Winter is Here

As she gathered all the courage she had, she felt the walls closing in on her. With one final dash of strength, she let go and took the leap. The last thing she felt was the air pushing up against her skin, and the next thing she witnessed was the encompassing darkness.

It was a normal day for the twenty five year old Sheetal. Just like every other day, she got up at seven, and was done with her morning rituals in no time. As she took a bath, her mom was busy preparing her breakfast. Hurriedly she got dressed and took a bite or two off the plate and like a gush of wind, she ran out of the house lest she misses the eight o’ clock bus to her office in Noida. Sheetal’s mother went about her daily chores while her father, now a retired army officer, was engrossed in the newspaper. Neelam’s brother was married with a one-year old. The house hardly enjoyed any quiet with the constant wailing and crying of the baby, who kept the spark in their little family alive. The other member of the family was Sheetal’s grandmother, a lady of whooping ninety, who had been a huge inspiration to Sheetal in everything she did.

She was, in short, the darling of the Agarwal family.

It was the second of the eleventh month and a bright sunny day. Winter hadn’t set in quite yet, but the air was chilly with the hints of its arrival that was to happen soon. It was an usual day, except that it wasn’t. It was Sheetal’s birthday and no one seemed to remember that, not even herself. After the retirement of her father, Sheetal was the guiding star that kept the family going forward, especially with her brother, the only other male member of their family, living in Kolkata because of his job.

Sheetal had always been a bright student, right from her school to her university. She was a kid who would do well in life, or so everyone believed. The scene in Sheetal’s office, where she worked as an assitant to the editor-in-chief of a major magazine, was the same as her home. She was ‘little miss sunshine’, brightening up people’s lives, the person who was rumoured to have a solution to every single problem that happened in the staff’s professional and personal lives alike.

She was good at her job. She was ‘the’ perfect assistant a boss could ask for. Although what she really wanted to do was write, write about everything that happened around the world, write stories, and basically just pen down whatever her heart desired.

As five o’ clock neared, people started arranging things on their desks and making preparations to leave. It was around six in the evening when the janitor came to switch off all the lights and fans, and do what a janitor does. On seeing Sheetal still sitting infront of her laptop, Hari kaka inquired, “Aren’t you going to go home dear?”, to which Sheetal replied with an indifferent “hmm”. Hari kaka, seeing no point in continuing the conversation, left quietly and asked her to switch off the lights when she left.

Now was the time Sheetal dreaded. It was just her and her thoughts.  There was nowhere to hide. All day long, it was work that kept her concealed from her overpowering thoughts. But who was to save her now? That’s right, no one.

Life hadn’t been as smooth for the 25-year old as the world perceived it to be. Right from her very childhood she had been living under the shadow of her elder brother. No matter how great she performed, she always fell short of her parents’ encouragement. Be it something as trivial as painting or something as serious as her grandma’s love and affection, she always remained the second choice.  And with the nightmarish sexual abuse that she had encountered, there wasn’t a light at the end of the long and dark tunnel. Then along came the best part of her life, her 14-year long schooling in a convent missionary institution. Those truly were the best days of her life, where though she couldn’t live upto her potential, she was finally good enough. She had humans arround her who accepted her for who she was. The long-craved acceptance she had been searching for her whole life, she found it. As school ended and time came for her to part ways with her soulmates, her girlfriends, she starting keeping more and more to herself. The usual charm and vibrance that had for so long characterised Sheetal and made her who she was, was fading. In a desperate effort to cling onto the few remaining friends she had left, she wanted to attend college away from home. But as fate would have it, she wasn’t allowed.

The next three years was initially difficult for Sheetal. She couldn’t adjust to her life in college. And just when things were going downhill for her, she found a couple of people she could be herself with. All was good with the world again. Again as those three years came to a hault, she found herself uprooted and yet again had to fight to find the perfect soil to plant herself in. What she found was nothing like she had imagined it would be. The place she ended up in was dark and evil and full of unhappy vibes, where no one cared and no one bothered to look back. It was a machine where everyone only desired progress, even if it came at the cost of someone else’s dreams and happiness.

Those two years became Sheetal’s best teacher in life. As she bade the place goodbye, you couldn’t see sparkle in her eyes any longer that had for so long lightened up the darkest of rooms.

