ON THE NINTH CLOUD OF NETWORKING E-Book

Suman Lederer

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 366

Beschreibung

Suvarna, a simple Indian girl, neither poor nor rich, lives a normal life in India. She loves life and her friends. After a traumatic experience in her young life, at the age of nineteen she goes to her mother in Germany, where she lives a carefree life. Then she goes to Austria and meets her husband. Even after experiences that test her, she does not give up, goes her way and eventually reaches a very good level in her profession. A few years later, the family moves to Jakarta for some time for professional reasons. Unfortunately, such happiness attracts, in addition to many positive outcomes, sometimes negative reactions, most often envy. A group of women come together for different motivations and, with the support of some people who are looking for Suvarna's international contacts, target Suvarna's entire network on the most popular private and professional networking sites. After the first invented story, it's easy to keep going, so they do. The result: false accusations against Suvarna, prepared witnesses, massive intrusions into her privacy, attempted damage to her reputation through manipulated stories, the resulting destruction and spreading of her privacy, betrayal by her own friends and relatives, destruction of all trust, and unfortunately a thorough acquaintance with the dark side of human nature. One of the main purposes of all the betrayal? Networking! Suvarna's story is an autobiographical novel that alternates between the past and the present and moves very subtly in the genres crime, psychological and conspiracy stories.

Leseprobe

ON THE NINTH CLOUD OF NETWORKING

FRIENDS, WHO ARE NOT

Suman Lederer

© 2020 Suman Lederer

Author: Suman Lederer

Translator: Elke Keilhofer-Schmidt

E-mail: [email protected]

Cover design, illustration: tredition GmbH

Publishing & printing: tredition GmbH, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg

ISBN: 978-3-347-19302-4 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-3-347-19303-1 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-3-347-19304-8 (e-book)

The work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. Any use is prohibited without the consent of the publisher and the author. This applies in particular to electronic or other reproduction, translation, distribution and making available to the public.

Bibliographic information of the German National Library:

The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

“Cogito, ergo sum”

“I think, therefore I am”

- René Descartes (1596-1650)

I would like to thank my parents-in-law and my mother, who in my absence, always took such good care of my two men, that I could leave without any worries.

I thank our son, who, at the age of seven, is so confident in discussing all kinds of things with me that my brain cells have to stay awake and alert at all times.

Above all, I thank my husband, who loves me above everything, whom I love above everything, and who makes everything possible for me. Without him, the idea of writing this book would never have come about in the first place.

Chapters

Prologue

1. Suvarna

2. Germany, India

3. New-Delhi

4. Bengaluru

5. New-Delhi

6. Mumbai

7. Neu-Delhi

8. Bengaluru

9. New-Delhi

10. Mumbai

11. Jakarta

12. Germany

13. Vienna

14. Bengaluru–Mumbai–Bengaluru

15. Austria

16. Mainz

17. Berlin

18. Austria

19. Jakarta

20. Karlsruhe, Mannheim

21. Karlsruhe

22. Karlsruhe

23. Jakarta

24. Austria

25. Vienna

26. Austria

27. Vienna

28. Paris

29. Rome

30. Paris

31. Bali

32. Neulengbach

33. Mongolia

34. Jakarta and the world

35. Jakarta, the beginning

36. Neulengbach

37. Jakarta

38. Vienna

39. Jakarta

40. Jakarta

41. Neulengbach

42. Paris

43. Jakarta

Epilogue

Prologue

April 2020

“Know that wherever you are in your life right now is both temporary, and exactly where you are supposed to be. You have arrived at this moment to learn what you must learn, so you can become the person you need to be to create the life you truly want. Even when life is difficult or challenging—especially when life is difficult and challenging—the present is always an opportunity for us to learn, grow, and become better than we've ever been before.”

– Hal Elrod in Miracle Morning

Suvarna wrote these lines in her diary and read them over and over again. I must somehow internalize these lines, she thought. It's so difficult. Maybe if I speak them aloud, it might work. She repeated the lines aloud, several times. It made sense, but it was so hard to accept them, to accept and really internalize them. Maybe I should send them to Maximilian. Thatway I could put a little pressure on myself to accept them. So, she wrote Max a message with the text and the addition

"Please read these lines, they sound wise, I’ll try to internalize them".

