look at this lovely face.. it belongs to Durga, our very own Utpal’s half sibling, and his only family!
this morning I was shocked to see large welts across this beautiful, innocent face… she had been beaten by her mother..

Durga’s story is what movies are made of.

Many years ago her mother, a child herself, was ‘married’ to a man in a remote village in Bengal. The man left the woman and never recognised the child. Another man wanted the woman but not the child. So Durga was left to the care of an ailing grandmother and a reluctant uncle, while the mother decided to live her own life..

Durga grew fromm child to ‘ little woman’ and somewhere along the way the grandmother died. The uncle was not willing to take on the responsibility of a young girl and Durga was packed to Delhi, to a family she never knew.

In the small room where they live, this young girl brought memories that the mother did not want revived, and the new ‘father’ found more ammunition for the unkind words hurled in drunken anger.

Yesterday, Durga was beaten, for being born, for being alive…

Did anyone hear her when she whispered: But I never asked to be born