It’s just a tale of a ‘girl’…
Well, what a jolly little tale this is! Picture this: a wee lass born in the rather fancy-sounding “princely state of Tripura” (sounds like something from a fairy tale, doesn’t it?). Until the ripe old age of four, she was living the dream, surrounded by more relatives than you could shake a stick at – pishis, kakus, thakumas, jethus and whatnot. A proper family circus, if you ask me!
Her father, a rather important chap at the State Bank of India, suddenly gets shipped off to West Bengal – absolutely chuffed, he was! So off they pop to Kolkata, our little protagonist, her parents, and sister in tow. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end! One minute she’s splashing about in a village pond, the next she’s bobbing about in the ocean of Kolkata! The poor mite couldn’t understand a blooming word anyone was saying – bit of a language pickle!
The hardest part? Being torn away from her beloved thakuma and pishi-kaku. Rather devastating for a four-year-old, wouldn’t you say?
Once in Kolkata, she pined for her thakuma something chronic, but lo and behold, she gained a Dadu, Mejo Dadu – her mother’s uncle, no less! This chap became her knight in shining armor, showering her with oodles of love. Being the headmaster of “Shibtala Adarsha Prathamic Vidyalaya” in Dum Dum Cantonment, he promptly enrolled her. New chums and all that!
Meanwhile, her teenage sister was having an absolute mare trying to fit in. Teenagers, eh? Drama queens, the lot of them! Oh, what a right royal pickle for our little heroine! Anxiety coming out of her ears, she had! Lost all her chums from the old school and her proper home. Nothing left but those pesky books – turned into a proper bookworm, she did, with her nose perpetually stuck between pages. Talk about a classroom swot!
Meanwhile, our plucky protagonist was having a rather different experience – making new mates at school whilst toddling along holding her Mejodadu’s hand like it was the royal scepter. How utterly adorable!
Growing up, she was never what you’d call academically brilliant – decidedly middle of the road, if we’re being honest. But blimey, did she have grandiose dreams! When she hit class 11. Some mate mentioned journalism, and well, she was absolutely gobsmacked by the idea! “Journalist? Me? Bloody marvelous!” she must have thought.
After finishing her education at the rather magnificently named Dum Dum Motijheel College (sounds like an ice cream flavor, doesn’t it?), she enrolled at Calcutta University. Studied all that media malarkey, did an internship at CNN-IBN, and then hopped from job to job like a rabbit on a pogo stick – Khas Khabar NE Bangla, ANI news agency, and qued up more!
But wait, there’s more! Amidst all this career-building palaver, she bagged herself a husband, created a family, and popped out a sprog. Standard stuff, really. But here’s the twist in our tale: her husband wasn’t just any old bloke – he was an absolute legend! Encouraged her at every turn, he did, supporting her foreign study dreams. Her in-laws were surprisingly not the nightmare variety from EastEnders but actually quite splendid too!
When she got into a posh university in the UK (with a scholarship, no less – clever clogs!), her husband ditched his steady teaching job in India and trotted along to support her. Well, somebody had to look after the nipper while she was buried in books, didn’t they?This isn’t just your typical “woman overcomes adversity” tearjerker, oh no! It’s about the chap who stood by her side. We’re always banging on about the “woman behind the successful man” rubbish, but when’s the last time you heard about a bloke behind a successful woman? Practically never! Society’s always yammering on about women juggling homes, kids, and pots and pans, but rarely do we hear about a man’s sacrifices. These rare specimens who support their wives are treated like they’ve just discovered the cure for the common cold – absolutely extraordinary!
We have one measly Women’s Day while chaps get the other 364 days! Smashing! The world’s a man’s oyster, innit? We’re all painfully aware of the rather depressing statistics – women getting roughed up by husbands and in-laws, rape cases becoming as common as a cuppa tea. Absolutely dismal state of affairs! But hold onto your knickers, because amidst all this doom and gloom, there’s actually a silver lining! Some blokes actually respect women and their dreams – revolutionary concept, that! For women, making a family or popping out sprogs isn’t the be-all and end-all. There are oodles more dreams that men ought to respect, unless they want to be proper berks about it.
Our plucky protagonist had quite the revelation after landing in the UK. She’s not throwing shade at her homeland, mind you, but crikey, did she notice the difference in how men gawked at her! Back home, she was scanned from head to toe like she was going through airport security. But in Blighty? In UK the men at least have the decency not to ogle her like she’s the last chocolate digestive in the packet! She can totter home late at night from work without feeling like she’s starring in her own horror film. Women’s safety is leagues ahead here – jolly good show! Of course, she’ll toddle back to her country eventually. That’s the very thing she wants to transform – ensuring every Tom, Dick, and Harry (or Tara, Divya, and Harini) gets the respect they deserve. In the still corridors of RG Kar Hospital, a young doctor’s aspirations were violently extinguished—not merely by the hands of her attacker, but by the systemic failures that enabled such brutality. She represented countless women who dare to pursue their dreams of healing others, only to find themselves unprotected by the very institutions meant to safeguard them.
This wasn’t simply an isolated incident of violence; it was a devastating indictment of our collective failure. A dedicated medical professional—raped, murdered, and discarded—speaks to the profound vulnerability women face even in spaces presumed safe. Her body, callously violated and torn, stands as grim testimony to a system that repeatedly fails its daughters. She embodied every woman striving to contribute meaningfully to society. Her story resonates beyond borders, beyond cultural contexts—a universal narrative of promise destroyed by institutional indifference.
The tragedy at RG Kar transcends the individual perpetrator. It reveals the hollow promises of protection, the fragility of progress, and the devastating consequences when systems designed to protect instead become complicit through negligence. In her, we see reflected our sisters, daughters, and colleagues—and the sobering reality that their ambitions exist in a world where the structures meant to support them remain perilously inadequate. Women aren’t commodities to be taken for granted, and men aren’t some sort of supreme beings who deserve all the privileges. They can actually be decent examples, just like our protagonist’s hubby. I could easily blurt out her name, but I’ll keep her anonymous – like a fairy tale, a dream, or a bit of inspiration. After all, where’s the fun in spoiling the mystery?