After that, she read the lines aloud again for several times. It surely would work sooner or later!

It was the first day she had gotten up earlier than usual and had gone downstairs for jogging. There had been periods earlier in her life during which she had jogged on a regular basis, not a long distance, just about 30 to 40 minutes. For a while, she had stuck to that routine until various things had come up, until she finally had given it up. After eighteen months she was now back to jogging.

It had rained that night, and the streets were still wet. In Jakarta, the pavements were usually very slippery when they were wet. She had to be careful, she was well aware of that. So, it wasn't really running, rather a slow jog, then walking for a while, then jogging again a little bit. For the beginning, she did quite well.

The night before she had figured out that going jogging the next morning would certainly help to make a fresh start, without them all, really without all of them! For the sake of networking, they had simply put the friendship with her, or acquaintance, or whatever it was, on the scrap heap. They were all free to network as much as they wanted to, connect with as many people from her network as they wanted to, and be happy with each other, without her!

The running, walking, then running again for half an hour did her good. The morning breeze, the wet trees and plants, the beautiful colourful flowers in the greenery in between, everything looked so fresh and beautiful. It really did her good!

Lots of sweat, a slightly higher pulse, some exercise, hopefully other thoughts soon, and not thinking about them all any longer! Well done, she patted herself on the shoulder in her thoughts.

1.

Suvarna

2020

Suvarna was forty-four years old, 5'5 tall, had dark brown eyes, long black hair, wheatish skin - neither too dark nor too light - and average body measurements. But she looked more like thirty-five, or at most as if she was in her late thirties. Well, there were advantages and disadvantages, she was aware of that, because she always looked younger than her actual age. Sometimes she thought that maybe there were some disadvantages in her work, that people wouldn't or couldn't take her seriously, but fortunately this thought had not proven right over time.

From childhood on, her father had taught her the importance of discipline in every area of life. Having deviated from this principle once in her life, she had returned to her origins, to the disciplined way of life that she had been taught.

Her mother had never stopped her from doing what she felt like doing, whether it was playing table tennis or badminton, going jogging, painting, taking a dance class, taking private lessons - Suvarna was free to think about what she would like to do, discuss it with her, and then she was normally allowed to participate. It was very important to her mother that Suvarna should have a degree, a job and be financially independent.

She had worked in the private sector for large international corporations and as a lecturer at universities of applied sciences. In between, she even had had the privilege of working for the United Nations. For several years now, she had been working as a freelancer for a major international corporation, for the last few years from her home in Jakarta. As such, she could work anywhere or from anywhere, be it the beach, café, train station, airport, plane, and sometimes she even did so, and she liked it.

Suvarna knew to enjoy whatever she was doing. When she was on holiday, she enjoyed her holidays to the fullest, when she was at work, she enjoyed doing her job, when she was with friends, she thoroughly enjoyed her time with them, when she was lazing around, she enjoyed lazing around, because that shouldn't be missed out either. That was typical of Suvarna.

She always spoke softly and hardly ever raised her voice. Of course, it had happened two or three times in her life that she had raised her voice, but people had to make a great effort to evoke this reaction from her. She was always friendly and polite to all people, regardless of their social or economic or hierarchical status.

She was hardworking, very organized - it almost seemed as if she had been born with the talent for excellent time management, very structured in her thinking, sometimes diplomatic and sometimes very straightforward, helpful - everybody helps in his or her own way, her talent was to listen and give advice. She liked to listen to everybody and everything, she was really good at that, and she always gave advice, when asked.

She was very eager to learn, read books from different areas of life and work, but had no particular hobby, only did sports sometimes, loved to travel to other countries - who doesn't -, liked to meet people, loved to talk on the phone with her friends from all over the world - at least she used to - all in all she was a happy person.

Her knowledge of German was excellent, on the phone, most people thought Suvarna was a native speaker and were surprised when they first met her. After her long stay in Germany, she had developed a slightly harder tone, but not always and not everyone perceived it as negative, or even noticed it at all.

It was precisely because of these character traits and talents - in addition to people's expectations of her - that she sometimes had unintended problems in her relations with others, not with all of them, not with the majority, but still here and there.

