Here is NK Sreedhar’s 2nd post. This time it is a real life account, with the names changed, of course. Please be generous with your comments to encourage him. – Sukumar

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It was a brisk spring morning. The streets were painted yellow by the Cassia fistula tree in full bloom. You can smell the new season in the air. My friend Vivek and I were riding a bike on our way to class this morning. We were in our 2^nd year in college and in a few weeks it will be our final semester exams. Needless to say, that wasn’t the thought on our minds.

As we rode through the entrance gate, the ever unhappy Somu, the security guard, greeted us with his stoic face. “College closed today, sir”, he said. What, now! We couldn’t be having a strike! “Why bother! It’s not like we attend many classes other than the majors”, Vivek suggested. Still, the thrill of ‘bunking’ classes is lost when college is closed.

As we got near our department, we saw all our friends huddled around and chatting in a low hushed voice. “What’s up, who died?” was the first sarcastic remark that came out of my mouth. I was only in my 2^nd year and they were teaching ‘etiquette’, ‘how not to be a smart ass’, ‘avoiding foot in mouth’ etc. only in the 3^rd year. There was widespread shock in all my friends’ faces. Raj said, “Angel passed away this morning”. I knew then what a blow to the head felt like. Angel is one of the sweetest girls in our class. She is down to earth, highly pious and a quiet girl, who kept to herself most of the time. Being in the seat right behind her for most of 2^nd year, I picked on her a few times and she was always calm and collected. She always said, “Christ is with me. I don’t get annoyed”.

There were so many questions swirling in my mind. How did this happen? Why her? She was young and had so much to achieve. I was frustrated with how fragile life was. I wasn’t going to cry in front of my friends, but I was close to it multiple times. As we drove to her house, Raj pulled me aside and said “the news is, she committed suicide”. “Suicide! Why? She didn’t seem unhappy when we left her yesterday”, was all I could think about. You think you know someone well, but, looks like we didn’t know her at all. My mind was totally blank. This is the 2^nd death to a classmate and I was too young to remember the first one (3^rd grade).

Angel’s house was inside the church. Her parents served the church and lived in a house inside. As we tried to get in, most of our department was already there outside. We were told that there wasn’t going to be an open coffin as Angel sustained severe damage when she burnt herself down. Some of us were really furious. Why didn’t she talk to any of us if she had problems! We would have helped her.

After the funeral, we were all there in a friend’s house. All of us wanted to talk to Vicky, Angel’s best friend. If something was bothering Angel, Vicky would have known about it. Vicky was crying inconsolably. When she recovered, in between bouts of crying, Vicky explained to us that Angel was in love with Ed. Ed was in his first year of becoming a ‘brother’ in the same church. He was going to give it all up to marry Angel. Angel was going to tell her parents the previous night and get their approval. Apparently, Angel was scared about how the church and her parents would take it.

It was very hard to imagine the ever smiling, calm Angel going through this and not telling anyone. Did her parents not approve of Ed, was she worried about what others would think, was she worried about Ed being pulled from priesthood – we could only contemplate without knowing what happened.

If all this was all shocking and overwhelming, nothing prepared us for what was to come two days later. The police were investigating into Angel’s death. Apparently, Ed lodged a complaint that there was some foul play. They exhumed her body and found that Angel was pregnant. They also found that she was force-fed kerosene. Angel’s parents were arrested for killing her by burning her alive.

We were unable to understand why one’s own parents would do this! Why would someone kill their own daughter and grand child? – Just because she was pregnant! Was their image in society more important to them than their own flesh and blood? Why was it acceptable to be called a murderer rather than facing society for an out-of-wedlock child?

Many of the parents felt that it was better to go down for murder than to face their daughter bring ill-repute to the family name. As Angel says “Christ is with her”.