Whispers Of Resilience
~ An Emotionally Stirring Narrative about a young woman with Special Abilities by Anushka Darda, inspired by Real-Life Events.
“Heroes aren’t always the ones who win. They are the ones who lose sometimes. But they keep fighting, they keep coming back. That’s what makes them heroes.”
-Cassandra Clare
The quiet little village in the heart of Maharashtra heard the screams of a dying mother. Yet the sun rose with the birth of a smiling angel. Unaware of her mother’s and her own special conditions, Niharika grew up with her brother in a small house.
She never had the privilege of receiving proper care and facilities a specially abled child should have. Niharika had only her brother to hold her hand to weather any storm life threw at her and he ripped away even the tiny fraction of childhood she had left.
Niharika spent days on end calling out to her brother from the dimly lit dungeon room the seller had locked her into, oblivious that her brother had sold her off to a local schizophrenic for some money at the mere age of fourteen. Her life from here on had no clear trajectory and no source of hope. Her pleading hands were mercilessly shoved away. Her skin had purple remnants from the leather belt. She was surrounded by vulgar men at night, clawing away at her body like a filthy scavenger.
Niharika didn’t let this be the end of her story. Countless tears paved her escape road back to her village. A fleeting glimmer of hope that her brother would protect her. That she would soon return to her mundane world.
She felt numb, empty roars echoed through her body as the pregnancy test fell on the muddy bathroom floor. What would society make of her? Would her brother be her saviour?
There’s a moment in life, the one that shatters your mind and kills your soul. Niharika scowled like a mad wolf as her brother forced himself on her. The tiny grasps of sanity left her soul that day. How would you ever define happiness and love to her?
From that day on, Niharika kept screaming. Only screaming. Her response to anything at all was reduced to violence. How else would her brain and body protect her? Some may even wonder as to what slivers were left to protect?
Who will believe a mental woman? Her screams of help were reduced to insanity by the village panchayat as her brother pinned the blame onto her. When will our society hear the screams of those who can’t put their grief into words?
There was silence. Utter silence when Niharika was thrown out of her own village. Her screams had ashen out or perhaps some crevice of her mind knew she was finally free. How do you be free in a maze?
In the corner of a government shelter, Niharika had stopped eating. It seemed as if her lungs had a place only for screams. The people around saw only the broken pieces of her mind and walked all over the pain in her soul.
Wrapping shawls around every cold shoulder in the government shelter, Aradhya’s eyes fell onto a teenage girl with pale skin, her face almost engulfed by her unmatted hair and dark circles. As Aradhya wrapped the shawl around the seventeen-year-old, the scream that left Niharika touched her core.
If the existence of humanity needed proof, Ms. Aradhya’s presence would be more than enough. The founder of NGO immediately made arrangements to take Niharika with her.
Aradhya’s sleepless nights and months of persistence and love, slowly reduced Niharika’s screams. It wasn’t easy, and most of the times, Niharika scared away the other residents at the NGO. So, Niharika stayed at Aradhya’s house. All her kindness was only met with violent gestures and screams from Niharika. How can anyone bring back a shattered soul?
If there’s anyone who can answer this question, it would be Aradhya. But she herself cannot put it in words.
“After nine months, screams had turned into a smile and it had lit up my whole world.”
In the years to come, Aradhya adopted Niharika as her own daughter. Niharika now mingled with the kids and adults like her in the NGO. The screams haven’t vanished but the cracks are starting to fill up with smiles.
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Instagram: @anushka_darda
