A month later, in memory of..

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                                    Jyothi

                                         A

                                        bus

                                 came by, they

                                  hesitated but

                                    got inside

                                     anyway.

           Sparkles in eyes, lightness in steps, just a

           boy and girl on the way back from a movie.

           Interrupted. A nasty comment by one who

           lured them inside with a singsong solicitation

           whistle. Violation became vicious. Fueled by

           entitled rage. Hours later, a nation found its

           guts were pulled off. Shocked nation lay by

          roadside, bloodied and naked in the cold dark.

           Cuts, bites, wounds for all to feel. But no one

           offered to cover even as it agonized for help,

           shivering, bleeding, throbbing. Even one tear

           of the young girl who stood up for the right to

           be herself has more worth than all that was 

           ever fathomed and will be - that almost all

           felt this later and their hearts hushed as she lay 

           dying maybe the realistic hope that there is for 

           this restless nation, so young, so old, so much 

           vigor and so resigned, now forever haunted by 

           the headline“A large number of Police Vans 

           and BSF followed the victim as her body was 

           taken for cremation.” When one, just one cop 

           or a morsel of respect in any of the 6 men could 

           have saved the night when a girl going home from

           a movie bravely battled beastliness in a quietly

           plying bus in the heart of a city in a free nation.

***** 

January 2013