Manvi was going to school. She was in the 7th class. She commuted daily on her new bicycle. It was a usual morning. Nothing felt extraordinary until she heard a bike coming from behind. In a moment, the pillion rider did something beyond her wildest imagination. He tried to grab her breast. This sudden attack disturbed her balance, and she fell. Her back scraped against the concrete of the road. Her cycle collapsed over her, and the handle somehow turned, poking hard into her stomach. It was painful.
The guys stopped their bike. The pillion stepped down and moved towards her. He was smiling, looking at her like a trophy. The rider then shouted that someone was coming and they should flee. While returning to the bike, he turned to Manvi and said, “It’s not over. I will be back soon to finish what I started today.”
He climbed on the bike, and the two sped away.
Manvi was numb. For a few minutes, she felt nothing. She could not believe that what started as a normal, routine morning had turned into her worst nightmare in a matter of seconds. Slowly, she returned to her senses. In the meantime, some passersby stopped and lifted her cycle. Manvi started crying. They thought she was crying because of the fall and her physical wounds. They asked if she wanted them to take her to a hospital. She refused and turned her cycle back towards her home. Her mother was shocked to hear of her ordeal.
She consoled her, assuring her that they would report it to the police. Her father arrived a few hours later after getting the bad news. All three went to the police station.
After hearing about the incident, the police asked if she had seen the face of the guy responsible. She informed them that he was wearing a helmet, and thus his face was not visible. They asked if she had noted the number of the bike. She said the incident happened so fast, and she was so bewildered, that she didn’t even look at the number. The policeman then told her father that since there was absolutely no clue as to who the guys were, it would not be possible to register a formal case. He assured them, nonetheless, that he would look into the incident unofficially and inform them if he found anything. He also advised her father to accompany her to and from school for some time. He asked Manvi to note the number if they ever came back.
She had to leave her cycle at home, and her father started dropping her at school every morning on his scooter. It became her mother’s duty to bring her back. A child who was almost independent with her routine suddenly became totally dependent on her parents. She hated it, but she had no choice because of the deep fear she had developed inside her. She panicked at the sound of a bike whenever she was alone. Even a casual tap on the back was enough to traumatize her. She would suddenly wake up in the middle of the night terrified, complaining to her mother that she was hearing the boy’s voice. Her physical wounds healed in a month, but her mental wounds were hard to shake. She suffocated under the feeling that she had become a burden on her parents for no fault of hers or theirs. Whenever she was alone in the house, she cried, trying hard to get it out of her system, but the more she tried, the longer it stayed. Her mother even advised her father to send her to her uncle’s home for some time, but the idea was rejected. He asked her how it would feel to run away from a place where they had lived their entire lives. How long could she escape her school?
Two months passed. No one saw the guys on the bikes again. The fear began to fade. Manvi started going to school on her cycle again, with her father following on his scooter. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Gradually, she regained her confidence and requested her father not to bother anymore. He was hesitant at first, but when she insisted, he budged. Manvi started going to school on her own and no longer felt her stomach churn.
One morning, while riding to school, she heard the sound of a bike approaching from behind. It wasn’t a bike with a normal engine noise; it sounded as if the driver wanted to take off. The loud roar was getting closer. The old fear immediately tightened its grip. She stopped her cycle and waited by its side. She was alert, ready to note the number as soon as it came nearer. The bike entered her field of view and then, in a wink, sped past. She breathed a sigh of relief. From that day onwards, she decided to always carry the divider from her geometry box with her, just in case it was needed.
With this added tool and her ever-growing confidence, she was getting back to her normal self. Her focus redirected itself from survival back to her studies. The gap of more than two months had ensured her presence in class was mostly physical, but now, she was returning to her element. She started participating in classroom activities. She liked to play games and became a live wire on the playground. She began to laugh at last.
One evening, while returning from school, almost midway home, she heard the sound of a car stopping very near her. She stopped to look at who was inside. The front door opened, and a guy stepped out. He walked towards her. As soon as she saw him, she shouted, “What do you want?”
