"Wait… AJ's elder brother knows nothing about his death?" I asked, purely shocked.
"To my knowledge, Makini… he knows nothing about his whole family," replied Deepika, sitting next to me as more Dalit supporters socialized with each other in the next room.
"He was the one who managed to detach himself from AJ's whole family?"
"Yes, because according to AJ, his elder brother has never been heard of since he migrated abroad," replied Deepika. "He lied about going for a 3-month shift in another town, but eight months later, a next-door neighbour told AJ the truth. His elder brother had migrated to Jerusalem, for a job, and never told anyone."
"Did AJ ever try to reach out to his elder brother?"
"He never lived to succeed," replied Deepika.
Her dark-skinned boyfriend AJ's elder brother turned out to have run away, accepting to be an immigrant in Jerusalem who worked in the Western Wall site as an attendant.
"AJ was told by the neighbour about how he came across many notes and letters placed in the Western Wall of Jerusalem, and how he indulged in many written prayers as he watched many people from across the world wail in prayer and place notes/letters," said Deepika.
The more I learned about Deepika… the more I felt stunned by the prices of our decisions.
"AJ's brother will never know about what happened…" whispered Deepika.
The reality of those words were bone-chilling...
She almost lost her life because she loved a Dalit.
A Dalit who was murdered by her stepbrother.
I refused to conform to the African way of family life, and in the process I became an outcast.
This is how love connected us.
The cracks we sustained from how many times our hearts were shattered revealed deep within... We were still young at heart, capable of love and compassion.
We had experience with the world and its brutality, since we saw all of it from our own backyards.
We were expected to conform to the norms of societies yet the same societies rebuked us from worlds we still wondered whether we were meant to belong to.
We were expected to separate our art and culture from deep within ourselves, for we expressed with no shame; we loved and cherished with no limitations.
We were hated and discriminated against because we never conformed; we never stopped being mirrors of rejected selves that people never wanted to be reminded of. We were declared black sheep because we were the ultimate reflections of dreams long cast aside, choices regretted every day, and decisions whose prices, to this day, we still pay for.
We were souls from lives long past; we saw through the colours of eyes, we saw through the lines on palms, and we learned about being our own nurturing parents in worlds where greed and envy overtook sight of longevity within us all.
We are the odd ones out, and yet we are desired for; our accomplishments stun many who are now regretting the loss of productivity for a moment of desire, temporary pleasure and forgetful paradise.
Our cracks show from deep within our golden opposites and opportunities, and in equal measure... we reflect the flaws we wish long gone.
We are the humans who, through each other, revived flames deep within.
***
The dream never stopped appearing.
"…Main tumse pyar kartha hoon, darling."
Those were his final words, as they rained blows on us both.
"…"मैं तुमसे प्यार करता हूँ."
"Main tumse pyar kartha hoon…"
I never once thought I'd be the one to say those words to another…
"…मुझे तुमसे प्यार है."
"…Main tumse pyar karthee hoon, darling."
I never once thought the people who were supposed to say these words to me… ensured that I would never know true love from within myself… until I met another forbidden one who was the New Moon in Scorpio when it was time to make an important decision.
"…मुझे तुमसे प्यार है."
"…Main tumse pyar karthee hoon, darling."
I never thought I had to cut them off…
"… The courts have found your father guilty of murder, and he will be sentenced to hang…" Makini whispered in my ear.
I never thought…
"… You will never know peace, the moment their souls leave their bodies, you bloody outcast…" rang the painful realization as Deepika's vengeful stepbrother watched the ongoing court case.
I never thought… sibling rivalry went so deep, even our souls paid the price for decisions we never thought would have to be made by us.
"… I can tell you for sure, Deepika. You are now your own nurturing parent…"
The reality of the statement sunk in the moment it was evident that I was truly hated, the moment I saw the bile from them both.
My family had now made it clear that I was no longer part of them; It was astounding to see how a separation of family was going to show the world around us how contrary blood was thicker than water.
Because of the verdict on my father, I was now a marked individual, and Dalits who joined me in the demonstrations understood why nothing should happen to me.
Makini was also ensuring that all was well with me, keeping me updated with news from the courts, and anything he heard from my brother and mother.
"You know, if such a thing took place in Kenya, people would have asked a great deal of questions," said Makini, sitting next to me in the benches outside the police department.
"I'm not surprised, what surprised me was why they didn't sentence them both," I replied.
"Could it be the judge was bribed?"
"The judiciary in India is always going to be questionable considering the cases pushed aside," replied a forlorn Deepika.
"I'm guessing that there's some relative of yours who ensured that your mother was acquitted of the murder charges but a scapegoat had to be shown to the public," I replied. "I've seen such kind of methods whereby the judiciary gets bribed at one point, and then sooner than expected, the case is closed."
Deepika knew that with her mother not sentenced like her father, she was never going to know peace and love in her household.
"You should be proud of what you started, though," said Makini. "There's no way other Indians will be taking Bachara Indians for granted from now on."
Deep down, Deepika knew, wherever AJ was watching from the afterlife, he was proud of her, and what she managed to accomplish, at the expense of cutting off toxic family members who didn't blink an eye when discussing how Deepika and AJ were going to be 'taught a painful lesson.'
However…as I thought about what was now coming Deepika's way…
I came to a reflection I didn't think of.
If there are material objects which would speak more about the tears of us humans, the vulnerability we reveal together with the nakedness we reveal to other halves who we think at the moment are the ones... it's shower heads.
Shower heads spray hot water onto us as we shed tears in the steam...thanks to betrayal from the closest, whose wounds will be remembered because we expected so much, but got shocked by the results.
Those tears which cascade down cheeks are felt by steam which evaporates together with filth we scrub off as our attempts to forget, or chase away...
But the shower head knows what we should have known from the start.
We can only forget from within...
We can only watch the mist fade away together with our tears...if we face all which holds us back from within ourselves...for our inner journey continues to be a key factor of how we lived our lives, and what we did to the outer journey.
Many of us are vulnerable in places no one else even knows... But if material objects had throats, they'd speak to us in ways we'd get scared to face at first.
They would be the reason why the world would never know how to keep a secret...for the more a material object wears down with time, the more it has absorbed from us beings, the more it has seen from us, in our true selves.
We create objects so we can feel understood without any objection or criticism to our own cracks, which we hide with either makeup or financial prowess.
But we forget about our cracks, which we must take care of while we are still going strong, for even we wear down thanks to all we have absorbed within, all we have had to live with and all we have had to do.
Unlike material objects and foodstuffs, our expiry dates are hidden from us by the Almighty God. He must know, for sure, that we are not strong enough to live with the knowledge of our expiry dates, like the foodstuffs we consume.
But we all share a common theme.
We all wear down as time continues its cycle, whether we have a soul within us to replace us in the afterlife, or whether we were created by a human being somewhere for a single purpose.