YOU ARE MY THEME FOR A DREAM (Part 2)

CHAPTER 1

It had been two tough years in the prison for Shalu. Although, she had been given ' B' grade cell as she being a graduate.
But the life in the cell was a hell as it was being shared by another four convicts. They were only given blankets to sleep on——two each in summer & six each in winter. Her skin was allergic to the material of the blanket, so she had to sleep on the floor directly. The prisoners were not allowed any sorts of mats or mattresses from outside. This was a privilege for political prisoners only.
Even the toilet was inside the room, she shared with the other four. Not surprisingly, the big issue was the lack of hygiene & sanitation.
The other lady convicts threw their sanitary napkins into the toilet instead of the dustbin. No one from the jail authorities cared enough to try & fix the problem.
Each month menstruing women had a problem. They were just given twelve sanitary napkins. If their flow was heavy & they needed more, the authorities just gave them gauze bandages & cotton & they had to make their own napkins with that. For disposal, there was just one bag & it wasn't properly cleaned out everyday.
Because, the women's section of the jail was enclosed within the larger men's prison, the women had no say in food provisioning & cooking either. The food was horrible & not just the taste. The insects in the brinjal & caterpillars in the rice was a common scene.
It wasn't just that the people were always watching you in prison, it was also the feeling that they had no control over how your body will be treated.
In the nights Shalu always had a thought in her mind  that being incarcerated is tough in itself, but being incarcerated for something she had done out of revenge & not enmity was entirely different story. And, then she thought of challenging the law.
She called upon her defence attorney who clearly guided her to remain silent & not testify at trial. In the months that followed, her defence attorney never stopped fighting for her. In the plea that she signed was accepting responsibility for the crime but maintaining her innocence. It took another year to have gotten her case to trial.
Every time she came back from the court, she had to strip completely in front of women guards & they would put their hands everywhere one can think of. And there was nothing she could do feeling completely powerless.
It didn't matter, if she was on her periods. She would even be asked to take off her underwear & to spread her legs.
Another year, the case came upto Supreme Court where she was charged with a second degree murder conviction. She never testified during her trial but during her appeals process, her attorney took the stand & described how at the time of the killing, she was ensnared in an abusive relationship with a Casanova who baited her into having sex with him & impregnated her & that she had attempted suicide out of shame.
Her case gained a new scrutiny where all the papers & documents were reproduced before the three bench jury who went through it thoroughly & after six months of the case for reprieval the jury came out with their decision & announced
" At some point we have to ask, are we really protecting society when we punish abused teenagers by putting them in prison & throwing away the key. Now it's a way to end this four year long drama & trauma with a finite date which will be six months from now to be able to leave prison & begin her life"
After hearing the judgment, Shalu returned to the prison, all relieved & content in her mind. She requested for a pen & paper to be provided to her which was given to her by the jail authorities. The writer in her, had once again risen like a phoenix from the ashes which till now had completely burned down the day she was imprisoned for her heinous offence.
She wrote:
Thae end of my journey is now in sight
And from the darkness, I can now see light
I know, it's been tough, but I'm hoping I know
From that hard bitter lesson, you reap what you sow.

Someday, the gates will open
And once again I'll be free
A fact, that makes me wonder
What will become of me?
And then she wrote
I'm a female, who is out on parole. I spent four years of my life in prison for my crime. They said, my punishment was for rehabilitation. But instead, they just locked me away, I didn't learn how?
And these thoughts kept swimming in her head for a long time.

After serving another one year in prison, Shalu was released after signing another plea of innocence & a condition that once out, she behaves well.