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They dragged her from her burning home amidst shrieking winds on a cold, moonlit night. She was sobbing, kicking, shouting, screaming and resisting her tormentors, five of them, many still in their army uniforms. She cowered desperately looking for a way out from the leering, sneering men, found a jagged stone and held on to it, hoping to aim it at the first coward's eyes. One of the men sprayed pepper. It stung her eyes. As she tried desperately to see, rough hands groped her. A man hit her, another slapped her. She fought back with the stone, but there were too many and one by one they almost overwhelmed her.
Suddenly, she heard shots. The men tried to peer into the darkness. The ghostly moonlight playing upon moving shadows chilled their spines and for a moment they froze. Another shot rang out scattering the deadly darkness and the men did not wait any more. They scampered like rats leaving the girl on the rough ground.
"Run," said a voice inside her. She ran to the thick jungle swirling with bamboo trees and leach infested marshes. "Run," urged the voice again. She ran through the rough terrain and plunged into the dense forest. Panting hard and shivering with cold, she rested on a grassy knoll hoping to catch her breath. The blue beckoning horizon glowed with a rising sun. And in the new light of dawn, she saw something. On a white stone slab was an inscription. All it said was Indian border 1 Km. Someone had wiped the name of the town. She sighed with relief as warm thoughts of hospitality soothed her mind and gave spurs to her feet. She walked the seemingly longest kilometer and was about to jump over the fence when disaster struck. A shot was fired, her feet slipped and she felt the sky seeming to rotate a million times as her eyes closed.
When she woke up, her mother was hovering anxiously, "Must have been a bad dream, Aarti" she said, "this is the second time you fell out of your bed, what were you dreaming?" Aarti was so shook up that her face registered a total blank. It took a while for her to gather her wits. Then the full impact of the tragic scene she had seen a couple of days ago, hit her.
Last update : 27-12-2009 14:06
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