That Silent Night

It was about eleven in the night and my friends and I were just stepping out of Marine Lines station. After the heady dose of a very political play we had gone to watch, we decided that going Marine Drive would be the best way to relax. Except for a few taxis and a few stray dogs and us, the roads were more or less empty, usual for this part of the town this time of the night. Standing outside the station was a girl. She looked tense and lost and scared. She must not have been a day over eighteen. I could see that she was staring at our group. She’s probably just fascinated I thought. Judging from her clothes, she looked like someone who had just come from a village. But there are almost twelve million people in Bombay. She was just one of them. As we reached closer, I could make out that she was puckering her guts to probably speak to us. Her eyes were a bit moist, as if she is struggling to fight back tears. When we reached near her, she spoke; she said in Hindi, “Can I please borrow your phone? It’s very urgent. I am waiting for someone and he was supposed to be here half an hour ago. He’s still not here. I just want to check if everything is okay with him.” Having stayed in Delhi for more than four years, I am extremely careful as to who I speak with in the roads. What if I gave her my phone and she just ran with it? Looking back, I feel so petty about it. I could see that this girl was genuinely troubled. So I gave her my phone. My friends continued walking at a very slow pace while I stood next to her. The phone call was brief. From what I understood of the conversation, the man who she was waiting for was ten minutes away and would be there soon. When she gave back the phone to me, her entire face had changed. She was beaming. The change from a girl with worry lines on her forehead to this shiny bright face was unnaturally drastic. She thanked me again and again for helping her. I told her it wasn’t a big deal and moved on to catch up with my friends.

After about five minutes or so we heard a gut wrenching scream of a girl somewhere. We all looked around, trying to figure out where the scream was coming from. The roads were empty and we couldn’t see anything but the scream was moving closer and closer. Just then, I saw her. I saw the girl who had borrowed my phone outside the station. Even from a distance I could make out it was her because of the bright yellow kurta that she was wearing. My heart stopped beating for a few seconds, as I saw her emerge from under the shadows of the flyover and run haphazardly on the roads just shouting and screaming for help. We just froze where we were standing. It just seemed to be too unreal to be true. She was crying and her voice was going hoarse from all the shouting. She screamed as she ran. She screamed “Tum jhoothe ho..." "Liar. You are a liar.” “Bachao Bachao”Help! Help! It looked like she was screaming for the walls of the buildings around, for the roads to help her. She obviously had no idea which direction to run to because she just ran around in circles. I had just about managed to register this when I saw two men running after her. They caught up with her and they beat her. I was too dumbfounded to do anything. She managed to escape their hold again and ran. And this time she ran directly towards us. She landed on me and she dug her nails into my forearms just begging to help her. The two men caught up again and dragged her by the hair and pulled her away from me. My mind wasn’t even working. I just didn’t know what to do. We were a group of four girls. How could we possibly fight these two men? One of them was really tall and well built, like a bouncer. The other one was relatively younger but at that moment looked like an animal to me for the savagery that he was carrying out. She kept shouting “Tum jhoothe ho, makkar ho.” You are a liar “Maine tumhare upar bharosa kiya tha" I trusted you.

There was a police jeep standing with some constables chitchatting inside it. They were acting as if there was nothing happening there. I ran to them and shouted at them and told them to rescue the girl. Even then, they came slowly trolling all the way. I could see from the corner of my mind, those men beating that girl. By the time the police stopped the two men; the girl was hurt and bruised everywhere. Quite a small crowd had formed. At this very moment, out of nowhere a fat burly woman in a burkha entered the scene and told the police that the girl in question was in fact her daughter and that she had run away from home and that the two men were her brothers. All this while the girl just kept screaming and repeating, “She is not my mother. I have never seen her before…” each and every person standing in that crowd that night knew exactly what was happening. But nobody, absolutely nobody, including me and my friends did anything to help her. She kept pleading for help and I just stood there doing nothing. I have never felt more incompetent in my life.

The crowd insisted that the matter be taken to the police station. The three people agreed they would do that on the condition that no one from the crowd would accompany them. The police agreed to. So they took her way. They put her in a taxi and took her away.

She kept shouting “Main in logon ko nahi jaanti.” I don’t know these people. She screamed and cried and pleaded. But no one did anything.

When I came back home that night, I wept. I wept because I felt helpless.

I could imagine her that someone had probably duped her, someone had promised her marriage and family and a happy life in the big city. I could imagine how her heart must've broken into a million pieces when she finally realized that her husband had in fact sold her off. 

And I can imagine her now; probably locked up in some hole somewhere, far away from the light, getting beaten and raped into submission every day.

Although India has more than 2500 registered NGOs working for the cause of human trafficking and prostitution, and though the government spends millions each year to stop it, it still goes on.

It’s all in vain.