the best option for her. That
The character of the city had changed in the recent times, they soliloquized…the chastity of the past times a long forgotten memory when neighbors knew each other…when evenings were reserved for the neighborhood kids to gather and play together. No, this was the tumultuous times where people were out to kill each other. Were they being overly dramatic? But didn’t they just read in today’s morning daily of a baby, a six-year-old child killed for no reason by the neighbour…a man the parents of the slain child had probably waved and greeted all their lives?
Anyway, her mother asked around in her teaching circle for references and finally, one tutor agreed to come to their home and teach her. The conditions were thus put in place… five days a week in the evening and the classes would be one hour long. One hour was tolerable, the girl decided grudgingly.
And then the classes began. When she met her tutor for the first time, she did not think much of him. An ordinarily dressed guy with oily, unwashed hair, she thought, grimacing a little. But he was a good teacher. And when her mock test results came out, she was pleasantly surprised that she had scored rather well. Her parents were happy with her performance…they were already scheming to send her to the country’s capital for higher studies and her tutor had agreed wholeheartedly.
But then…it all started…
When it first happened, she convinced herself that it had to be a mistake. After all, he was a married 40-year old man with a wife and two young boys. And he was her teacher. It probably had happened unintentionally. He was too engrossed in the book he was reading that he had not realized that his hands were brushing against her fluttering chest. She had sat stone-faced on her chair, unable to move, mind unable to absorb what had happened. Red-faced and confounded, she felt trapped to be in that situation but did not really know what to do. He didn’t do it deliberately…he couldn’t have.
A week later, it occurred again. This time, breath held, he had stood near her chair and touched her back. Her body recoiled at his repulsive touch but she pretended not to notice it. Perhaps, emboldened by her silence, he kept stroking her back. It was then, however, she knew, with all her feminine instincts that he was doing it deliberately, with intent. She did not know what to do even then.
It was then she was sucked into an endless nightmare. His motorcycle revving up the driveway in the evening would be enough to throw her into a feral panic. She hated him…hated his voice…hated his touch but she did not have the guts to spill of what was happening to her mother and she hated herself for it. She did not know what she was doing to invite his repulsive, uncalled advances but she felt guilty.
That evening, she was alone in the house. Her mother had gone out to visit someone in the family. “Why can’t I come?” she had fumed, her heart beating fast. ‘Aren’t your exams around the corner? Anyway, you have your lessons. I promise, once your exams are over, the three of us will go out on a vacation,” her mother had tried to win her over.
When he came over that evening, the first thing he asked was, ‘Has your mother gone out somewhere?’ She felt uneasy at his question but then, without another word, he had started the day’s lesson. Calming her panicking heart, she willed herself not to be so afraid and had sat on the chair next to him. She desperately wished for her mother to come home soon.
And then it happened…and it happened suddenly. A silent scream escaped from her dry lips as he lunged towards her. “You are so beautiful,” he had whispered to her over and over again as he mauled her.
She was unconscious and bleeding when her mother found her a few hours later, lying inert on the cold, marble floor. She could hear someone screaming in her ears, but the screams were too feeble as if coming from a place far far away. She tried, in all desperation, to open her eyes but somehow could not. Her eyes were glued shut, it seemed. She felt someone lifting her body and at the same moment, someone grabbing her cold hands. She sank further and further into a dark abyss from where there seemed to be no escape. She was soiled, broken never to be whole again…Why? Her spirit screamed. He was her teacher. How could he?
The next thing she remembered was the white blinds near her bed and her father weeping, head hidden in his hands, sitting next to her. A cry broke out from her father’s parched lips, the cry of a hunted animal. She was scared for the very first time and it broke her spirit to see her father like that. She was the reason that he was grieving; she wished to reach out to her father with her hand but there were millions of tubes stuck to it. A white-uniformed nurse stood by her bed who looked that she would rather be somewhere else than to be near her. Alien, loud, beeping machines surrounded her. She was in a hospital, she realized as she drifted back into unconsciousness.
Time turned and days passed…and the ordeal began now in all of its glory. Policemen…doctors…relatives…came and went. Like always, without a fail, dawn came and dusk fell…but it didn’t really matter to her. She was stuck at that moment when her whole life shattered before her eyes. Fleeting visions of that fateful evening kept playing on a loop in her head till she could bear it no more.
As time wore on, when she was finally able to talk, she had to recount what had happened to the police…again and again. Her mother had broken down several times when she heard her ordeal. Shock…disbelief…anger…were plastered on her mother’s face. She did not leave out any detail, however disturbing…she had to purge herself. But she felt half-human…telling and retelling the story in a lifeless, monotone voice.
When she was discharged from the hospital, she did not want to go home. “I will not leave you alone again,” her broken father had tried to assure her. How will he know about the demons she will have to fight for the rest of her life. Will she be able to do it or drown in them? That the vicissitudes of time will only tell…
Her incident got all the sensationalism any incident of this nature could get…it made headlines on a few tabloids…on a few local television channels…but then ultimately it was her crusade and that she had to do it herself…on one’s own. It was as if overnight, she had forsaken her naivety and metamorphosed into something she did not know yet.
She learned, much later, that he had been arrested, a week later after the incident had taken place…at the railway station. An unknown, unfelt-before hatred filled her bereaving heart when she heard of his arrest from the police officer who had come down to their home to inform them.
She had to do something or else she knew that she was going to die, a living death more painful than the natural one.
But she knew this. She did not want her ordeal to be just a case number…she did not want him to get away with it. It was going to be difficult, her tearful parents had warned. It will only bring us ignominy, they foretold. But she had already made up her mind…she was going to seek justice, even if it was the last thing she did.
Countless, painful visits to the police station, to the lawyer’s chamber, came in the order and finally today she stood in the court…trembling but resolute on the witness stand.
As she finished her narrative, whispers, some deafened, some loud enough to reach her ears broke out. Head reeling, she could feel hot, stinging tears carving serpentine lines on her face. She was done…she has laid her story in front of the judge…It was probably the bravest thing she had ever done in her sheltered life.
The judge looked speechless, stunned. Nodding to her, he bent his head and promptly started signing on some papers placed before him. The clerk gently motioned to her to step down from the stand.
As she was getting down from the stand, her eyes fell upon her. The blindfolded woman. She was holding the scales of justice in one hand and a sword on the other.
For that profound moment, the girl felt that the blindfolded woman was trying to tell her something. How could she, the girl reflected. After all, she was just a statuette made of stone…how she can ever understand what I went through? she thought hysterically.
As she walked towards the crowded exit where her teary-eyed mother was waiting for her, she saw someone else had already taken her place on the witness stand. She whirled around. Many pairs of inquisitive eyes met hers…some looked at her with pity…some with disgust…she felt like screaming…
The blindfolded woman looked at the tiny, frail girl being led out of the courtroom by the heartbroken mother. “I am here,” she wanted to shriek out, “I am here…” The blindfolded woman kept crying from her pedestal, cobwebs encasing her balancing scales and sword…
