What the author has to say….

Words have the power to move the world, and written words can do wonders. They provoke thoughts and inspire actions. Fiction liberates the author to paint characters with the color of his wish. I tried to tell a story full of the essence of life. When living becomes a struggle, even the best of us crumble, and a few of us rise above it and shape our destinies. As you flip through the pages, amidst the present dark and gloomy situation that the global pandemic bestowed upon us, you might see a glimmer of hope, a tiny little light at the end of the tunnel. I am cautiously avoiding the “C” word here, as it has become the most dreaded word lately.

A book was brewing inside me for the past 21 years of my living self. And finally, it was written during 21 days of isolation. The floodgate opened during a time of global crisis, as a result of introspection in the solitude.

Needless to say, I love every 50K odd words that went into the book, it is a usual and exclusive love affair between the author and the book. And I hope you will love it as well. As my first novel, it was not difficult to tell others’ stories; it was somewhat difficult not to narrate mine. So, I consciously choose characters utterly different from me. Still, I believe you will find yourself somewhere in the characters, as I could see myself in some of them.

Let us begin our journey and get acquainted with some of the flawed and imperfect characters who tried to live their lives in their own ways. That’s what we all are doing. That’s what we all are—flawed and imperfect in our own ways. Perfectly imperfect or imperfectly perfect, as the situation demands.

I would like to thank my friends and the experts who took the pain to read the manuscript painstakingly and offered suggestions for betterment. Thanks to Notion Press for their professional approach to make this book see the light of the day.

I hope you will enjoy the journey the book will take you to. Word of caution: It will be a rough and bumpy ride throughout. And as the problem was unique, the solution had to be one of its kind.

Happy reading!

1

I lost count of how many times I was raped, how many times my privacy was compromised, how many sleepless nights I had spent. I put on loads of makeup to hide the bruises and scars. Even while being afraid to the core of my being, I had to practice staring hard into the eyes of males, just to shoo them away. I was tired of being tough. I had made myself so strong that I lost all flexibility and ended up being brittle. I was so exposed from within that I did not know where to hide. They were watching, they were following, they were waiting to pounce on me. I was always guarded.

Always shy. I always tried to bury myself so that no one could find me. I never trusted anybody. The hatred I carried within me kept on pulverizing me, not metaphorically, physically. Persistently for 25 years, I could feel burning sensations under my skin. I wanted the earth to be flat so that I could go far away from all these. But, the globe being round, troubles kept on coming back. How awful it feels to be just a body. Sometimes, not even a body… just a sex organ… just a means of physical gratification.

I died a thousand deaths. I could not see myself in the mirror, it felt so ugly. And I believed it so earnestly that I became cynical if someone told me I was beautiful. Have you ever been physically humiliated? If yes, you know these feelings; you know you can never get over it. No amount of counseling, meditation and positive, feel-good thinking can erase the memory of rape. It always haunts you.

I believed in God and begged Him to prove Himself. Be the fucking GOD whom people believe in – otherwise rape victims have nowhere to go. Don’t be so philosophical and mystical about your presence; be the GOD in action. I wished for a magic pill that could wipe my mind clean. I was always ready to trade all my knowledge for the loss of my memory. I was prepared to learn A, B, C, D all over again, if I could start with a fresh slate.

I am a rape victor. Not a victim, not even a survivor. But it was not always like that, not until that day; not before those 45 life-changing minutes of my life. That incident changed my life and many more lives afterwards.

My name is June – June Banerjee. Now that I share the same initials as James Bond, I can introduce my name like he does. But the similarity ends there; yet, we both have a story to tell.

As the narrative progresses, I will take you into my past, my in-between years… starting from my tenth birthday.

2

The last thing Rick wanted was a bullet fired into his arm when he was in an unfamiliar area. He needed a few more breaths, a few more steps, few more minutes before he could faint, to reach someone who could help. Rick had to reach her. Rick had to hand over the flash drive containing the all-important videos. He could bleed to death. Death was not optional; it was a certainty. Death is not about the exhaustion of all the available resources of living – it is about answering the basic questions. “Have I lived my life and served my goal? Have I been grateful enough for the days I lived?” If the answers are YES – you have lived your life. But Rick had a few questions still unanswered. Some ‘No’s’ still needed to be changed to affirmations. Rick was just a few meters away from doing it. Life sucks, but he denied being a sucker. The seemingly ordinary life of his would not have turned upside down, if only he had agreed to comply…

Shit happened, but Rick was trying hard not to get buried under it.