When people met her, they automatically had certain expectations without giving it much thought - the pigeon-hole thinking that one often automatically follows - but her behaviour did not at all correspond to the outward appearance. People saw a petite Indian woman with soft features, dark eyes, dark skin and dark hair. But when she started talking, you could almost hear a German speaking - her German had later adapted to Austrian German. The picture didn't fit, and on top of that, this harsh undertone, these demands she made, the approaches to solutions, some of which she knew and offered immediately, her structured approach to problems, none of it suited the picture. Some people had issues with it. Some could not pin down her behaviour, were confused, in rare cases even aggressive towards her, without being able to tell exactly why.

Suvarna was aware of it, Max too, but they could never change this expectation of the others towards her. Fortunately, this did not happen very often. Unfortunately, they had not foreseen, and could not have foreseen the extent of what was about to come. This expectation towards her was actually a big reason for her troubles with the women's group from the network.

2.

Germany, India

60‘s, 70‘s

The marriage of her parents was unusual in that both came from very different parts of India and belonged to different religions, a very unusual union at the time of their marriage - her father a Hindu-Jain from the state of Bihar in the north of India, her mother a Catholic from Kerala in the south of India.

The Jains belonged to the ancient religion Jainism, which believed in the universe, nonviolence and abstinence. The Jains believed that all living things had a soul, including plants and insects. One probably knew the picture of the Jains, where they can be seen sweeping ants off the road before moving on so as not to kill them when walking. The Jains were generally strict vegetarians. For this reason, Suvarna had been raised a vegetarian from birth. Much later in life she had tried meat, but she did not like it, because it was unfamiliar to her. Her mother had not been a vegetarian before, but after marrying Suren she had become vegetarian because it was very important to him and his family, as they were Jains.

Her father, Suren, came from the small town of Arrah in northern India. Having grown up with two sisters, he had studied nuclear physics. The renowned Atomic Energy Research Centre, which at that time had eight centres in India, had advertised a nuclear physics post at his university. Suren applied, got the job and moved to Mumbai to live and work there. Sometime later, his boss approached him and asked if he would like to go to Germany for two years to take part in an international research exchange programme. This is how he came to Karlsruhe in Germany.

Her mother, Madita, came from a small village in Kerala. Most of the villagers there made a living from fishing. One day the priest from her church asked her father if one of his daughters would like to become a nurse and work abroad and help the sick. Since her parents had a total of eight living children, the choice fell on her, still young at 17, but old enough to learn a profession and above all, help people. In a group of 20 girls, she came to Karlsruhe, Germany, to learn the profession of a nurse and in order to work at a hospital afterwards and help people.

In October, the Indo-German Society in Karlsruhe had invited all Indians and others to the Diwali Festival.

Diwali, the Festival of Lights, the biggest festival in India, celebrated every year the return of Crown Prince Rama after 14 years in exile. It was celebrated everywhere in India, with a huge firework.

The Indians abroad did not miss out on celebrating Diwali either. The pretty young girls from Kerala were very happy that they were going to meet other people from India. Although they could not speak Hindi and would not be able to talk to anyone there, they did not care, they just wanted to meet other people from India and celebrate Diwali.

And it was there that her parents met each other. Several dates followed. They would go for a walk and do some sightseeing in the city. Verbally they could not communicate with each other, except with hands and feet, but when it came to love it was sometimes not necessary to verbally understand each other. In Bihar, where Suren came from, Hindi and Bhojpuri were spoken, in Kerala, where Madita came from, Malayalam.

When it was time for Suren to return to India, Madita decided to go back to India as well, both wanted to get married. There was resistance from both families, discussions and arguments within the respective families, because the language, the traditions, the food, simply everything was different. Nevertheless, the two got together and got married. Love had triumphed! They had two children, a boy, Sandip, and a girl, Suvarna.

3.

New-Delhi

July 2019

Suvarna was on business in India, in the capital city of New Delhi. One week of business in New Delhi, then almost a week in Mumbai and then back to Jakarta, that was her travel schedule. She had meetings all week long, every day from morning till evening. She met several people who had been specified in her travel plan. She had to concentrate during each meeting, because later she would have to write a detailed report. Despite the day's stress of listening carefully, so as not to miss anything important, and in order to incorporate the information she had received during the day, she usually spent at least one or two hours in her hotel room in the evenings working on her report. Normally, she could sleep well after that. But not that evening.

