They stopped responding.
As if I was speaking to a wall.
I looked at Minu.
No anger.
No tears.
No resistance.
Just emptiness.
And that emptiness terrified me more than anything else.
I wanted to hold her and take her away from that place forever. I wanted to give her a bed, warm food,
medicines, affection \u2013 things so basic, yet so absent from her life.
One last time, I pleaded with her parents.
They turned their faces away.
I took Minu\u2019s hands into my lap.
Her palms were dry, cracked, bleeding with ulcers.
Her head remained lowered.
Then I asked softly,
\u201cMere saath aayegi?\u201d
(Will you come with me?)<\/p>
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ruralhospitalnetwork.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1000064915-1-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>
She immediately lifted her head.
For the first time, there was expression in her face.
Hope.
She nodded quickly.
That nod still haunts me.
I cried. I kissed her wounded palms.
And then I left.<\/p>
A few months later, Apexa, a physiotherapist from a centre I had visited texted me.
Minu had died.
I broke once again. Sat in a dark room for many hours.
Kissed my hands which once held Minu\u2019s, and cried uncontrollably in guilt.
I should have taken her with me
I betrayed the trust in that small nod.
I left her behind in a house that had already abandoned her long before death arrived.
Sometimes I wonder if she waited for me.
If every passing vehicle made her think I had come back.
If she believed, till the very end, that someone would finally take her away.
Even today, I cannot forgive myself for asking her that question.
\u201cMere saath aayegi?\u201d
Because she said yes.
And I still left her there.<\/p>
Now Minu exists everywhere around me.
I wonder, how many more Minus are hidden in the remote villages of this country?
How many girl children are silently abandoned while still alive?
How many families decide that a daughter is not worth saving?
How many villages continue to exist without access to healthcare and transport facilities?<\/p>
Minu lives with me now.
Not just as a memory, but as a wound.
As a story I carry and share, to remind people how cruel society can become, how deeply systems can fail, and how easily suffering is ignored when it belongs to the poor, to the rural, to a girl child.
Minu exists everywhere around me, around us, in every injustice.
And we keep ignoring her.
<\/p>
*The name of the patient has been changed to protect privacy.<\/em><\/p> About the Author<\/em><\/strong><\/p> I have never wanted to be identified by a name, a place, or a designation. I do not fully know why, but I have always hesitated to belong to any fixed identity. But today, I feel grateful to introduce myself as a Travel Fellow.<\/p> For a world that needs identities as introductions, I am Gayathri \u2013 Batch 4 Travel Fellow, a confused human, a traveller, a writer, and a doctor from a village in Pudukkottai district, Tamil Nadu.<\/p> I completed my undergraduate medical degree in 2021. Since then, my journey has taken me through many different spaces \u2013 volunteering with NGOs, working in a rural clinic, spending nearly a year in Auroville, undertaking a travel fellowship, teaching as a tutor in a medical college, and practising functional medicine for a few months. I am now pursuing postgraduate studies in Physiology. The travel fellowship was one of the best things that happened to me. It gave me the opportunity to witness many other sides of life, politics, and this country. It helped me become a better human being. It made me question, observe, and explore.<\/p> Even after the fellowship ended, I continue to carry the experiences, questions, and qualities it gifted me with. And Yes, I met Minu during the fellowship.<\/p> <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has been two and half years since I met her.But her face still visits me at night.I met her only once. Yet the bond we shared cannot be explained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[302],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials"],"yoast_head":"\n