And there I stood in front of her, just looking at her face thinking what to do next. Beneath the sky full of stars and dark, she looked like a bright morning star which still waited to shine even more as the dark grasps her very slowly. All of a sudden she had grown much taller than me or anyone of us standing there. I couldn’t stop myself from staring at her. I knew she had been through a lot but at that very moment all I could do was just sympathize and hug her real tight because I had no words to express.

Each one us have a story to share, an experience to spread and some topics we can always ponder about but are we real good listeners when it comes to someone else’s story? Do we connect with them or we just listen to them for the sake of listening?

How many times have we actually listened to someone and felt a huge sense of respect for the former person. Well this is something that happened with me.

I would have never imagined that the person I respect the most would be so younger than me but at the same time she would be so taller.

So to begin with let me tell you one thing about this girl, she’s as ordinary as you and I are and after meeting her you would just say one thing that she’s quite annoying. Trust me even my reaction was the same but knowing her had changed me in many ways whether good or bad, but yes changed me from what I used to be.

       It was a normal day, with all the monotonous routines and chit chats going around in the hostel. We would usually end up there late with all the food almost gone and watch each other’s faces because practically we were starving. There was a pact of us which we in a very proud way used to say would never ever break.

We weren’t friends from the beginning of the Time but yes we were real friends and that day our bond became even stronger.

After dinner we went to the terrace just to have some more fun.

It was unusually dark and as per my normal monotony I was looking at the sky with my eyes wide open spotting every star I could.

“Where did you get this scar from”? One of my friends asked.

It’s nothing just let it go. Seeing my eyes get little wet they just wouldn’t stop enquiring about it, so in the end I had to bow in front of them and tell them everything honestly and I began.

     “It was in the month of July 2007 when I asked my parents to drop me at one of the neighbor’s house because they were leaving and would be late at night. I wanted to meet my neighbor who was like a sister because it had been quite a while meeting her. I was there and we talked and talked about a lot of stuff when her elder brother came and joined us. I was supposed to stay there till 11 pm and it was quite a tiring day for her brother so he insisted if we could just turn the lights off and then continue the talk. We had no issues regarding it and we did as he said. Just then he held my hand in his real tight. Well for a 14 year old girl, this was quite an uneasy task to identify what molestation meant and at that point when she considered the guy as her brother, it was more difficult to state what she really was feeling. I had no clue of what he was doing; all I could complain was that I didn’t want him to tease me. Of course I couldn’t get nicer word than that to use it at that time. He kept on rubbing my hand and I tried loosing off the grip but he was too powerful and all my tries were wasted. Slowly he took my hand towards his lips and started kissing in a very unusual way. I didn’t know how to respond, all I knew was I hated it like hell. Deep inside I was cursing the decision that I made of coming here. His other hand went straight away to my upper arm and he held it real tight. It was paining a lot but didn’t utter a word. I wanted to shout out loud and scream at the top of my voice to let this feeling go off. I thought my any claim would turn it into a fight which I didn’t want. I asked di that I needed to go and that’s when all his stuff ended. I came home and started crying in my room, I couldn’t bear his touch at all so I took a knife and cut all the parts that he touched. So these are the scars that you see.”

    After hearing this they stared at me and one of my friends in a very calm and sympathetic way said, “You were lucky that nothing more than this happened to you”

On this remark I looked at her face for an answer and that’s when with all the heavy heart she actually began

      “So it all started in my summer vacations, we all used to go at my grandma’s place. I was about 6 years then. One of my cousins came and asked me to play with him. Obviously at that age playing was all that mattered to me so we used to play together in a room. And then one day he just asked me I wanted to play a different kind of game. He asked if would like to play his wife’s role and I said yes with all the ecstasy and joy. We made a house out of all the pillows and the sheets. I bought all the cups and the plates I had so that i could act serving him the food. I didn’t know what his real plan was. He inserted it inside me. I don’t know what happened in those minutes, all I knew was it pained terribly and that’s why I rushed towards my mother to narrate what all happened with me, instead of beating my cousin up for this, she asked me to shut this nuisance right up and slapped me.

This continued for 6 long consecutive years. Every year in the summer he would do something to make me end up in that room alone and would do that to me again and again. This had such a bad effect on me that I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I used to stand in front of the sun so that my complexion gets darker and would end all this but no he never stopped. He would beat me so hard so that I shouldn’t open my mouth in front of anyone else. He was 13 when he started it and for god’s sake, he was my first cousin. Sometimes I wished I could just end my life up. Nobody believed me nor anyone listened until one of sister saw the bruises on my hand and asked me what happened. I told her everything and she took me out of it”

Well nobody till date knows about this and my cousin still is the most ideal person in the family and everyone including my mother used to flaunt about him but only I knew what lies beneath the perfection of that person.

After listening to her I was astonished, she had been bearing that person all her life, talking with him, doing work in front of him and pretending as if nothing really happened with her. Moreover when she needed a support, her parents didn’t even believe her.

All her life she had been living with this bare fact that she was raped but there was no one to help her. Somehow she was lost in that part of her childhood where she could have played in the real sense. In spite of being just 16 years old she had learn to hide her pain. She was devoid of her childhood and till now she has a regret that she can’t get it back because of that single incident that happened with her.

She laughs out loud but if you really look into her eyes you can see that there is something which is still hidden.

And this is how I watched her grow taller than me or you or anyone else I knew.

 

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