It had all started just three days back…

3

Zooming in through his camera, Rick captured the quivering of my nose, my chest heaving up and down slowly, tears rolling down my cheeks – the complete emotional turmoil I was going through as I addressed the audience. Rick could not comprehend what I was telling the audience. He was amazed by the manifestation of my emotions as I delivered my speech. He was busy capturing reality. “No series, movies, or drama can recreate this honest display of purity,” Rick thought. The camera was frozen in his hand. The entire audience in the auditorium was mesmerized. He noticed that a prepared script was present on my desk, but I was not reading from it. I had forgotten that I was addressing an audience. It was as if I was possessed. As if I was confronting my demons face to face, finally. I was overwhelmed by my own emotions. Rick’s camera captured the droplets of my tears, making the flimsy white papers on the desk wet. The documents were of no use anyway. Rick steadied his camera. He had never before captured such a personal outpouring of grief, pain and humiliation. Later he knew that very few did, ever.

I was not myself that day; I rarely lost control over myself those days. But then, it had not been ‘just another day’ either. The jolt that I received just before the speech had triggered all the emotion that followed. Everything happens for a reason – with a cost attached to it.

It did cost me dearly.

4

Even an extraordinary day begins in an ordinary way.

Rick hated those early hours of the morning when he would be woken up by the mobile alarm. Someone said you are still poor if you must wake up by the bell. Yes, Rick had become poor, with his money all spent, energy exhausted and the absence of hope. A slanting ray of sunlight invaded the gap between the curtains and drew a straight line on the floor. It was a summer morning and the sun had woken up earlier than Rick. The line on the floor reminded Rick of the linearity of his present life. Without any spikes, life had become dull lately. On a cardiac monitor in the ICU a straight line signifies death. Was he dead? Rick wondered and tried to get to his feet.

He always had to wake up early in the morning, prepare breakfast for himself, and get ready for the office. Rick hated his profession and every aspect of it, including his meager salary. Life had become lifeless for him. He could not differentiate one day from the other. He had taken up journalism, thinking it would be exciting and adventurous. But it had turned out to be dull and boring. At least for him. Over time, he gained all the skills required for the job, and the camera was a mere extension of his right hand. He had a dream, passion and a professional degree in journalism. When the Twin Towers were hit by terrorists’ planes, he had decided to be a journalist. He had to be. The scenes on the road, the bustle of people rushing away, the emotions on display… He did not choose journalism, journalism chose him. He fought with his father, argued with his mother, convinced his friends, and dove into reporting. After all this, and after completing his journalism course, he became a journalist for ABC. But he was disappointed big time. It turned out to be yet another profession.

By now, he had already completed five years in ABC. It was a consolidated platform of print and electronic media. As a ground reporter, Rick’s cumulative screen time was less than an hour. Less than an hour in five completed years! Five completed years of hard work resulted in less screen time than that of a repeated commercial in a single day. All his reporting usually appeared as a flash in the “100 stories in 15 minutes” slot. On some days, the capsule did not include his reports at all. Rick sometimes wondered why on earth they needed him. He was just surviving by bringing in numbers to fill the 100 news slots, only as a filler, a number, one in one hundred.

Rick tried to kickstart his motorbike and it would not yield to his first effort. He noticed that it usually started on the third kick. He wondered WHY it had to be that way, every day. The lifeless bike needed a little prodding, patting, and a full-blooded kick to come to life. Or was it him? Did he, too, gather the right amount of thrust on his third try only?

Unlike the young model in the commercial who was shown riding the same bike with a charming smile on his face, Rick’s bike ride from his home to the office was far from being pleasant and smooth. He had to negotiate bumpy roads, heavy traffic, and most importantly, thoughts of yet another hard and futile day. Smelling the emitted burned diesel, hearing the honks and sounds of traffic, and burning in the scorching sun, Rick cringed, gasped and sweat his way into another day of battle ahead.

Through the glass door, Rick entered the reception area. He felt a cold shiver as his sweat began evaporating rapidly in the colder office environment. The absence of warmth of the environment perfectly reflected his relationship with his reporting boss. The reception desk was manned (or womanned) by a young lady. The receptionist never greeted the ground reporting staff. It had to be they who had to wish her a good morning first, and then sometimes, she would deign to reply to the greetings. But she was never short of an ear-to-ear smile for sub-editors and higher-ups. Rick wondered which training classes taught them about such differential and hierarchical treatment for human beings. Life is a bitch in the hand of bitches.

Rick, by now, knew his routine. His immediate supervisor might turn up with some low-key assignments like covering the annual sports events of colleges, blood donation camps, or midday meal issues in some little-known villages. All the duties he was given had a typical mediocrity and certainty about them. He always knew where to go; very rarely did it involve any interviews, and it never mattered to anyone. Even worse, he might spend the entire day in the office without any work at all. There was a hive of activities around him, but he was not a part of it. There was news breaking every hour but he was just a distant onlooker.

There would not be any cameraman or support staff with him. He would have to go alone, record some videos, shoot some stills, and report back to Dona. He had pleaded with Dona several times that he needed challenging assignments, that he could handle certain areas independently and report all that needed to be published. He had complained that he was not growing professionally. He even offered to cover Page 3. Nothing worked. She seemed determined to keep giving him such low-key assignments. Rick could not reason why; bitches are unreasonable anyway.