The Forgotten Star

9. A Walk Through Memories

I woke up at 2 p.m. had a quick lunch and moved to my office inside my library. With Aleena from my side and Nisha my personal secretary holding the fort in the London office we had a busy time designing for the new project negotiation.

We worked together till it was 1.30 a.m. in India and 9 p.m. in London. It was a very hectic day and I nearly forgot about the mess I made in India. We called it a day and ended our work with 5 finished designs for the client to choose from in the meeting tomorrow.

Around 2 a.m. in India, I settled myself in the pavilion in the garden in front of the house with a bottle of wine. I started to notice my house and how I dreamed of making this house when I was immature. At that time building this house was making a love nest just like how my childhood home was to me. the place I enjoyed with my family. I started to reminisce about my childhood and how I turned myself into now.

I don't know when my life changed like this. I'm the eldest daughter of the house. It's just me, my mom, my dad, and my younger brother Chotu. I was the pampered Princess like every daughter would be. My parents. My mom is working as the Judge and my dad used to be a Forensic Doctor. I love what they used to do as their job and the moral ethics they taught us, how the world works even though we were kids, we were able to understand the morals and ethics we need to follow to not get destroyed by this world.

Me and my brother saw a lot of things and incidents when we were around our parents when they were working. We saw many things that people don't normally allow kids to see and when asked our parents doubted those things that we didn't understand surprisingly they were very patient with us and explained everything clearly to us even though we were kids at that point. I'm very happy about learning those things at that time, even though they were scary and most of the time I didn't understand why people did those things that way it helped me to understand the world better and I think it helped me to become mentally strong.

For example, both my mom and dad were dealing with a gang rape case when I was in fifth grade. I saw the pictures of the victim and got scared very badly. I saw the pics when I sneaked into the study to get the special pen my dad uses, I think the astronaut's pen. I wanted to take it to class and show off to my classmates. Anyway, when I went inside the study inside the first drawer before finding the pens, I found the pictures of the victim. After coming out of the study I was still shocked, confused, and scared.

Then I was silent, I felt pity and was wondering how painful it would have been for that girl the whole day. She was not very old, the same age as ria sister, my neighbor. I thought if that victim was my neighbor who said bye to me at the bus stop and went to college but didn't come back home anymore then, what should I do?

My lovely stupid annoying brother noticed that something was wrong with me and went to our parents to snitch me. my parents being lovely and caring barged into my room and started to shower me with all their love and caring words. Once I saw all my family in my room, I didn't know what came over me I started to cry and tell them how I saw the pictures and I was confused since I couldn't do anything to help them. I don't want to just leave the situation as it is like a bystander I don't feel morally comfortable. But I also don't know what to do since, I'm still young and confused.

My parents looked into each other and asked me not to cry anymore and to get ready. And they both went out. I was confused. I looked into my brother. He was also confused because at that age he was just in second grade I think, and he didn't understand whatever shit was happening right now. I somehow stopped crying. And I know that my parents will find a solution for this like they always do and start getting ready.

It took nearly one hour for us to get out of the house, but we were out and my parents were taking me to an outer city, I think kind of like a village kind of area. But it was still very near the city like it was just 20 minutes away from the city. And we reached an an NGO, I think, but it was looking like a small farmhouse where people were working together. Everyone was happy together like a family.

But then I started noticing something. Most of the people inside are girls like 80 percent of the population are girls. And in that few people were not physically fit like some people had something different about them. Oh, like scars, marks on their faces, some have burn marks, some may hurt badly and they have scars on their Body. But somehow everyone was not at all looking upset or sad. Every one of them was happy. I was just following behind my parents, and they took me inside a room where I saw a sister.

I think she was in eleventh or twelfth grade. Just a few years older than me. And I saw something different in her. She was not like a happy sister like my neighbor, but she was also not a sad person I don't know how to describe. I think so she was, Mature like she was a bit like our parents she had a certain charm in her body, you can't say she is a, Go free girl. But she is not also sad. Can you understand it? I was very confused at the time I was trying to understand her.

She looked into my mom and smiled. She was thrilled to see her. And and my mom introduced me to her saying "She's my daughter. She's a very mischievous and curious kid. She saw some photos of A gang rape victim, And she don't know. How to help them? She's very confused, but she also has lots of questions about what they would have faced, what they would be doing, and everything. So I thought It would be better If you both had a conversation, I hope you don't mind."

She sat still and heard everything very patiently and she did not even have a frown on her face or anything But I think she showed only a surprised expression when my mom mentioned I saw the photos. My mom turned to me "She's Illavarsi, She's doing 11th grade right now, and she plans to become a judge or lawyer in the future. I'm a personal mentor to her. I'm helping her through Letters and online classes. Have a chat with her." And she left me alone with the sister.

When she was alone with her, only got to know that this sister went through gang rape when she was in 9th grade, two years earlier. And after that, she met my mom and she was the judge handling her case She is not able to go back to her hometown because they are very conservative people, but she doesn't want to be sad and question her life. She doesn't want to be always filled with sadness and she is ready to face the world because of the encouragement she got from many good people and now, she knows many people like her who face this incident but still survive in this world.

I was very happy that all the victim's lives did not end in death and that not every victim's life just ended due to the incident they also had life after this and I wanted to spend more time with those people. So I went to my mom and asked can I spend my time after school. Sometimes volunteered in this NGO and she was happy and she allowed me to. My brother doesn't know what I was speaking about. But then my mom sat with us and said about good touch, bad touch, rape, sex, consent, and everything to both of us.

We were very young. It was not our age to learn about sex education, but my parents were not ashamed or not mad at us being curious about it, but a very young age. They were happy to teach us and we learned it like this. We learned many other things that the society considered were not appropriate for us. because of them, we were able to meet with lots of people, Whom we wouldn't have chance to meet inside society if my parents had not been happy to let us learn everything and learned that society is not just a very beautiful world, but it is also filled with darkness and we should not get stopped or afraid because of darkness. We need to learn to overcome it and live in this peaceful, positive, beautiful society, I don't think I will be this confident and Independent right now. I'm very happy to have my family and I owe everything to them to what I'm now.