She stalls the streets knocking door to door. It’s been 2 nights since she hasn't slept. Probably might not sleep at peace for the rest of her life. She can’t eat food, can’t swallow water. She’s not bothered about how she’s looking or what she’s wearing. Her heart bears pain, worry and a nightmare! She splashes her face, checks the time and date and starts to walk.
After 2 hours of walking. ‘Knock knock’ “Is my daughter here?” she asks with misty eyes and a lump in her throat. “Nahi! Why bhabhi? Is everything alright?” the lady opening the door replies. “Anita hasn’t returned home since Monday evening. She left for tuition and hasn’t returned since.” the mother replies as a tear trickles down her sleep deprived eyes.
She turns around helplessly and walks to the adjoining door. To ask the same question hoping for a positive response or hoping to see her 15 year old girl run towards her and hug her from behind each door. Each knock gives is a ray of hope. Each no crushes her. She visits the tuition, school, park, friends and all the distantly possible places her daughter could be at. She has complained at the local police station, and put up endless posters reading “missing” and a picture of her daughter from her tenth board admit card. She has checked with everyone.
Daily the mother cooks Anita’s favourite dishes and lays the table along with Anita’s plate. Hoping her daughter will be back. Anita’s room lies the way it was left, comb on the dressing table, half opened drawer, two opened text books on her study and list of 26 children Anita was going to invite for her birthday party. "My beti...she wanted to be a doctor" her mother sobs, talking to one of her neighbours. The young girl's father visits the police station pleading, every three days. It has been a month now. Her mother hopes one day her ‘beti’ will be back.
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She faintly remembers leaving her tuition and walking around the corner…the second left was her lane; 6th house in the row. She wanted to be a doctor; she wanted earrings on her 16th birthday. She was going to throw a party, invite her friends and distribute the finest candies. She had it all planned, she’d take biology and study hard.
A bout of acid comes into her mouth and she throws up. Sitting in a cheap dress (nowhere close to what she’d hoped for on her birthday), hair messed up, feeling dizzy…dry tears on her face, Anita has turned 16 today. She begs to God, hands joined, pleading as she stares into the night sky from the room she is locked in. ‘Please’ she says in her mind ‘Please take me away from here. I’d rather die. Please help me God. Please.’ Sometimes she’d wish she would die and sometimes hope she’d escape and meet her mother, make something out of her life. It had been a month, and what Anita was going through was something she’d never imagined. It was hell, worse than her worst fears. She never imagined studying hard and being an obedient child all 16 years would land her in the incorrigible state she was now in. Everyday she’d wake up to her appalling reality after a sweet dream of her college graduation like she’d seen in the movie 3 idiots.
The memory races in her head. Eyes closed, she recalls; she was walking and someone grabbed her by her waist and covered her mouth, sprinting into a van. No one could hear her muffled screams and the next second a soft cloth was pressed against her nose.
Her eyes flutter open on hearing a sound. The door is thrust open and a drunken man stumbles into the room. She sneers and gives him the most contemptuous look. She would've spat on his face had she not learnt in the past month that doing that she might be pierced with broken glass bottles into her face or back or beaten black and blue. She was helpless. She breathed; her heart ached.
The man sprawled on top her and ripped her blouse hungrily and ruthlessly. He looked as old as her father. Her eyes pleading and hateful simultaneously. That dirty look the man beheld, the filthy grin across that man's face. She knew what was coming. It had been a month now, she ought to. Never in her dreams had she imagined that this is how it would be for her.
This is not a description of a CID episode!
If you’re surprised…well then keep it low as this is the tale of woe of thousands of children across our country. An increase after the count of 40,000 in 2004, in 2009 about 60,000 children were lost and NOT found. What the newspapers say is that this count too is probably an underestimation. Security is distant but what seems like is that the police aren’t really bothered about missing children. After a study in 2005 it was found that there is a need for a separate investigating agency to track missing children but just like another issue, here it wasn't considered necessary. Probably because we already have too much youth population that a loss of a life or a potentially good future of a few children can definitely be over looked.
Any complaints of 'missing' are taken in as diary entries and unlike an FIR the police aren’t compelled to investigate it. The lodging of an FIR also depends on the socio economic background of the parents. Of course there are those rare instances where the parents have evidence that their child has been kidnapped and then the police can do nothing but file an FIR. In all states except
The sorry state is that among these, are children who could probably get into politics and change the system, help in scientific development, do social work, could be doctors and engineers saving lives or just be good human beings, but all nipped in the bud. Every city's streets and chaurahas are thronged with children begging. Thousands end up as beggars on the streets. Somewhat like the story in Slumdog Millionaire, where in they’re handicapped or made blind and are compelled to beg for money to live another day. Or maybe just taken away too young that they probably don’t even remember where they’re from. Some end up as bonded labourers in shoe, oil and drug factories. You never know the young boy that comes around to clean your car or to do any other domestic jobs for a menial monthly wage might just be a son taken away when he was small and now…he doesn’t know his way home.
The country is thriving today considering the sex business. Don’t pity the hungry, deprived and frustrated souls. Pity those adolescent boys and girls who are helpless, live toys for these animals. Finally, man has found a price tag for another man…life is no longer priceless…you pay for the night you pay to buy. The one who’s been bought and sold has been drugged so heavily that the naïve adolescent can’t even stand properly let alone talk or fight.
It’s not just the adolescents you see…there are people so gifted (I mean it in pure sarcastic terms) that they can trade with infants. About 10% of the missing children population constitutes of infants. A new life…an infant…opens his eyes, unaware of the evils of the world and he’s harmless, hasn’t even got teeth, sleeps, babbles, smiles, cries, eats and sleeps again…he doesn’t even understand what’s happening around him. So, while an hour ago he was smiling at his mother as she sang him a lullaby he doesn’t know he’s now sitting in a lab and is a part of a forced organ trade.
This is the ALARMING truth, and no one can deny that. They’re human… and they’re still in the becoming stage…. Not even fully grown adults and yet their lives are being snatched away from them. A potential politician, scientist, teacher, doctor, engineer, writer, thinker, artist, musician, police man…a potential HUMAN BEING is being crushed, killed and destroyed even before moulding. Everyone has a right to lead a life and it’s snatched away from these children. WHY? Why then are we complaining about our country’s development? Can this matter be looked into? Missing jewellery is such a serious matter; missing capital is a serious matter then why not missing children? The way it has been made mandatory in
Now that’s where my brain wrecks, I need more ideas more thoughts more suggestions more solutions! What do you think, can be a solution for this brutal fate of the children and the helpless state of their parents? What can be done for these children?
