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Wednesday 11 April 2012

The Life and Death of Afreen



Today, at 11 A.M., Afreen finally succumbed to the bites, blows and burns caused by her father. The report said that she suffered multiple convulsions and ultimately died of cardiac arrest.  Three months was the duration of the life she lived or let's say suffered. She was brought to the hospital three days ago with burn marks and multiple dislocations in her neck. I'm looking at an old clip which shows her delicate and small structure tubed all over, her chest rapidly rising and falling, while she is unconscious, lying on a hospital bed about twenty times her size. Her mother has put her head near her daughter's legs. She hasn't left. I had almost begun to pray for her recovery, when I realized that the clip is from yesterday. I pull myself back to reality,  to today, where she is dead.

 I don't want to see it. Its so painful. Yet I see it. "Baby Afreen is no more". The headline goes on & on & on... I feel a hole growing inside my guts. I helplessly fight my brain,  and try not to imagine scenes of her and her father.  She was his daughter. An incarnation of his, maybe a female, but his continuation nevertheless. 

I am angry , I am helpless, I am burning & I'm welling up. Fictitious visions of a beautiful life that Afreen could have lived, torment me beyond tolerance.



Hello world, my name was Afreen,
I was born to love and hatred akin
I did not know pain, 
But then I was bit and beaten
I did not know smile
I could never do it for a while
Life started and ended before I breathed
Like some numbness it prevailed

Faint voices of my mother
Crying to fight my torture
The man who brought me here 
Was the same who banished me forever
I was created by him
Somehow I never got to see him
His hands were all so unkind
How could he kill his daughter's body & mind

They hated me from the day I cried
They hated me for the body I carried
I could not even know why I was born
Some evil in some past I must've done
I was greeted with frowns,
They thought I would let them drown,
Never gave me a chance
Never wanted me to keep balance

I could not know your Earth
Its green and its past
I could not make friends
I wasn't afforded that much sense
I will know not what is a hug
A pleasure I was supposed to get a lot
I will know not the birds, the seas, the skies,
My world started and ended with cries

I could not kiss my mother
My lips were shut forever
Before my hair could learn to curl
They were dragged to satiate some call
Teeth were sunk in
When kisses were to be left on my skin
I was welcomed by pain
Unfair ! I underwent it in vain

It all became too much
One day to a ward I was rushed
Tubes galore were slided
Though silently I chided
My mother sat there looking & praying
She often stopped to fancy me playing
I knew my mother's pain
She too swallowed it in vain

I did't even know how to pray,
The hands that hated me night and day ,
Were the ones that ought to have taught ,
A beam of mercy desperately I sought
My mother, I worried what would happen to her
I knew I was nearing to say 'adieu' & come back never 
Ever believing, ever hoping to revive and take me back
I'm so sorry ! I wish we could have run more than this small track

I had to go, the angels could wait no more,
I wish I could tell my mother, its a better place that I'm travelling for
God must know what he does and what he says,
I've heard He works in mysterious ways
My body was broken in places
A new life, Yet counted were my days
But my heart broke then
When the healers rushed in

They must have noticed I was leaving
Broke mid way my mother's praying
She howled and held and kissed and prayed
She begged, I know not who, but onto her prayers she held
I was growing cold, she must have known
She held me close with her tears rolling down
Those arms where up I had woken
Now held me again when I was being taken
Then...it snapped, that chord that tied
Me and her, My life was over, in her arms I died.








                                                                              -  Afreen



















13 comments:

  1. its such a shame, baby falak, then baby afreen....
    Humanity has been butchered by the brutes. Its unimaginable how a human being with all his reason and heart becomes capable doing something as abominable and shameful as this.
    The poem brought tears to my eyes. Esp the last lines. Heart wrenching. Profoundly felt.

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    1. i could not stop my tears..it was insane..i was feeling sad, angry and helpless all at the same time....so i wrote this as my small contribution for the baby...i have tried to give her voice..things which she might have said had she been able to speak...that was my only intention

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  2. This is inhuman.. Can't say more about that

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  3. i will go through it tomorrow!! But should be certainly good, if its from anupam patra!

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  4. I think the first thing every single human has to be taught is that its actually the Father who carries the chromosome which determines the Gender of the child. So he should be actually killing himself and not the wife or the daughter. Such news are really disheartening. This poem of yours probably reflects all the things those tiny tots wanted to say.

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  5. speechless....... nicely portrayed.....

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  6. thanks for writing this, Anupam. It is so very important for our society to wake up from its deep slumber and rise against such crime against innocent infants. The death of Afreen is the death of humanity. Makes me think if gender is more imporant for some people, than life!

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  7. Deeply moving! Want to share my thoughts with thin link:

    http://www.ours-funarena.com/2012/04/after-baby-falak-now-it-is-baby-afreen.html

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  8. Undoubtedly these are baby afreen's painful words Anupam. In tears.

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  9. Well Expressed...We know one because of the media...Our country has so many Afreens stating the same words you have sketched...Hope time heals the pains and causes required changes !

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  10. deeply intensive....m so moved

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