Before she left, she turned once more to look at the little boy in a cream shirt, a threadbare yellow sweater barely keeping the cold away, and blue shorts. She wanted to remember his sweet smile and his soulful eyes. She wanted to carry him with her.

Kesar could not help but wince as he saw her looking at him. Tears spilled down his face. She stood there with a swollen face, the black eye, broken jaw, the fresh cuts angry and red. She looked wounded and broken. She could barely walk.

Kesar called out to her one last time. He wanted her to wait. He rushed inside to fetch the red diary from under her bed. Kesar had often seen her smile as she read it over and over. He held it out to her. With great effort she grabbed the diary, and then she turned away. It was difficult to see if a tear had escaped through her bruised swollen face.

Kesar stared at her departing figure. He had to tell someone. He knew the shop of the man who had come to see her from the village. Maybe he would help out. Wearing his little rubber slippers he ran all the way to the busy market plaza. While he ran, Rajjo limped through the busy marketplace, getting curious, sympathetic and horrified reactions from onlookers. A little further she passed out, only to wake up in a small government clinic.

They had put her on a drip and questioned her repeatedly, but apart from her name and her husband’s name Rajjo did not say a word. The clinic was called Satnam Charitable Centre. The woman in charge spoke to Rajjo calmly and explained to her that they were going to take pictures of her bruises. She had been assaulted and a police complaint had to be lodged. Rajjo went through it all, trying to hear what was said with her left ear. There was complete silence in the right one.

She sat listlessly and the camera clicked. She was taken for a medical examination as Rajjo sat through it all. The doctor gave her a pitiful glance shaking her head. They had prepared her report. They suspected rape and torture.

‘One of your ear drums is severly damaged.’ The doctor informed Rajjo.

‘But these days you can get machines and advance procedures to help you.’ The doctor then turned to a nurse who wanted to take her away to attend to another patient.

It began to drizzle as the dark clouds ushered in the dusk. Rajjo gulped some cold air and passed out again, only to wake up in the dead of the night on a strange narrow bed with the smell of sterile hospital spirit flooding her senses. Suffocated and scared, Rajjo quietly left the clinic. As she walked the deserted streets, watching the fires lit on the sidewalks gently warming the huddled souls in blankets around them, she went back to the professor and the red diary one last time. If life were a story, the plot of tragedy was its soul.