You might have heard stories of child abuse. You might have seen it happen in movies. However, we all think that it is just a story and such things hardly occur in real life. We believe that no parents can be cruel to their children. They are the angels God has sent to take care of the little life. Well, we wish it was true, but child abuse exists in reality too, and it counters all the mighty sayings and beliefs.
In this tale, Hatke Story features a child (Ilyakat Sheikh) who was a victim of child abuse at such a tender age. He had never gotten the love of his parents despite staying together with them for two decades. Let’s read the story from his perspective.
Ilyakat Sheikh – His Story
I’m Ilyakat Sheikh, and you are going to read my story. You may not believe it as it might not have happened with you but trust me, child harassment and abuse exist in our society. It hurts when our parents become our worst enemies, and we start hating them for being a part of our lives. No one knows the feeling better than me. I have gone through it daily. It ruined my childhood completely. Because of them, the best time of my life became dreadful and horrible.
Let’s come to the story now. I was born and brought up in Kolkata. My mother was a Christian, and my father was an Islam follower. They had a love marriage and were blessed with Rocky and a younger one, me, Ilyakat. However, my mother didn’t care about this blessing. Forget about caring. She crushed it under her feet, eradicated it.
She had an illicit affair with my father’s friend, who was unmarried and much younger than her. One day both of them landed at our doorstep together as a married couple. My father was shocked because he didn’t know anything about it. My parents had a massive fight over their relationship and upbringing, but my mother was least bothered about her first husband and children.
She clearly said that she doesn’t love my father and is not interested in raising both of us. I was too young to understand the seriousness behind the ongoing drama as I was only eight years old and my brother was 10. At that time, I didn’t know that it would shape my life differently, and I’d become a victim of child abuse.
My father tried his best to convince my mother, but she stayed adamant, and her new husband refused to accept both of us. In the end, they both went for a mutual divorce. Now, our upbringing was my father’s primary concern. People from his family and society suggested remarriage, and he went along with the suggestion. After some time, he fell in love with a woman who was half his age.
She lived in our neighborhood and came from a below poverty line background. Her family quickly agreed to the alliance, so he married her and made her my stepmother. Well, our upbringing was just a drama for remarriage because he never cared about both of us. He was a selfish, evil man who sought revenge and did everything to destroy my life.
My stepmother gave birth to a boy and got busy raising him. It was getting difficult for her to raise three children, and by the way, she was least bothered about my brother and me, so was my father. We both lived like orphans in our own house. I didn’t know why they did so much drama in front of society.
My Fufu (father’s sister) couldn’t see our condition. She had realized the true colors of my stepmother before anyone else, so she decided to take the matter into her hand and adopted my brother. Good for him. He got a new life, good folks, and better education. He shifted to Canada with his new family, and I was left alone to die in my house. My last companion, my brother, was gone too.
From here, I began the worst phase of my life as I was old (12 years) enough to understand what was happening to me. My stepmother started abusing me, putting me in a government school to fund her son’s education. I was forced to do household chores like cleaning dishes and washing clothes by hand, even if she had a washing machine. I would barely get proper food in return for all the hard work.
Since childhood, I was fascinated by computers, and my father had one, but he told me to stay far away from it. Once I had touched it, and my father had beaten me like an animal. I cried a lot that day. My tears won’t stop flowing, and the thing that hurt the most was that he was my real father.
I was his blood, and how could he be so cruel to me? How could my mother do this to me? She, too, was a mean, selfish lady who didn’t turn her back towards me. I never tried to know what I was going through in my house. After that day, I started hating my parents, and I wished to be an orphan as being an orphan was better than being with both of them.
The rest of my life went like this, with me doing household chores and bearing violence. I was like a punching bag for my family, and they didn’t care about my feelings. At the age of 16, I was forced to work in an ice-cream shop as a caretaker. That job only increased my struggles. My stepmother used to take my earnings, and I was still doing household work after my shifts. They stopped my education when I cleared high school. I couldn’t go to college, couldn’t continue with my education.
You must be thinking that these things happen in movies and serials, right. Trust me, and it happened to me. I have received nothing but pain, hatred, and rejection from my family. It all came from the people who were supposed to protect me. But instead of protecting me, they had eaten me from inside. I used to feel so empty like I had no purpose of continuing with my life.
Once I had run away from my house for two days, no one even intended to find me out. It was stupid me who returned to them as I couldn’t spend more days on the road, empty stomach with baggers and homeless people. So I had to return for the sake of my survival. Human survival is a bit*h in the true sense, and I learned it that day. My so-called parents yelled at me for disappearing without informing me but didn’t care to ask how I was? Or why did I leave? During the time, I had thought about suicide but couldn’t gather the courage to kill myself.
But I had enough of all this, so I decided to leave the country. People tried convincing me to stay back, but I was firm. I had chosen to leave the country because I knew my family wouldn’t leave me alone if I stayed anywhere else in India. So it was better to switch countries. I applied for a work visa, got a job with the help of my friend Asif. He and my aunt sponsored my travel expenses. Within a few months, I left the country and shifted to Hong Kong.
Initially, it was challenging to stay in an unknown country where I barely knew anyone, but it was way better than living under a roof with those vultures who had killed my childhood. I worked hard to build my future, but the worst was over. Now, I’m happy, and I have a booming business here. I never revisited Kolkata neither they tried to contact me. I had strictly cut all the ties I had with them.
Honestly, I had a tough time forgetting my past, and you know what the irony is? It troubles you more when you leave it behind. My past would haunt me in the nights. I would often hear their voices reverberating in my head or imagine myself with them in dark dreams. It took a lot to leave my past behind. I won’t say that it does not trouble me anymore because it does, but now I’m in a better place, far away from abusive relationships. I haven’t thought about marriage yet, but I know for sure that I will raise my child with so much love and care. My kids will help me in forgetting my past.
So I rest my story here, and one thing that I would like to say is, “Please be kind to everyone. Please don’t kill humans, and if you can’t spread love, don’t spread hatred. If you are in an abusive relationship with anyone, then please walk away. They don’t deserve you, and you certainly deserve much better than them”.
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