Year 1816,
The Lotus and the Moonlight
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She was covered in plain white clothing, just like every other commoner who meant nothing to the upper class. Yet, she shone. She was like a diamond among diamonds, a flicker of light in a world designed to be dim. Her laughter sliced through the air around her—an air heavy with the suffocating weight of patriarchy and the relentless pressure to stay invisible.
That is what the lower community did best: being invisible. They were shadows moving through the fields, ghosts tending to the hearths of others. They were invisible at all times, except when the upper-class men felt a sudden need. It was a vulturous, predatory need for anything feminine and "lowly." To them, she was lowly. She was a fruit ever-forbidden, considered dirty because of her class, yet yearned for by the very men who looked down upon her.
Her name is Tamara.
It means lotus. Her parents had named her with a prayer in their hearts. They wanted her to grow well like a lotus flower—whether she was rooted in clear, pristine water or the deepest, darkest mud, they wanted her to grow strong and graceful. And she did. She grew gracefully. She grew strongly.
Tamara lived with her community in the valley, in small huts made of sun-dried brick, mud, and heavy hay roofs. She led a common, lowly life according to the standards of the nobles. To them, her people were not humans with beating hearts; they were merely a commodity, tools for the harvest, or objects for their amusement. Fortunately for her, Tamara had not been violated yet, despite the predatory eyes that watched her from the high balconies of the great houses.
Still, she shone.
Her people worked under the scorching sun, sweating in the grain fields and the endless acres of land owned by the nobles. Meanwhile, those same nobles stayed tucked away in every luxury she and her people could only dream of. They lived in a world of marble and silk, while Tamara's world was one of dust and grit.
As a child, she would often tag along with her parents when they went to the huge houses—the ones with tiled roofs that glowed like jewels after the rain. The children of her age in those houses had skin that seemed to glow from within. They were draped in colorful silks and heavy golden ornaments. Tamara would sneakily watch the noble girls her age being taught how to dance. They moved like fluid water, covered in expensive silks—maroon reds and dark greens that made their pale skin pop with vibrance. Golden ornaments hung from their ears, swaying with their movements, and their ankles flashed with silver anklets that made a beautiful, rhythmic sound with every practiced step.
"Tamara! Let's not get caught by the noblemen and get into trouble!" Her mother used to scold her, her voice a sharp whisper of fear, whenever she saw Tamara drifting toward the dance arena. It was a forbidden place for them. A place of art and beauty that was supposedly reserved for those with "noble" blood.
Even so, the fire in Tamara couldn't be extinguished. Sneakily watching the moves carefully, memorizing the tilt of a head or the curve of a wrist, and later practicing in her locality with her friends became an everyday activity for her during her childhood days. Not long after, she had started to gracefully perform in front of her parents. Her parents would watch her, awestruck, as their daughter transformed the dusty ground of their hut into a stage fit for a queen.
The happiness of her childhood, that childlike laughter of hers, the loving relationship between her parents, ... All of that did not last nearly long enough.
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The Night the Moon Screamed
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On a chilling night, the moon was shining ever so brightly, but the rest of the world was asleep. It was that specific time of night where everything is silent—the animals, the birds, the beetles, the crickets, and even the wind. Everything was silent. The only loud thing in the universe was the light from the moon. It was loud and bright, casting long, skeletal shadows across the valley.
For some reason, eleven-year-old Little Tamara couldn't sleep. Even after hugging her little sister and feeling the rhythmic rise and fall of the younger girl's chest, sleep eluded her. But why?
Her mind kept drifting back to the morning. She had noticed a certain nobleman from the huge house approaching her mother while her father was absent in the fields. Her mother, a woman of fierce dignity, had slapped the nobleman. Tamara had watched from the shadows as her mother grabbed her hand and ran, her face pale with a terror Tamara didn't yet fully understand. After that incident, Tamara was shook. Even at an age where one doesn't fully grasp the darkness of the world, she could sense something was fundamentally wrong. The air felt charged, like the moments before a devastating lightning strike.
Not soon after, the silence was punctured. Tamara heard whispers from outside her house. Upon lifting her head to look for her father and mother, she realized the mats beside her were empty. They were gone.
