Little Box of Secrets

She saw him sitting at his desk. He seemed to be working on something... Probably a new sketch. She loved the way his eyes were focused on the task at hand and the way his fingers moved nimbly across the paper. He sometimes bit his lower lip slightly as he concentrated on the shading or on drawing a certain curve. She was intrigued by this quiet and lovely creature. He did not see her as he kept working on his sketch under the dim light of his table lamp. Every now and then, he laid down his pen on the desk so he could rest and rub his eyes. (Picture Credit: Atiqah Aekman) At that moment, she wanted to hug him tightly from the back and plant a soft kiss on his cheek... Maybe ruffle his dark, messy hair a little bit. But she did not... Lest she disturbed him. What she loved most about him was the intensity in his beautiful brown eyes, which seemed to project a tiny hint of pain and sadness. Those emotions were indeed very well hidden underneath. She knew he'd been working ha...

She sat in darkness, motionless on the edge of the bed. She was exhausted and feeble, as she had struggled and fought for her life while claws scratched at the flesh of her back. Her skin - pale, dull, and lifeless - showed scars and wounds from previous fights. Thin streaks of blood were oozing out from the fresh wounds but she did not flinch, nor did she express any signs of pain. She was used to it. All of this was to her as normal as it was for a person to wake up in the morning or to sit down for a meal. Her battle had begun at an early age. Those wounds and marks had started appearing regularly by the time she was seven years old. She was scared at first, but as the years wore on she got more and more accustomed to the creatures that came to her at night. She was no longer terrified by their horrible sights nor repulsed by their horrible stench. Despite this, every single night she would still scream in pain but no one would hear her. Her blood-curdling screams were dr...

The day wore on and she was growing weary and angry. Her fingers were banging on the keyboard with every letter she typed. She felt her colleagues secretly eyeing her, wondering what was wrong. But she didn't care because she was fuming. "One of the cons of working for a small-time company", she thought to herself as the faces of certain people flashed across her mind. She had finished most of her work for the day and had submitted them for editing. Just half an hour left till she could leave and several last-minute correction requests were delivered in her inbox. The worst part was that those specifications had not been mentioned before she'd started working on those articles. This did not ease her thought from the dread she felt about the two-hour bus ride home and the cooking that awaited her once she reached the apartment. She cursed and cursed in her head. Damn you! Why is it that people never think about what others have to go through? When she finally ...

What good is a mother who ignores the pain and cries of her children? What good is a mother who knowingly turns a blind eye towards the sufferings and discrimination experienced by those who seek comfort and shelter underneath her wings? Can she be called a mother? Is it safe to assume that she does not accept them as her own? Would it be wrong for her children to disown her and and say, “She is not my mother, for she has no love for us!”? Now, answer me this, would it be wrong for the North-East Indian citizens to claim that their motherland has no love for them? Or that they would be better off without their “so-called” country? When incident after incident of hate crimes and racial discrimination has lined the history of this nation, we continue to live in fear that we may be the next victims. What with our looks and choices of dressing clearly distinguishing us from the rest of our “brothers” and “sisters”! But didn't we learn in school that India is a land with “vast...