She had arrived on Monday, on Tuesday one week later she was to fly to Mumbai.

There was a weekend in between, which she would spend in New Delhi. On Friday, she thought about how she would spend her weekend there, hmm … what should she do? Well, get up late, enjoy a long breakfast and drink two or three cups of Indian Masala Chai, work on the presentation that she had to hold on Monday, have lunch, do some work again, then as a reward go to the spa in the hotel, that is, for a massage. The left side of her neck hurt. Dinner, maybe yes, maybe no, a phone call home and then sleep, those were her plans; on Sunday she would do the same, that would be her weekend. Until she called Prabhakar.

As usual they talked for a while about their jobs, then about their children, when they were planning their next holiday, whether it should be a short one or longer, when a weekend holiday would be possible, what they planned to do during the weekend. Suvarna told him that she was in New Delhi for her work, and that she was thinking of taking it easy on the weekend, a little work, a little relaxation, and hopefully just a little food.

Then he suddenly asked, "Why don't you meet up with Harshwardhan? He lives with his family in New Delhi. It would be great if you could visit him and his family."

Suvarna had not even thought of that. She had written to Harsh months ago and he had told her that he and his family had moved to New Delhi and were now living there. True, she could do that, but what would she converse about, she hadn't seen him for twenty-two years, they had rarely written to each other, although it had not been that difficult any longer since the social networks had come into being. She did not know his wife and two children. On the other hand, she had nothing else to do. Well, she could write him and inform him that she was in town and had some spare time. If it worked out with a meeting, fine, otherwise she had planned a relaxed day anyway. So, she sent him a message. As luck would have it, he was free on Saturday from noon on,

"We would be very happy to welcome you to our home. Who would have thought that we would meet in New Delhi at my place! I'll come with the kids tomorrow and pick you up around noon, be ready."

To her surprise, it was all relaxed and nice, his wife, Mandira, was very likeable, easy going and communicative, his children, fourteen and twelve, a little reserved at the beginning but chattier with every minute that Suvarna spent there. When his son caught her alone in the living room for a few minutes, he wanted to know from her whether his father, Harsh, had had a girl friend at university, and whether he had gotten into mischief. She liked it all very much, she liked his family and immediately thought how nice it would be to come to New Delhi with Max and Mousie on holiday and meet them all again, so Mousie could get to know Harsh's two children. That was Suvarna, she always liked people immediately and immediately thought about how to keep in touch with them and how to deepen the friendship.

In the evening, Harsh, Mandira and Suvarna went to an in-location. The outside temperature was pleasant. They decided to sit on the roof terrace. After two cocktails that weren't too strong, the mood became a little more exuberant. Mandira and Suvarna teamed up and started teasing Harsh a little bit - how he never found a parking space, how he tried to look cool when other women were around, what Suvarna could, but would not give away from former times - and both kept laughing and laughing and laughing, at their own jokes.

Harsh told Mandira to watch her drinking; upon which Mandira said,

"It's all right, look, I haven't divulged anything yet".

Suvarna was on her way back from the restroom when she heard this.

Harsh also said: "Yes, we all know everything, we know about the adoption plans, about the tenants, about her affairs with men, about the marriage crisis, but she doesn't know that we know, and we'll leave it at that, there's no point in serving up everything now, we're having a good time and it's fine, let’s just keep to that!"

Suvarna arrived at the table. She did not say anything, because she thought at that moment, if they wanted to tell it, they would have mentioned it themselves, why should she embarrass them with questions, it was such a nice evening, so she just left it aside.

"Mandira and I are at the restaurant with her right now; yes, she had a drink, but so did Mandira," Harsh wrote.

"For us, what counts is that Suvarna has been drinking."

"It's Saturday night, we are meeting after twenty-two years, and both women are just enjoying the evening, there's nothing wrong with that."

"You don't need to defend her. We told you all about how things are. Keep watching, take pictures, and let us know," Deborah wrote back.

Harsh and Mandira brought Suvarna back to the hotel. On the way there, Mandira and Suvarna were giggling like schoolgirls, laughing at everything and nothing, they were having a good time. When they reached the hotel, Mandira and Harsh suggested that if they had time, they could have dinner together again the next evening.

