On a cloudy day of June 6, 1944, the German forces are standing at guard on the Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. There is an eerie silence across the beach. The only sound one can hear is of the waves crashing with hundreds of hedgehogs (anti-tank obstacle) on the shore and the cawing of crows. It almost feels like the silence before the storm. The allied forces in thousands of boats are crossing the English Channel to attack five beachheads in Normandy, France. When the American soldiers reached near the shores the eerie silence was filled with the echo of gunshots. As they commenced disembarking from the boats into waters the shootings intensified. Some soldiers were underwater and while they were struggling to come out of the water the bullets pierced their hearts underwater, painting the water red, signifying their valor. Taking support of hundred of hedgehogs the American forces tried to advance their positions meeting with mine explosions. A great number of mines were planted by German forces all across the shores. There was chaos everywhere. “Ryan, give cover”, shouts a fellow soldier. Suddenly an explosion sets off. It makes Ryan deaf and shocked for a brief moment. He saw across the battlefield with no sound piercing his ear and all he could see was devastation till the horizon but he could not hear the magnanimous devastation. He saw a soldier walking with someone else’s arm and he pukes after watching a dead body with its intestines popped out of its body structure. Whirrrrrrr…… The airplanes of allied forces join the fight to combat the Luftwaffe airplanes and provide assistance to American ground forces. After hours of struggle, they were able to vanquish the German forces and get hold of the desired land.
The actual horror is post-war when you get a sense of the scale of devastation. Nurses and doctors come to inspect the site and tend to the badly wounded soldiers. A nurse walks towards Ryan who has suffered various injuries. He asks with a trembling voice, “what is your name?” she says, “Cathy”, then he says “Thank you, for your service”, and Cathy weeps. Suddenly she sees a locket float ashore, right beside her feet. The stone on the locket looks like god intricately weaved that stone, making sure of every intricate detail. A sapphire stone with two ruby buttons carved on it. She picks up the locket and keeps it with her and starts treating Ryan. A perfectly fit soldier shouts hey!!! Sexy will you not heal the wounds of my heart; come to me, baby. The soldier walks towards her, she walks a step back, he takes a step front, and she steps back. Her legs start to tremble vigorously with sweat dripping all over her face due to paranoia. She presses hard on that locket in fear.
Now, everything can be seen as long trails like watching a long exposure video in 3-D. Suddenly there is a black void all across. Her blue eyes slowly open as she regains consciousness.
Victorian era
Everyone is staring at her. She can only see men and very few women. A page from the newspaper travels in the strong breeze and hits her face. She is shocked to see that the date on the newspaper is 14th April 1867. The page has an article about the notable work women’s rights activist Josephine Butler has been doing concerning the unfair contagious diseases act, 1864 and women’s rights. She is shocked. She isn’t able to understand what is happening with her. She confirms the date with a man and he says the same date as the newspaper. Confused and shocked at how she has come to the past. She panics, asks someone again and again but they all have the same answer. She cries and pleads a man to help her understand what is happening with her. The man tries to console her and take her to his house. After they reach the house the man introduces himself as “Kevin”, offers her water and some food. He then takes Cathy to a building approximately 20 minutes walking from his house, tells her to sit outside and he goes inside. Kevin comes out with cash and some toned men forcibly hold her and take her inside into a bedroom.
She is tortured until she doesn’t accept to be a prostitute. Her shock and confusion is overpowered by agony and grief. A person, who was once perceived as a human, is now perceived as a commodity. She is being dragged into darkness against her will. Every wall of this building is filled with the pain of hundreds of women that live under the shadow of it.
Cathy lies in bed the whole day. Clients come, have nonconsensual sex with her, pay and go; while she lies there like a statue, traumatized. It feels like she has almost forgotten what is emotion and has become a programmed robot designed to do the same job every day. Alas! She is ultimately a human. After some days she starts developing red rashes on her body and gets a high fever. The head of the establishments suspects it to be the great pox and calls the police. According to the contagious diseases act in, 1864 the police could arrest prostitutes on the suspect of venereal disease but there was no regulation for so-called “men of status”. She had to go through various medical tests and the result was positive for a venereal disease. She was put into a lock hospital and subjected to substandard treatment. She thinks of expressing her suffering in terms of a poem but all she could say was “men make us reach this place, and after reaching here we are again handled, doctored and advised by men”. A ray of sunshine finds its way into the darkness of Cathy’s life. She was found by the workers of a charity organization “Magdalen house”. This organization helped the affected girls to start a new life in Australia. This organization gave her a chance to come out of her plight and start a new life in Australia with proper medical treatment.
