Can one incident change the course of a person’s life entirely?
While bullying and ragging are experiences that often render individuals with traumatic imprints, some rare individual manage to channelize their traumas to make their lives better.
Today’s story is about a young girl, who was pushed down by people, but she stood up and sailed through the storm to finally reach her happy island.
Samyukta Hornad, a simple, loving cheerful girl, who spent all her life in a protective bubble her father created for her. Little did she know how this pretty bubble would put her in a spot one day.
Mount Carmel College was an exhilarating experience for her. All the women there knew how to dress well, put makeup, they all seemed pretty independent and headstrong.
Young Samyukta, still new to the university life had never been to a parlour. She was the girl with a unibrow, who could barely convince her father to buy her a phone.
But something that happened on a college trip brought a drastic change in her life. One of her seniors walked up to her and asked her to strip!
Baffled and confused, Sanyukta firmly refused to comply. But what happened next churned unfortunate memories for her, that she ended up choking on for a very long time.
At least twelve girls waked up to her on the stage, and in front of a huge ground ragged her, and assaulted her physically.
“I remember sitting in the bathtub confused, crying, trying to get rid of the bloodstains! I could barely get a hang of what happened to me”
The aftermath of the incident rendered Sanyukta with physical and mental pain. And as if things weren’t pathetic yet, a few days later she discovers that the girl who bullied her was featured on the cover of Banglore times.
She was angry, disturbed and helpless. It was as if her world was mocking her.
For two long years, Samyukta felt as if she was being consumed by trauma. Amidst the never-ending dismal and gloom, she desperately looked for distractions.
Luckily Samyukta fell truly, madly and deeply in love with dance and theatre. While dancing would let herself loose, she would for once move away from the unhealthy thoughts that would infringe her otherwise.
Theatre was her newfound emancipation. It gave her the ability to become a person, a character that wasn’t her. Someone who did not walk around with the grim clouds of shame and sadness.
But what started as a therapeutic endeavour made Samyukta the most popular girl in college. She signed a film called Oongan, for which she later received several awards including a Filmfare! Overnight, the girl who got bullied became a star.
The positive attention was surely overwhelming but was she really happy? The truth was she could never stop thinking about what happened on the damned night. The girls from Mount Carmel, who bullied her seemed to come back to haunt her, even on the happiest night of her life. The inability to enjoy such precious moments finally made Sanyukta realise that had she never moved on.
A couple of months later, when Sanyukta was called at Banglore times, she bumped into the same girl once again. But this time, it was different. She did not feel burdened by her past or angered by her presence.
She had finally forgiven her, and everything felt a lot better. The unburdening gave her a sense of fulfilment, something that she had been craving for all this while.
Once again, Sanyukta felt successful, the only difference was, this time her successes came from within and noone could beat that.