"Yes, that would be great", Suvarna replied without hesitation and was happy.

It was already after midnight. At the hotel reception she asked how long they served breakfast in the morning, as she intended to sleep until the last possible minute without missing breakfast time. Okay, there would be enough time to lie in.

When she was in bed, she wrote a message to Max,

"I’m back at the hotel. It was a really nice day with the whole family and a very pleasant evening with Mandira and Harsh. We can talk on the phone tomorrow, oops, I mean today, in a few hours. It's a bit late I'm going to bed now. It was really funny tonight. Sleep tight! Good night."

Then she called Prabhakar in the USA, he replied quite curtly and just said he was on the road and couldn't talk. So, she sent him some pictures of the evening.

He wrote back, "Nice!"

Huh? Was her first thought, that's all, just ‘nice’? He must have had a hard day! But then she remembered that he was on the road, probably it was due to that. She could not have known that this was their second last exchange, and that the last one two months later would be just as brief. Nor could she know that the November meeting in Singapore that they had arranged would not take place.

The network and especially the women's group had contacted him long before, and his connection with Suvarna had already been successfully distorted. Later, she would be surprised, how he could allow twenty-six years of friendship, at least she had thought it was friendship, admittedly with a large interruption of nineteen years, but still with regular contact again since three years, to be exchanged against manipulated stories and networking with unknown people, known for a few months through the social networks. And this, after he had told her that he was glad to be in contact with her again after nineteen years and that he did not want to lose the friendship with her under any circumstances. Well! She really couldn't have known or imagined any of this.

The next morning, she only woke up just a little before ten. After breakfast, she immediately started working on her presentation for Monday. She took her job very seriously and thoroughly enjoyed doing it, because she loved her field of work. It was not that easy to gain an insight into a project that had been running for several years in such a short time, that is, within one week, to understand and analyse the whole content and to present the results at the end of the week. But she was good in her job Max was proud of her and motivated her to keep going, because he had seen that she really loved what she was doing.

"Suvarna, you're good at your job. Keep in mind, it's not about whether you are or can be the best at your job, it's about giving your best. You are committed, you like it a lot and you do it well, keep it up!"

For lunch she just wanted to have a little snack, because she had made an appointment for a massage in the afternoon. She felt a hardening on the left side of her neck again, she touched the spot and pressed it with her fingers, hoping it would get better, but it didn't, it never did, the massage would do her good. After lunch and some more typing she went for the massage. It was the same massage therapist as two days before. She had told him about her neck.

After the one-hour massage, he showed her some exercises she could and should do to stretch and strengthen her neck muscles.

Harsh had written that Mandira and he would pick her up around eight o'clock in the evening and they could go somewhere nice for dinner. Shortly after eight, Mandira and Harsh arrived, without children, and they went to a nearby North Indian restaurant. When they asked her if she would like to order wine, Suvarna refused, knowing that she would probably still be working after dinner, as the presentation was the next day, which meant she would have to finish it that evening.

"Mandira and I are having dinner with her right now. We offered her wine and other alcoholic beverages a few times, but she didn't want a drink."

"Yeah, yeah, it's okay. Let us know if she asks or says anything," Deborah wrote back.

They all had a nice evening, chatted a lot, both women made fun of Harsh again, laughed a lot, and then they accompanied her back to the hotel. Somehow, she thought it was a pity to say goodbye, all the memories from Bengaluru were coming back to her,

it had been so much fun then, just like tonight, she thought. She was happy that she got along so well with Mandira, she felt like she had known her for a lifetime. She hoped they would really stay in touch!

"He didn't tell her anything" wrote Lungi.

"Very good, that works well for us. Do you see how good it is, if we know her plans in advance. Remember that, we should, no, we need to, know everything beforehand, then we can plan everything accordingly, prepare certain people, inform others ourselves, just the way we want to, and even more importantly, position ourselves and behave accordingly, that's worth a lot" came the answer from Mexico.

"Sure. Anyway, we try to make sure that people inform us early on, before they are going to speak to her, if possible, so that we can prepare them."

"Very well. We'll be in touch."

"Everything is going according to plan. Nobody knows." The message was sent from Mexico.