Enroute to Australia she suddenly starts admiring the locket. She notices something is inscribed on the side of the locket. It says circumago (Latin for rotate) with an arrow which indicates rotate. Holding the side portion of the pendant she rotates it. The sapphire layer opens up to reveal inscriptions on a polished gold. The inscription says, “THE BEARER OF THIS LOCKET SHALL POSSESS THE POWER TO BE A TIME TIME-TRAVELLER. THE FIRST BUTTON SHALL BE USED TO ENTER THE DAY, THE MONTH AND THE SECOND BUTTON SHALL BE USED TO ENTER THE YEAR. THE TELEPORTATION PLACE IS RANDOM”. There was ‘WARNING’ written after it, but she forgets to read that part and closes the pendant. Nobody would believe this, but after the events that occurred in her life; this is the only plausible explanation. She is suddenly tempted to explore the future.
Golden age
She enters the date 26th June 1998. This time she is teleported to Stockholm, Sweden. When her eyes open she is so happy at the same time surprised to see men and women walking together hand in hand. She is surprised to see a woman driving a car. They say “TIME HEALS WOUNDS.”. She has no fever, rashes, and itchiness is gone and she feels perfectly healthy ‘physically’. After a while, she realizes about her monetary needs to survive in this era. A car is approaching at full thrust, while a man is crossing the road. The driver breaks hard to stop in time, but unfortunately the car rams into the man crossing the road. The hard braking of the driver has surely metamorphosed this severe accident into an accident where the victim has suffered minor injuries. Cathy just standing across that road rushes towards the guy. She examines his injury and sees a severe, deep wound on the left side of his waist. He is bleeding badly. The utmost priority is to stop his bleeding before a high quantity of blood is lost. She asks the lady standing right beside her to go to the tailor’s shop straight down the street and get some threads and a needle immediately. Cathy looks up for a brief moment and notices a man drinking. She runs towards the man and smells his drink. She sighs with relief as it is a whiskey. Cathy takes the drink, applies on his wound, and cleans his wound to keep infections at bay. Meanwhile, the lady returns with the required materials. She stitches his wounds and then takes him to the hospital; she is helped by the man who was responsible for the crash.
Surprisingly that particular hospital is owned by the injured man and he is a doctor himself. After a while, the injured man says “Hello! I am Lucas. You seem like a professional in this skill.” She chuckles and says “I was a nurse before.” He then offers her a job at his hospital and tells her to pursue a further degree in the medical field from the same college as a hospital with a full scholarship. Her dream of being a doctor would be fulfilled and in the meantime, she will have a nurse job to sustain herself. All the pain she endured until now fades away from her soul. Her lips reach towards her eyes, making those chubby cheeks glow like full moon in the night sky, the smile on the face that has endured so much of hardship is no less than a polished diamond.
The gate to her dream opens as she enters the college for her first day. It has been 3-4 days since the college reopened so she hasn’t missed much. A group of guys constantly stare her as she moves through the campus and she overhears a guy from the group passing lewd comments. She enters the class with new hope and zest. On the first day, she gets acquainted with her classmates. She is as happy as a mother after she gives birth to a new life form when the professor commences with lectures. As the days pass classmates become friends, a nurse gets closer to becoming a doctor and her tragedy turns into gaiety.
After her college, she sits in the library to cope with a little she has missed before. In the library, a boy from her class offers her to help with her missed syllabus. He introduces himself as Bhupinder from India. First, they only studied together to help her cope with the syllabus but slowly they started studying together regularly. They liked each other’s company and it made their learning process swift and amusing. From friends, they became best friends. From sharing books they shared their happiness and sorrows. Finally, Cathy could trust a man again.
