Page 155 - Till the Last Breath . . .

Zarah gazed wordlessly at the glittering lights of the city while Dushyant

waited for her answers. It felt like he had been violated, not her, and his
fists clenched in anger. He stepped closer to her, Zarah’s hair brushing
against his face. A part of him wanted to turn her around and envelop her in

his arms but he didn’t know how she would respond.
‘You can tell me,’ Dushyant pressed again.

‘I tried telling my father …’ Her voice trailed away.
‘What did he say? Didn’t he do anything?’ Dushyant almost bellowed,

the Anger Vein in his forehead now far more prominent.
‘He didn’t believe me.’

‘He didn’t believe you? That you got raped? Why the fuck? How can that
be?’ Dushyant clutched her hand and jerked her around, almost as if it was
not Zarah in front of him, but the men who had raped her. ‘There are tests,

aren’t there?’
‘I didn’t tell him I was raped. I told him I was manhandled … Molested.’

‘Why? Umm … but still …’ Dushyant struggled with his words. He
grappled in the dark to come up with an explanation as to why her father

didn’t believe her and why she had to lie. He also wondered if Kajal had
told anybody what had happened that night.

‘He refused to believe me and said I was imagining things,’ Zarah said,
her voice steeled now. ‘I didn’t know what to tell him.’
‘And you have not talked about it to anyone?’ Dushyant still pressed on,

looking for answers, trying to make sense out of this ridiculous atrocity.
‘You’re the first person I have told this to,’ she confessed.

Why? Dushyant felt burdened by the truth. All of a sudden, he felt
accountable for what had happened to Zarah fifteen years ago. He started to

imagine a lonely little girl being ravaged by two big army generals as she
screamed powerlessly in agony. He felt vomit rising to his throat.

‘What about them? The men who …’ Dushyant asked, hoping for the
worst.
‘One of them died in action a year later. The other had an accident at

home and slipped into a coma. He was taken off the ventilator recently and
he died too,’ she said with air of triumph.