Ally Renae04

My name is Amala.  I was recently taken from the life I have known since before I could remember anything at all.  This is my story.

I have always lived with many other girls like me.  These girls have always been here too.  We don't know life anywhere else but here.  I live with 26 (they come and go) other girls in a small, hard, cold room.  Every day of my life is the same.  I am awoken by our mistress, Kala, yelling that we need to hurry up and get in a line.  There are men who come at all hours of the day.  I never know what time it is unless someone wants to take me out of Sambhog house.  I really like when the men want to leave Sambhog.  Outside of the house I see other people who I sometimes forget exist.  I forget that there are women who wear smiles on their faces and men who take their hand when they cross the street.  They are all so beautiful.  They mostly look happy.  I know now what they have to smile about. 

Whenever Kala comes in, we all know that we must be on our best behavior and look eager and hopeful.  Then she brings one of them in to pick which of us he would like to spend time with.  Sometimes it only takes a few seconds, and sometimes they look at us for minutes on end.  They look us up and down almost like something to eat, something to consume.  If you are chosen, you do not act afraid or apprehensive.  Kala tells us to act as interested as possible.  Sometimes we have our bad days.  Sometimes I am not able to act interested or happy that another man will know my secrets.  I am so tired of sharing secrets with men I do not know and will never see again.  With every visitor, I am broken into a thousand tiny pieces.  Sometimes the pieces are rainbow colored, sometimes they are black and evil.  I have tried not to show people what color my pieces are anymore.  I used to cry out that I was in pain and that I didn't want to feel the pain anymore. I have learned that whenever I do so, they try even harder to break my thousand pieces into a thousand more.  If Kala finds out that any of us have resisted a visitor, she "takes care" of the situation.  I only had to be, "taken care" of once.   I couldn't walk for weeks after that.  I have never been "taken care" of since that day.  From that point on, I try to be what the visitor wants.  I never want my friends to know what I felt.

I have a little trick when someone new comes to visit.  I think about beautiful and bright women I see in the streets.  I think about how they smile and laugh.  I think about the color of the saris and they way they drape around them covering their secrets.  I think about the smell of the spices in the market and the blue of the sky.  Whenever I fill my head with such wonderful things, the moments go by faster.  The moment seems to have left as quickly as it begins, and before I know it, I get to be back in the Sambhog house with my friends. 

Sometimes my friends leave...

One day this very strange man came into the Sambhog house.  He did not look like any person I had ever seen before.  His eyes gleamed with something I didn't understand.  He didn't look like he wanted to consume me whenever he took me out of the line-up.  He looked... well... like light... like white light.  We left that day, and walked to a place I had never been to before.  The building was bright and had many important looking people wearing green and brown shells on their heads were standing there.  They all smiled at me, and gave me colored fruits and a warm drink.  The man had me tell the important looking people with hard shells on their heads where we had come from, and how many other girls like me were there.  Then they all picked up these black cases and left.  After that the man (I learned that he was called Donovan) wanted to get me and my friends out of the Sambhog house.  He said that he had a place where there were nice people who were not going to yell at us or give any of our secrets away.  When my friends got there, I didn't see Kala anywhere... I didn't understand why she didn't want to come with us. 

 Only myself and four of my friends are still in our new home.  Everyone else slowly left us... I think their hearts were too filled with happiness to stand it. 

I never knew that when visitors came, Kala made money off of them.  I never knew that they paid her money to spend time with us. 

I make my own money now.  Us five women make goods with our hands to make other people happy.  Most days, I am happy too.   If there ever comes a day when I am reminded of how I felt when a visitor came, I talk to one of the boss's of the company that employs me, Hope International.  They are very kind and try to help me move on from what happened during the first 14 years of my live.   They are very good at calming me down and showing me all of the good things in my life so that I am not sad anymore. 

I plant my own seeds too.  We have a small garden outside of our house where we each get to plant our favorite thing.  Every year, I plant the same red fruit that I was given the day Kumar took me away.  When it is ready, I pick them from the green plant and think about how much life has changed... and I can't help but smile...