They have started to love each other. Both are scared to confront due to the fear that they might lose this friendship which is like the strong covalent bond between carbon atoms in diamond. They are in an anatomy lecture; Bhupinder is constantly looking at her. Cathy notices and looks back with a sweet smile on her face, Bhupinder winks at her, and then they both chuckle softly. Professor notices this and exclaims, “ahem!! I am not teaching you, Romeo and Juliet.” She is wondering about him in the night, thus she couldn’t sleep the whole night. The morning anatomy lecture has become her sleeping time today. After the college Bhupinder takes her to the college park.
“Love knows no bounds.
Your holy, kind and humble soul bewilders my senses,
Your voice echoes in my ears like chirping cuckoo,
Your hair feels like a touch of love birds feathers,
Your smile as wonderful as the smile of farmers after the first rain,
Your soul which is as holy as the water of river Ganges,
Your beauty has enchanted my mind,
You have etched love in this cold heart,
Will you be mine?”
Cathy is in tears, but these are tears of happiness. With teary eyes and an innocent smile, she says ‘yes’.
Six years later
They both are doctors and are married to each other. They both have become successful neurosurgeons but still, his husband has a higher paycheck than her. She writes to the hospital authority to take up this issue but meets with a dead end. She compromises in what is offered to her, does not take further and live happily as one family. The love hasn’t faded away after marriage but has only become deeper. They are the sweetest couple one can see. They have a very unique tradition that after they return home from work, the husband cooks dinner for his wife and the wife cooks dinner for her husband.
Today is 25th June 2004. She prays to god, “I don’t have a wish today; I just want to thank you for bestowing me with a jovial life and such a marvelous life partner.” And then sleeps.
Dark Age
Beeepppppp!!! Beep!!!, beep!!!, beep!!! She can only hear continuous honking. As she opens her eyes she notices she is lying on a footpath and instantly recognizes she has landed somewhere else. She is tensed, shocked, and afraid. She starts running here and there hurriedly. With her trembling hands, she opens the pendant on her locket. She reads the warning “If you own and keep this pendant then you will be transported to future randomly from your latest time destination if the current generation self of you is going to converge with your time traveled self in an immediate future. This random time travel will be your last time travel to maintain the laws of time travel.” Suddenly a glass carried by some laborers break just like her plans and dreams. The new sunshine has brought darkness in her soul forever. She turns and looks at the address written outside the shop and realizes she has landed in New Delhi, India. Bhupinder’s home country. She then looks at the front of the pendant and its written 16th December 2012. She can’t stop weeping and she keeps on walking, walking, and walking. From morning to evening and now it’s night. The noises have faded and given way to eerie silence and chirping of crickets creeps into the atmosphere. She cannot take this trauma and decides to commit suicide. She stands in the middle of the road crying loudly in the hope a vehicle runs over her.
A bus is heading down the road she has blocked. The driver notices the girl and stops just in time. The driver asks her to clear the way. She says “Drive the bus over me and free me from this tragic life.” The driver takes her into the bus.
The next day, early in the morning a person sees her lying in a dug up hole at Munirika, South Delhi, and calls the police. The cops are baffled to see her condition and take her to Safdarjung hospital as quickly as possible. Her reports show signs of brutal gang rape. Police launches investigation into one of the most brutal rape cases the world has ever seen. The story of this crime is all over the news and the whole nation is shocked by the brutality of this crime. Delhi police launch an immediate investigation to nab the perpetrators.
Some days later….
An accused confesses to his crimes. “Six of us took turns to have sex with her and then one of us pulled out her intestine by inserting an iron rod inside her. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. When being raped, a girl shouldn't fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then we would have dropped her off after 'doing her’. Housework and housekeeping work is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. A decent girl won't roam around at 9 p.m. If I am executed, this will endanger the lives of future rape victims. Before, they would rape and say, 'Leave her, she won't tell anyone.' Now when they rape, they will just kill the girl.” He says this with no remorse and regret on his face. Police nabs other culprits.
A court case is ongoing so that society and the system can give her justice. But,” बाज़ चूज़े पे झपटा, उठा ले गया! कहानी सच्ची लगती है लेकिन अच्छी नहीं लगती! बाज़ पे पलटवार हुआ! कहानी सच्ची नहीं लगती लेकिन खुदा कसम बहुत अच्छी लगती है! "The hawk pounced on the chick took it off! The story feels true but does not feel good! The hawk was attacked back! The story does not feel true but swear to god it feels very satisfying!"