Be it friendships or love, life had been terribly unfair to Sheetal. She had experienced the haunting reality of her boyfriend’s death, and had been rejected way too many times to have faith in the thing anymore. Apart from a few, none of the people she thought would stay did. Nobody. Life have had more downs than ups for her.

After her two years away from home was over, she managed to find herself a decent job with good pay, which brings us back to where we were before the narration of Sheetal’s past. Her dream of being an independent writer was still on hold with no hopes of seeing the morning light.

Were you waiting for something to happen? Because let’s be honest, a story with as linear a plotline as this isn’t worth anyone’s time.

It might seem like she hasn’t been through anything of such importance to have a story written about her. But do we really know what goes on inside a person’s mind? One might even say that there are millions out there who face worse and survive. That is absolutely true but isn’t it quite plausible that the extent to which one might bear with something varies from person to person? The saturation point for everyone is different. It was low for Sheetal.

Sitting in her cubicle, all alone, she suddenly realized what day it was. The clock had just struck twelve. She was twenty six now. It was then that she decided to gift herself a heart filled with hope and confidence.

The next day Sheetal handed her boss her two weeks’ notice for resignation and with a calm smile on her face, which was glowing, she cleared out her things and left. It was then that everyone was reassured that she was destined for greatness. Her walking out and not looking back was not ordinary. It had something extraordinary about itself.

She didn’t look or ask for anyone’s permission or approval anymore. Sheetal applied for a job in the armed forces. And her dream of writing, you might ask? Her journal kept it alive.

It was sometime in the year 2025 when terror struck the borders. Sheetal, along with numerous other officers, were sent to the border to look into the matter. Things didn’t go quite as planned they soon found themselves under attack. With very limited resources, supplies and ammunition, the troop had two choices- they either had to fight their way through or fall back and wait for rescue, which was immesenly dangerous as the attackers could very well defeat them and cross the border into their Nation. So they made the brave choice of fighting. They gave it all, until Captain Sheetal Agarwal of the BSF Special Forces were captured in an unfortunate turn of events. The officers could either give up and lose one of their greatest officers, or fight back and save the other millions of lives at stake.

The tables had turned.

The soldiers didn’t have to make the choice. Sheetal made it herself. She knew what she had to do. She wasn’t as valuable an asset to her country as the countless innocent lives which were either safe or in grave peril, depending on the decision the Army took.

The terrorists were sure that they had won the game. They didn’t think even for one split second that the oh-so-righteous Indian Army would agree to give up their soldier.

The tables turned again.

As the terrorists waited for a reply back from the Indian Government as to what their Army’s next action would be, Sheetal who was armed with grenades and explosives, stood with her back to them, looking over a large precipice, a deep gorge. From the little knowledge of Urdu that she had, she had made out from the terrorists’ words that just below the gorge were more men hiding, waiting for the right moment to strike. As she mumbled a few words, with the pain of the ropes cutting into her wrists, she took a deep breath. As she gathered all the courage she had, she felt the walls closing in on her. With one final dash of strength, she let go and took the leap. The last thing she felt was the air pushing up against her skin, and the next thing she witnessed was the encompassing darkness.

The whole place blew up in flames and as the Indian Army on the other side of the border saw it, they realized what had happened. It was their motto, the principle they lived on- Death Before Dishonour. They knew Sheetal would die before becoming and being reduced to a mutilated corpse at the hands of the terrorists.

The attack was subdued.

The Indian Army won.

The news channels and newspapers, all spoke of the undaunting courage and bravery of Late Captain Sheetal Agarwal. As her family and friends and colleagues watched the news saying that she’ll be awarded the National Award for Bravery, tears flowed down their eyes as their chests puffed with pride.

Somewhere in the neighbourhood, a voice of a mother could be heard, probably addressing her husband about their daughter, “Don’t let her go. Your brother is a boy, he can have sleep-overs, but not you. It’t not safe for girls nowadays. Girls are fragile, they aren’t as strong as boys are.”

The baby stared at the old woman’s face as Sheetal’s grandma shed a tear, falling on the book that she was reading to the kid. A cool breeze flowed by as the news came on- Winter is here.