"Excellent. How could they… Hahahaha!" was the reply from Russia.

"It's good that we've been in contact with 'her people' for several months, they have bought everything from us so far, really everything."

"That's the way it should be, and even her new contacts,… hahahaha… Talk to you tomorrow."

4.

Bengaluru

1993–1995

Suvarna was enrolled at the University of Bengaluru, still called Bangalore in her day, where she studied civil engineering. In her class, there were about fifty boys and girls.

She did not know anyone except Pardhan, whom she had met when they were both queuing up at the Central Student Registration Office and they had been talking. They had then realized that they would both be studying at the same university.

As was usual in such situations, everything and everyone looked so unfamiliar in the beginning, there were so many different types of people - some were probably shy and hardly dared to look up, some felt visibly comfortable and wanted to show that they were the doers, some were just talking to their neighbours; then two boys came into the classroom, both looked likeable. As they walked past her to the back rows, they smiled, it was not a flirty smile, it was just a friendly smile.

After three long lectures, they had their lunch break, the many girls and boys all began to feel better and used the time to introduce themselves to each other. One of the two boys came up to her and introduced himself - his name was Prabhakar.

Then he called out to the other boy, "Harsh, this is Suvarna, she's from Mumbai!"

She also met a girl called Shehnaz. Slowly, she started to feel more at home and the other students obviously did so too.

Prabhakar was from Bengaluru. He was always very friendly, had a friendly face, always inquired about the welfare of other people and was always eager to help.

Pardhan came from another part of India and had moved to Bengaluru for his studies. He didn't talk a lot but received everything positively. Sometimes, the others just kept asking him questions to see if he had really listened, yes, he had listened. Usually, he had a serious expression on his face. Nevertheless, he was always friendly, even if he didn't always smile. Whenever he was asked for something specific, he offered to help.

Harshwardhan, Harsh for short, as he was called by everyone, was funny in his own way, sometimes, he put up a serious face even in funny situations, Suvarna was never sure if he had understood the joke at all or if the joke was beneath his assumed high niveau. He came, like Pardhan, from another part of India, and had also come to Bengaluru to study.

Then there was Shehnaz - she was from Bengaluru and lived with her parents, her married brother, her sister-in-law and her one-and-a-half-year-old niece. As such, she was very talkative, but only with people with whom she wanted to. She could laugh a lot and very heartily. Some years later, after Shehnaz had got married, Suvarna would lose contact with Shehnaz. She would later search for her for years in the social networks and through friends, but unfortunately, she would not find her.

Suvarna was also not from Bengaluru and lived in a pension near the university.

So it happened that Suvarna, Prabhakar, Pardhan, Harshwardhan and Shehnaz became a clique. They spent their lunch breaks together, went to one of the two dhabas outside the campus for breakfast when lectures started later, or for lunch at the latest. As it would be normal for young people, they always found some topic to discuss and get upset about - mostly about the professors, they would complain about something, and so on. They were all very talkative, except Pardhan, yet he always listened and answered their questions. Though he did not use many words, he nevertheless was always interested. He just did not take an active part, but that did not bother anybody, the conversations went on with a lot of wild gesturing. Harsh had a bad crush on Shehnaz and the whole clique always made fun of them. They spent a lot of time together during the week - eating out, chatting a lot going to the movies sometimes, all five of them simply had a lot of fun and a great time together.

Suvarna came from Mumbai and had been brought up to be self-reliant and independent; she had never really understood the rules of society, which were so important in India, and she liked them even less. She did not understand why she should not talk to boys much, why she should not hang out with boys, why she should not go out with them.

There were only two girls from Mumbai at the university, and Suvarna quickly became known as one of them. With her long black hair, her grin like a Cheshire cat, her willingness to chat, she was a welcome chat partner for the young men. Everyone wanted to meet her and talk to her. Many were on the lookout for her, waiting for her on the road from her private hostel to the university to meet her. In addition, as was normal for her age, namely eighteen, she received almost daily offers from different hopeful young men to go out with them. She enjoyed receiving this attention.

