ESL Blogs

One day in the evening, I was wandering with some of my friends along the earthen road beside the narrow river flowing near our overpopulated village. Suddenly, we heard a riotous noise coming from another part of our village. No sooner heard the noise, we rushed to the place. After we had reached there, we saw a crowd in very agitation with tree branches, bamboo sticks and various kinds of handmade arms in their hands. We assumed owing the words of the people and their mood that there had been a riot between a group of people from our village and another group of people from a neighboring village. However, there were more people gathered in one of the houses and we entered the house to investigate the matter well. Some people rushed to us and said, “We have confined a boy from the neighboring village while fighting. Now just tell us what to do with the boy for some very crazy boys of our village are trying to cudgel him. If he dies due to a hard beating, just imagine what would become of us!” “Okay, let’s go to the confined boy,” I said, “Initially, I will talk with him and then decide what to do.”

Just as we started to go to the room where the boy was confined, a beautiful girl of the house, who was familiar with the people of our village as a girl of easy virtue stood in front of me spreading her two arms and said, “I have an objection, firstly you have to solve it, then you would be allowed to involve yourself with another matter.” She was frantic and her body was shaking from head to toe while talking to me and a rigidity very severe was stuck on her smooth face. I was more or less astonished by her audacity. No girl of our village had dared not talk to me like that before. After restraining myself, I told her, “okay, I am ready to hear you, just tell me what your allegation is.” I saw under the light of an electric bulb that a shyness came over her face and made her white check red colored. She gradually lowered her face and holding tightly in my one arm with her delicate hand, dragged me aside. Then she looked at my eyes fixedly and said, “Nazrul (a mischievous boy of our village) beaten me brutally as I was trying to stop our people from rioting. You must give punishment Nazrul first.” I befallen in hesitation and wondered why Nazrul had beaten her for they both were from the same village, and the riot had been against another village. I thought about the affair profoundly without asking the girl any further question. Then I understood what she had tried to mean by beating her brutally. And suddenly, I remembered some odd incidents had occurred during the time of our freedom fight. Some pretender freedom fighters raped and made sexual harassment of the girls of our own country when our whole country were fighting heart and soul against a raider country. I lowered my head in shame under the dim light of an electric bulb and felt tears gathering in my eyes. I saluted her in my mind because of her brave attitude and rebellion and the moment I understood the affair clearly I left the place followed by my friends to search for Nazrul.