He spoke, “I want to finish what I started that day.”
As soon as she heard the voice, she recognized who he was, and more importantly, she knew she was in danger. She climbed onto her bicycle and pedaled as fast as she could. The guy was surprised. He ran back to the car, and the vehicle sped up. In a matter of moments, they pulled parallel to her. He extended his hand out the window to grab her. He had no idea that a divider was ready to meet his hand. She stabbed hard into his hand, and the guy cried out in pain. The divider pierced his flesh. Blood gushed. In a moment, he pulled out the divider and threw it back. It landed on the back seat. He told his driver friend, “Hit that bitch hard.”
The car rammed into the bicycle. It dragged the cycle for several meters. Manvi was dragged for some moments as well. Then, the car stopped. The guy ran towards Manvi lying on the road and grabbed her. He lifted her up and threw her into the back seat. The sudden impact had knocked her unconscious. She was badly injured. Her school uniform was torn. Blood leaking from her body was soaking into the seat cushions. The guy told the driver, “This bitch stabbed me just for touching her. Today I will teach her a lesson she will never forget in her life.”
The car tore down the highway like an animal that had lost its mind.
Manvi lay twisted on the back seat, half-conscious, tasting blood in her mouth. Every bump sent fire through her body. Her school shirt was ripped at the shoulder. One shoe was gone. Warm blood from the cuts on her legs had soaked into the seat beneath her.
The boy who had dragged her into the car sat beside her, breathing hard, clutching his bleeding hand.
“You think you’re brave?” he hissed. “You stabbed me?”
She tried to crawl away from him, but there was nowhere to go. The locked door rattled uselessly beneath her trembling fingers.
Outside, the highway lights flashed across the windows in intervals — light, darkness, light, darkness — like the world itself was blinking.
The driver shouted from the front, “Stop moving back there!”
The boy grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her upright.
Pain exploded through her scalp. She screamed.
At that exact moment, the car hit a speed breaker at full speed.
All three were thrown violently upward.
The boy lost his grip.
Manvi slammed against the side door. Something sharp stabbed deep into her thigh. She cried out and reached down instinctively.
The divider.
Her divider.
It had pierced through the cloth of her skirt and into her skin during the crash.
For one strange second, her fingers simply held it.
The same divider she had packed every morning out of fear.
The boy lunged toward her again.
“Sit still!”
His face came close enough for her to smell the sweat and tobacco on his breath.
And something inside her finally broke.
Not courage.
Not rage.
Something deeper.
The realization that nobody was coming.
Not her father.
Not her mother.
Not the police.
Nobody.
If she failed now, this car would become the last place she would ever see.
With a sound that was almost more animal than human, she drove the divider forward with all the strength left in her body.
The metal point entered the driver’s neck from behind.
A wet choking sound filled the car.
The steering wheel jerked violently.
The driver’s hands spasmed.
The car swerved across lanes.
The boy screamed, grabbing at the wheel.
“Are you mad?!”
Headlights flooded the windshield.
A truck horn exploded through the night.
The car clipped the divider.
Then everything became noise.
Metal folding.
Glass bursting.
Bones hitting steel.
The world turned over and over and over.
Manvi felt herself flying.
Then came the impact.
A white-hot pain tore through her stomach.
She looked down weakly.
One of the iron rods of the highway divider had pierced through her abdomen, pinning her small body against the concrete.
She could not even scream.
Across the road, the boy who had attacked her lay broken on the asphalt, trying to crawl.
For one second, their eyes met.
Then the truck reached him.
Manvi shut her eyes before the sound came.
Far away, people were shouting.
Somebody was running toward her.
Somebody kept saying, “She’s alive. Oh God, she’s alive.”
Darkness swallowed her. The last thing she heard, from somewhere far away, was sirens.
A divider from her geometry box and a divider on the highway came together to save her life.