Eventually, the whispers rose into shouting. The shouting then dissolved into whimpering, and then into blood-curdling screaming.
Tamara stood up ever so carefully, moving with the grace she had learned from the forbidden dances so as not to wake her little sister. She inched closer to the door, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She peeked out. Her orbs grew three times wider upon seeing her mother's hair grasped in a cruel, tight fist by the very nobleman whose skin shone like polished marble under the moonlight.
Tears pooled behind her eyes, blurring her vision into a smear of silver and shadow. Her eyes turned red with a heat she had never felt before. Her small fists grew firmer, her knuckles turning white as she kept peeking out.
Tamara saw the true ugliness of that shining skin. It was a shine she started to hate from that very moment. The same so-called "royalty" was pinning her father down physically. He was being crushed into the dirt he worked so hard to tend, while her mother was being dragged away by her hair, her feet scuffing uselessly against the stones.
A primal urge surged through Tamara. She wanted to run to her father. She wanted to run to her mother. She wanted to lash out at the man who was dragging her mother away. In her mind, she saw herself grabbing the heavy oil lamp from the table and throwing it with every ounce of force she possessed at the man's back.
She wanted to see the lamp's fragile glass breaking as it came into contact with his skin. She wanted to see the kerosene slipping down that glowing skin—the skin that was radiant a minute ago—and see it ignite. She wanted him to burn. With fire.
She wanted to hear his scream rise up, screaming in true agony, while her mother slipped away from his loosened grip. She wanted to see the "shining" nobility reduced to ash.
But she didn't. She couldn't.
All she could do was stand paralyzed on the spot, unable to close her eyes, unable to turn away, and unable to run. She watched as her mother was dragged away, the noblemen laughing—a sound that was more terrifying than the screams. The only one not laughing was her father. He kept wailing, screaming, begging. He was pleading with them to let her go, his voice breaking into a thousand jagged pieces.
Tears strolled down her face, her body shaking vigorously, yet she remained anchored to the floor by a weight of pure horror.
She stood there the whole time. She watched as her mom was dragged toward the forest. She watched as her father tried to jog after them, eventually falling and crawling, clutching the laughing men's legs, weeping for mercy. She watched as heavy punches were thrown into his face, the sound of meat hitting bone echoing in the silent night.
She watched her hero break down into tears of blood and despair. And her beautiful mother, who had always been her heroine, was dragged away by the grip of her hair.
She couldn't move until all of them—the noblemen, the guards, and her mother,father—vanished into the dark, dense forest. The moonlight continued to pour down, indifferent to the massacre of her soul.
Finally, her legs gave up. She collapsed onto the cold ground. The moonlight was still loud and clear, but it no longer felt beautiful; it felt like a spotlight on her failure. Her mind began to give up, the trauma reaching a boiling point. Blackout.
It was too much for a daughter to see. It was too much for a childhood to witness. Her childhood had lasted exactly eleven years, and it had ended in a single night of silver light and red screams. And what about the rest? How was she going to live? How do you breathe when the air is filled with the scent of your parents' disappearance?
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Graveness of Morning
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The next morning welcomed her with a crushing graveness. The silence of the night had been replaced by a heavy, stifling heat. Tamara's mind raced with the dark possibilities of what might have happened to her mother and her father.
The morning broke out fully as her little sister wailed, realizing the absence of their parents. The sound was sharp and demanding, but Tamara sat still. She was a statue of salt. She sat staring into infinity, her eyes fixed on the doorway where she had last seen them.
While her neighbors gathered, trying to offer hollow words of consolation, Tamara remained in her trance. They spoke of "tragedies" and "the way of the world," but she knew something much deeper was wrong. The world wasn't just tragic; it was malicious.
But then, through the fog of her grief, she heard a whisper among the neighbors. It was a name.
"Balu is alive!"
Her father.
She didn't know if it was her own hopeful thinking playing tricks on her ears or if the neighbors had actually said it. In the wreckage of her life, she could only grasp at that single, fragile straw. She could only wish, with every fiber of her being, that it was true. Because if he was alive, there was a spark. And if there was a spark, one day, there would be a fire.