"According to the data from NCRB, fifty-nine thousand cases of missing children have been reported during the COVID-19 era. This strongly suggests that there is a substantial increase. The very fact that our Bachpan Bachao wing has freed 10,000 kids in the last 15 months indicates that the cases of child trafficking and kidnapping have increased multifold."
~ Rakesh Sengar, Executive Director (Programmes), Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation
"Where's your mother, young girl?" asked Manish, looking at Deepika.
"She's dead," replied Deepika. "She was killed by both my father and step-brother Zahir."
Her statement was more than enough for both Manish and me to be rooted to the spot, completely shocked.
"Why would they do such a thing?" I asked.
"She didn't want me to participate in the highway business," replied Deepika.
Manish reacted by clearly showing his disappointment, knowing for a fact that Deepika had just managed to escape from something which resulted in a gruesome and shocking act.
Manish didn't have to be told that Deepika was among the unregistered children in India who went missing, either by being kidnapped or by being trafficked by brutal family members like hers.
In Deepika's case, she was treated like a slave for five years, sold off to another family she had never met before she could adapt to her surroundings. Her job, at the age of ten, was to look after two children aged three and five.
According to what she told us two, she did that job for half a decade, facing brutal punishment from the family until when she ran away from them.
On returning home to Madhya Pradesh, she found out with horror that her mother had been dead for a year.
"She looks like she's Bachara tribe," said Manish, as he continued to clean up some of the blood from Deepika's cuts. "Where is home, exactly?" asked Manish.
"Madhya Pradesh," she replied.
"Of course," muttered Manish, looking up at me as I wondered what on Earth was Madhya Pradesh.
"What's Madhya Pradesh?" I asked, puzzled by Manish's reaction.
After a short pause, Manish replied, "That is a district which not only considers prostitution as a norm but also is home to the Bachara tribe, considered to be among India's lowest caste."
I had stayed in India long enough to understand caste discrimination, and considering how I had carried a dark-skinned young girl who risked her life jumping on the back of a truck which wasn't slowing down, I now understood something disappointing about who Deepika was.
Deepika was from the Bachara tribe, which was known to use prostitution as a source of income, and according to what she told me and Manish, she didn't want to get into prostitution but her father and step-brother were making up their minds about her fate, so Deepika decided to run away from Madhya Pradesh.
"There's a big chance someone from her family is looking for her, Adrian," said Manish, sipping a bottle of soda. "Considering how fast Indian children go missing in this country, don't be surprised if she ends up getting trafficked."
"We can't let that happen to her, man," I replied.
"Yes, but for how long will you keep her in India?" said Manish. "Anyone will know she's Bachara by just looking at her skin."
"The least we can do is hide her here until we get her to somewhere like Kenya," I said, suddenly thinking of Changamwe's slum, Bangladesh.
"Getting her out of this country is going to be the hardest thing ever, Adrian," replied Manish. "Tell me how this government will give this girl any documents, knowing very well she's Bachara!"
The fact Manish was trying to tell me was that we couldn't get Deepika out of India legally.
Deepika had no documents, including passports, and no government official was going to give Deepika anything like a passport, considering she was from the Bachara tribe; a caste which was seen as the lowest in India, and had faced fierce discrimination for generations.
Kenya didn't have any caste discrimination, as far as I was concerned, but the tribal differences between Kenyans, especially when elections were taking place, were higher than the Kilimanjaro.
"One thing we should be grateful for, is that she's not anyone's mother, Adrian," said Manish. "Her family wouldn't have thought twice before murdering her child."
Once again, I was reminded about the levels of brutality Indian families were capable of attaining, all because of skin colour differences.
I knew that there was someone in Kenya who could help me with getting Deepika to Kenya, and I had to find out from her what I was supposed to do.
Remembering the small note she gave me while doing her interview on Julius Iscariot, I decided to call Ruth Adhiambo-Khan's number and ask for her direction.
What I didn't know was what she went through under Julius Iscariot, and why she was no longer in Kenya, which was after the time I started to discover some strange things happening around me while in Kenya.
One moment I was laughing with someone whose sister was my deskmate in primary school, and the next moment, upon seeing me knocking on their door for a visit, I was thrown condescending words by the sister about how I hadn't let anyone know about my visit (yet, no one gave me any phone number to do that, especially the sister), and the same person who was enjoying a South African thriller with me while recovering from an injury, now has more condescending words to say over the phone than his sister, now a truly bitter woman raising another woman in the dangerous world of toxicity and transgenerational trauma transferred from apartments whose rent is a monthly nightmare to rack their minds to the point where the temporary pleasure of a head rush will postpone the main problems, and make people get trapped in the same miserable cycle.
People were beginning to feel more miserable with their lives, and strangely enough, the more I pursued my goals, the more I became my nurturing parent and the more resources I once turned to began to vanish.
Especially when I decided to migrate.
I was now officially on the 3rd floor of my life, and the Pinnacle Cycle of my life showed things which I resonated with and probably explained why I never walked in tandem with the masses who expected phone calls before guests, who attached themselves to substances and material possessions and even killed because of fear of loss, and never realized how much they were the slaves to items until when diseases began being the results of bottled-up hurt, hatred, grudges, jealous craving for more material wealth and more false egos adopted from screens, rhythmic expressions and earphones.
Poison was more embraced, considering its temporary pleasure and how it camouflaged its destructive power through loss of senses, and how it also postponed all of what was to be handled now, because temporary pleasure took over it all for a moment, a moment which ended up getting leaned on every time escape from reality of issues to be handled came to the inevitable surface.
I looked around and knew it was now, or never.
