Living in the darkness.

Trying to Believe

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RAPE~ isn't it something that happens in dark alleys? In dark nights?

It was 9:30 in the morning, when I was looking for Nandani everywhere in that hotel. The place where my granddaughter was supposed to get married. The day  which was supposed to the happiest day of her life. How did it turn out to be something so gloomy that it took her so far away from us that it took 2 years to find her?

Manik had called me just like 5 minutes back. He told me he is coming, and he is coming with Nandani. I was so happy. Happy would be an understatement. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to hear her. I couldn't wait until they reached here but, Manik told me that she won't talk. She hadn't talked to them at all.

And the answer to my why, was the most dreadful answer any mother would await. My daughter was raped. And I had got 15 minutes to deal with it. She would be here at the door step any moment, but I didn't know what to say to her, what to talk to her, whether to hug her or cry with her?

I didn't understand what would i ask her. I wasn't even sure whether to ask her or not. She wasn't born to me, but I had taken care of her more than her mother did. I was the motherly figure she looked upon after my son and my daughter in law died. And today this motherly figure didn't know how to react.

All these years why didn't I prepare myself for the worst? Why doesn't a mother not even want to think of anything bad happening to her kids.

Kids......, how much dear are they to us parents, aren't they? And so was Nandani to Ashwin. Why wouldn't she be? After all she was the first kid to them. It's not like that Rishu wasn't. He too was dear to everyone being the youngest. But the first child is the dearest to parents. After all she was the one who made them realise what it was like to be parents. What is was like to be a mother, what it was like to be a father. The first feeling of having someone who defines you. Someone who proves the existence of your love. I still remember how much Ashwin cried that day when the doctor gave Nandani into his arms. He cried more than Nandani did.

How much he loved her. How she wanted to go on a two day school trip and he wasn't letting her go. No matter how much we convinced but he wasn't ready to let her off her site for even two days. And here I am. Two years passed and I didn't even know where she was, how she was until now.

I couldn't decide if I was careless or just unlucky.

First I lost Ashwin. My first born child. My daughter in law. Rishu's voice. No one knew how dear his nagging were to me. No one knew how I would be up all night beside him pampering his head just to absorb that little thought that my rishu would never call me ever.

And then my Nandu. Someone just snatched her away from me. All my kids. I might be the most unluckiest mother of all times. What did i do to face such fate?

The past is past they say. But why is it so? Why is past the past? Why can't we change it? How much I wish to go back in the past. To that one day and just tell Ashwin, that son it's too late don't come tonight, stay there. Don't drive this late. I would have have had my son to myself today. Rishu would have had his voice.

Why didn't I tell Nandani, beta sleep with your Aams tonight. I would have known when she left. I would have accompanied her. May be nothing would have happened what happened.

Why didn't I force her to never leave Manglore. Why did I let her come to Mumbai? Why me? Why my kids, always? Why?

All these years i was dying to see her. Make sure that she is fine. Make sure she is alive. But when I come to know now. I don't have guts to face her.