PROLOGUE
Are there really only happy children?
There are those who are well-fed and express themselves unrestrained and return to the safety of a happy home. They come in a lot of shades because our lives are all different but every shade is a variation of the happy—the beloved obedient, the troublesome, the intelligent and the stupid, the smart and the dull. They are all loved.
And there are those children who are poorly fed, mud-smeared, and sauntering in the streets, their needs never noticed. Yet these children are joyous of the delights in the empty fields or the waterhole. That’s the source of their happiness. But, well, regarding the unfed, God be with them!
There is another kind. The beaten. This is brutal for they are born to be beaten and clipped off their natural selves, inquisitive and queer. No questions can be asked. No mistakes can be made. No failures can be had. God be with them, too!
In a shade not so different from the beaten is Sanjana’s story. This shade isn’t noticed either. But if you visited her home, your observations would be limited. Because you, an outsider, would be exempted from all the malice, temporarily swept underneath the rug. You would see happy smiling faces. But after you leave, she would have to witness it all. She saw it, the horror. Every single day.
So she returns home daily to a stage play of torture. While her friends desire home, she desires to be away. It’s her salvation. But how can a child be away from home? They are dependent, aren’t they? So she really is chained. She simply cannot refuse. It’s a forced experience. You have to witness it or leave home. She never considered leaving home. If she left, she would die anyway. So the choices are to stay at home and survey the delights of barbarity, or to leave home, starve, and die. She never even considered the latter. Quite like the habitually beaten children, you will agree.
But she grew, and she will show it to you. She will show how even such pain can be used to heal. And to flatten your doubts further, you will see how strong some relations can really be.
Her story is based on a collection of incidents from people’s real lives.