Either leave it all behind, embrace the opportunity to grow and develop as your own nurturing parent, walk your own road as life's sun continues to set inevitably, or stay in the same environment, engulfed by lies spitted out by people who used blood to justify their toxic behaviour.
It was an inevitable time to choose, and thank goodness, I already knew what direction I was to embark on.
What I did not know was what that direction represented, and what I was going to prepare for.
***
"I may not know how insane your family members were, but in my case, it was both my late mother and elder brother who took the prize for most manipulative and abusive members," I said, looking on at her.
Deepika looked at me with a look I saw in people who have felt the hollow feeling of losing a loved one.
"Late? You mean…?" Deepika asked, looking genuinely concerned.
I nodded, saying, "In the years which followed, my elder brother became worse, especially emotionally, verbally and psychologically. He was the type who, when my mother was alive, was seen as the golden child, and every time I was around either of those two, I felt a knot in my stomach, and I also felt a strange repulsion towards them, especially when they were shouting at me and trying to make me feel this one-down feeling of always being at fault, even for past mistakes which should have been long forgotten about."
"It's not surprising how African families have seriously toxic members, Adrian," said Deepika. "I have come across people who speak openly about how they've been treated with so much disregard, and how they make it look like it's a must for you to be there for them, or to answer phone calls or even to hear what they've got to say, just because they're your blood. They use that as an excellent excuse to justify their constant gaslighting and toxic exchanges towards us."
"They've normally got that thing they did for you some years ago, so they use it as this demand for you to do what they want, regardless of what it is," replied Adrian. "The moment I left my late mother's house, I swore to never go back there, or even be buried by that family."
"Just because they were a part of how you came to this planet doesn't mean they own your direction in life, Adrian," replied Deepika.
"Now wait for the day they realize you are no longer in their lives," said Adrian, laughing. "It bites into them with such brutality they start seeing your value when you were around, and then when they realize that you no longer need them, their toxicity will grow tenfold."
Deepika and I shared one thing in common which made us close to one another as time went by.
We both came from toxic family circles, only in my case, my family circle followed Christianity to the core like many Kenyans did.
No matter the reflections of all I saw through eyes which have seen enough to fill shocking autobiographies, like Deepika's, I had to make sure I held on to what I was given to express everything to the world.
There was a bitter truth which was like something which manifested in you as you continued to grow, regardless of gender; you are your nurturing parent, remembering once more about how Julius is four years older than you and sees you as nothing but a shitty son, something he became as a result of the cherishing of the temporary, in a life which summarizes to your empty stomach once again that the life you live is a borrowed one, whereby the treasuries we cherish will be left behind together with our bones the moment our expiry dates are revealed to the ones whose tears we won't see, for we are the ones they mourn, we will be the silent ones who are sunk six feet under as a stark reminder once again about how the lives we live are borrowed, cause tomorrow isn't promised no matter what we seek to endeavour, hearing once again from an ethanol-filled breath about how you will never make it.
Once again we are reminded in our silent attempts about how we must leave it all behind, labelled the most venomous of names by people who think because we share the same blood, we have no reason to walk away from their toxicity, knowing once more that age isn't going to wait, considering how fast time flew by, and how fast age caught up with us all, shocking us once again about how borrowed the life we take for granted felt on a deathbed.
***
Zahir was a man who knew a clear fact.
Substances were his demigods.
Alcohol gave him the mental clearance to forget all he had to do in his life.
The memory of him staring down at Deepika, letting her smell the unmistakable ethanol-laden fragrance as he spoke words he knew Deepika was never going to pay attention to for as long as she was alive, was the way Deepika understood what direction she needed to take in life.
He wasn't foolish, that was something he confirmed, so he lived knowing one day, Deepika would find a chance to leave the family, and do it for good, considering women in India now were beginning to understand their independence, regardless of their background or skin colour.
In India, it was the women's families which paid the dowry, so as he sat smoking his blunt, he knew how much his father lived mentally preparing for.
His father never wanted anyone from Bachara to marry Deepika, and many Indian fathers of daughters were no different.
The number plate of the truck was all he needed to find out because, for a few days, Zahir watched how Manish and Adrian boarded the truck and set off for work. Zahir had confirmed that Manish's truck was the same one Deepika almost died jumping on.
A bitter truth stayed in his thoughts as he smoked.
His family was now completely dysfunctional, and no matter what his father Rahul did, or said, nothing was going to unite his family again.
His father still lived with the nightmare of his mother having to be given a final bow by force because people like Deepika were the ones who blabbed to the authorities. It wasn't Deepika herself who went to the authorities, but since the authorities began showing a great interest in the whereabouts of his mother, his father Rahul has never been the same, using his tongue many times to develop a convincing response which the authorities won't suspect for the moment.
Zahir had never seen Deepika again, but he had reason to suspect the truck driver had helped her to get refuge somewhere.
He watched the truck disappear, his eyes getting as red as the colours showing around the buildings of other Indian folks celebrating Chandraghanta, dressed in red and showing red colours everywhere.
His lungs felt heavy every time he took a breath, and ever since his father told him about how his coughing late into the night sounded like someone sick with pneumonia, he started to realize something which was the reason why he smoked so much.
His lungs weren't as healthy as they once were, and as the days went by, it was getting harder to maintain breath.
This was the consequence of his brutal action.
An action he knew nobody was ever going to forgive him for, regardless of whether they were family members or friends.
Zahir was the one who watched his mother dying, after pulling the trigger.
Now, Zahir was the one sent by his father to do the same to Deepika.
No matter how much he tried to smoke cannabis, combining it with tobacco cigarettes in the process, the bitter fact remained Zahir was never going to forget for as long as he was alive.
The only way he would forget it all…was to die.
Something Deepika had to go through first.