Until she was fifteen years old, she had looked like a boy, played with the boys from her neighbourhood, was friends with the boys in her school and was treated like a boy from her point of view. All the more, she enjoyed the attention she now received being a young woman. She really enjoyed it. When the young boys complimented her on her looks, she was not really embarrassed, but laughed heartily and was always up for a little flirt. At the university, she liked to hang out with her friends during the day, in the evenings, she often went on dates with different boys. Her friends often told her to beware of these other boys, but she was not afraid of them. Life was great!

At the university, she met Mahinder. They arranged to meet for coffee and then decided to see each other again. They discovered that they liked to spend time together and they started to meet regularly, almost every other day. It was the normal things that teenagers liked to do, drinking tea, riding around a little on his motorbike, sometimes even out of town, going out for dinner, going to the movies, and the like.

One evening, he drove her back to her shared apartment where she had moved from the private hostel some time ago. They stopped one street away, just stood there and talked for a while. Out of the corner of her eye, Suvarna saw some men running in their direction, she did not think anything of it, because it was not unusual for boys to fool around and roam around. When they were a little closer, she wondered for a moment if something was going on, but then turned her attention again to what Mahinder was saying. When the men were even closer, the alarm bells rang briefly in her brain, it was all so fast, a part of her brain screamed that something was wrong, with one part of her brain she saw something threatening in their hands, perceived it and yet did not really perceive it, with another part she was still listening to Mahinder.

Suddenly the men were with them, there were five of them, they were holding a machete, sickle and knife in their hands - two of them held Mahinder, two held her, the fifth emptied Mahinder's pockets and punched him in the stomach. He shouldn't make a sound or he'd be in trouble. She had already started to scream when the men grabbed her. Thereupon, one of them showed her the knife and snarled at her to stop. She stopped. When the fifth man wanted to beat Mahinder again, she even tried to reason with the thug despite the situation. She told him that he could have all the money she had with her and her gold jewellery, but that he shouldn't slug Mahinder, why slug him when he would get what he wanted! The thug even reacted sympathetically. One of the two thugs who were holding her then wanted to smack her. Again, she looked the fifth thug straight in the eye and told him to stop all this nonsense and beating, since they already had the money and the gold. Whether it was her courage that she showed in the situation, thus creating a surprise effect for him, or whether he really understood, she did not know. But it did not really matter. He again agreed and told the other thugs to stop. In the end, the thugs still gave Mahinder a few more punches, threatened him and Suvarna with the knife and machete and then disappeared into the night. It was all over in five or six minutes, but it had seemed like an eternity.

Suvarna could not move, she could not believe what just happened, had they just been mugged? She had more money with her than usual because she had to pay a course fee the next day. But that was not so important, not now, she thought. Her gold jewellery was gone, how could she explain that to her mother and relatives? But that was not really the most important thing at that moment. They had just been mugged. It could have been much worse. They had been lucky, very lucky. Mahinder was paralysed, he just stood there, deeply shocked, almost crying, she couldn't believe it either. He's the man, isn’t he? He should be the one to comfort me, she thought.

She walked over to him and took his hand: "Come on, let's go to my flat."

They walked the hundred and fifty metres to her room in a shared flat. Her two flatmates, who were sisters, were at home, Suvarna told them what had happened, and they were appalled. Everyone just shook their heads and could not believe that something like this had happened in their neighbourhood. One of her two flatmates went downstairs, informed the owner of the house and then called Mahinder's flatmates.

Twenty minutes later, two of his flatmates arrived, everyone was talking, they were shocked by the whole thing, but it had already happened, they couldn't turn back time. Mahinder's flatmates took him with them and said something about the police, but not before the next morning.

Suvarna and her roommates sat on the big terrace in front of their small apartment for a while and looked out into the dark night. The sky was starless, so characteristic of what had just happened. On the one hand, people used to say that something like that happened every now and then, but they never had thought that it would ever happen to one of them. But what could they have done now!

After Suvarna had told the whole story at least twenty times and her roommates had listened carefully each time, asking the same questions time and again and expressing their bewilderment, they all decided to go to sleep and decide what to do the next day. This dark night would bring changes, but Suvarna did not know that at the time, nor that these changes would not be so bad for her.

Eventually, Suvarna fell asleep. Several times during the night she kept dreaming what had happened, sometimes she became restless in her sleep, sometimes she woke up. Eventually, day was dawning outside.

