Winner of Wattpad India Awards 2020 (Judge's Choice) in the New Adult category.
~*~
"The lights are cheeky, you can't live without them, and yet if you get too close, they'll blind you. Darkness? Well it doesn't cheat. It's cool and soothing. It's r...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
On rare, lazy Sunday mornings, when work didn't demand her immediate attention, Madhu would find herself picking up a normal newspaper instead of a financial one. Sitting on her balcony overlooking Lutyens' Delhi, she'd sip on the best tea Assam offered and turn to the crime section.
Celebratory gunfire in wedding injure three, groom arrested. Witness shot dead outside sessions court, police suspect local gang leaders. Student shoots himself outside minister's office during protests. Raid at MLA's house, four people including a foreign national arrested with heroin and firearms.
The headlines talked of distant places, far away from her gated community. Beyond passing worries as a concerned citizen, she didn't think much of them. Never could she have imagined experiencing it first-hand.
Yet here she was.
Two bullets in the air and the crowd went haywire. People, desperate to reach their children or to take cover, created a stampede. An unknown hand gripped Madhu's arm, nails puncturing her skin as she was shoved aside. She lost sight of both Sunanda and Vishal, her screams for her friend drowned by the chaos. Moving against the current of people, she winced when shoes and sandals crushed her bare feet.
Once she was away from the crowd, her eyes snapped to the figure of a man with a rifle slung over his shoulder. A burning torch in hand, he was striding towards the stage.
The wooden stage.
He hadn't seen her standing opposite to the side he was approaching. Heart beating in her mouth, she ducked from his sight and rushed around the stage. Embers of the hay effigies were still crackling.
"Madhu di!" Satish called out to her, lifting the cloth that covered the stage revealing the kids hiding under it.
"GET OUT! GET OUT FROM THERE THEY'RE BURNING IT!"
Her students processed that before Satish could, and much like their parents, drove out from their safe space like a pack of bees escaping their honeycomb. Flames were starting to devour it from all sides, and one of the pillars holding it upright had fallen. Satisfied that no one was under it anymore, Madhu was about to turn around when of the older boys said, "Reena's not here."
Lead dropped in Madhu's stomach. Dread upon the realisation of a child still beneath the burning stage made her head spin. The inquisitive ten-year old had a habit of disappearing under the stage even on normal days during practice. Madhu had no doubt that she had crawled to the front to see what was going on.
Two thirds of the stage was on fire when she fell to her knees before lying flat on her belly, her sari's pallu tucked under her waist. Elbows digging on the surprisingly moist ground, she dragged herself forward, deaf to the cries of Satish calling her name as well as the general ruckus.
Smoke made her eyes water, but she could still spot the outline of Reena. She must've started to crawl back after realising it was on fire but one side of the stage collapsing and making the whole structure tilt had trapped Reena. Sitting right in the middle spot beneath the crumbling stage, the child was frozen, too scared to push aside the burning log which was in her way, separating her from Madhu's outstretched hand.