Oh, no, so soon? I don't want it to be morning, I don't want to get up, I don't want to go out and pretend that everything is normal, I don't want to go to the police, I don't want to!

She got up quite early in the morning; her two flatmates were already awake and having breakfast when she came into the living room.

"Good morning! Could you somehow sleep? We're getting ready, in the afternoon we're leaving for our parents' house for a week, that was already arranged a long time ago and we don't want to disappoint our parents, but we already told you that anyway, didn't we?" they were speaking in turn.

The next blow for her. What! They were going away? Now? After what happened? And leaving her alone? Suvarna said nothing.

She was kind of mentally absent. Lost in thought, she somehow finished her breakfast and changed her clothes. Then they heard motorcycles. Mahinder and three of his friends had come. After everyone had greeted each other and reviewed what had happened the night before, they decided to go to the nearest police station.

At the police station, the police officers seemed rather half-hearted, why had Suvarna and Mahinder been standing there in the first place? There were only few people on the street at night, this particular street was pretty empty anyway, the inhibition threshold for such thugs to do something like that dropped, they shouldn't have been standing there at all! So, it had all been their fault!

Suvarna did not really get whether the policemen even took their evidence. She felt such anger inside her. She was sure, the police probably even knew who the thugs were, but they did not want to do anything. It was not important enough for them, besides, apart from taking money and some jewellery and a little "shoving around" nothing had happened, so why bother?

First, she called her cousin and told her a fairy tale, how she had lost the money and the gold. Her cousin listened, she did not understand the story and asked again, what had happened and why the money and gold were gone. Suvarna told her the fairy tale story again, she added:

"If my mother calls, don't tell her yet, she will be unnecessarily worried, you know her". Then she said that she had some things to do and could not talk any longer, that the cousin should please tell her parents, that is Suvarna's uncle and aunt, and then Suvarna hung up. After that, she called her friends, all of them one after the other, Pardhan, Harsh, Prabhakar and Shehnaz, and Anant. They were all speechless. They all listened, uttered almost the same words of bewilderment, asked how she was doing and told her to please call if she needed anything.

Anant and Suvarna had met at a friends' house a year before. Since then, they had gone out together from time to time, maybe it was something like a friendship. He asked her, if he should come over, no, not necessary, she was fine. He felt the anger in her and told her to try to meditate, that would help her. Then the anger, which had been hidden inside her in some undefined form since the attack, surged up within her. How would meditation help her? If the police caught the thugs and she could get some of her stuff back that would help her, not meditation. All right, never mind, then no meditation.

Her flatmates had cooked something for her for lunch, they said. She ate her lunch only half-heartedly. She knew what she was in for. The sisters had already packed their suitcases and said goodbye in the afternoon:

"Take care of yourself! If you need anything, call us. Your friends are in town anyway, right?"

Great. What now?

She sat in the living room for a while, staring into space, then she went into the bedroom, lay down and did the same, stare into space. Then she stepped out onto the terrace, dusk was already falling. She heard the birds chirping, on their way back to their nests for the night, what's the point of it all, these supposed sounds of happiness, nothing means anything, none of it means anything happy!

Gradually, it was getting dark, she began to hear noises, she suddenly felt so strange, as if the darkness was choking her more and more, not a nice feeling. She went into the living room, closed the door behind her and checked several times, whether it was properly closed. Every minute seemed like an hour, she kept looking at the clock to check, if it would soon be morning, but it was not morning, on the contrary, it was getting darker and darker outside, the silence grew. She did not know how she was going to make it until the next morning.

She must have fallen asleep at some point, because suddenly she woke up, heard noises from the kitchen, then from the bathroom, then from the living room, it was all too much for her. She went into the living room and lay down on the sofa. The sounds were still there, she fell asleep. She was in the middle of it again, the two thugs held her, she woke up, heard the sounds again, she was sweating and felt cold at the same time, she heard sounds outside on the terrace, then again from the kitchen …

The next day, after lunch, she went over to Pardhan. He lived nearby. She could always talk with him. He always listened to her, sometimes he would laugh at what she said, even if it was not funny, maybe because he did not take certain things as seriously as she did. But he did not laugh now, he gave her a serious look and asked how she was, not so well, she replied.

"Stay with us for dinner," he said.

The first rays of sunshine!