While the world was playing she was locked in darkness. Lisa, imprisoned at the age of 6, stepped out of the door 20 years later, but has nearly lost the ability to see the light.
Some stories unfold like wounds. Some childhoods never begin. Lisa's life is one such story of a childhood silenced, a girl erased by circumstances, and a woman rediscovered only after darkness had become her only reality.
At an age when children learn alphabets, Lisa, a resident of Bakawand, a village in Chhattisgarh's Bastar, was learning fear. At six, the world's voices were taken away from her. The door of her home opened only for food, not for life. Twenty years later, when authorities found her, she held nothing but darkness not just in her eyes, but in her memories.
Her identity was shaped by shadows. Her conversations were nothing more than the sound of utensils pushed through a doorway. And, after two decades in confinement, she now struggles even to respond to her own name.
Lisa's captivity did not begin with bars or chains. It began with terror.
In 2000, when she was studying in Class 2, a man from her village threatened to kill her. The words terrified her so deeply that she withdrew into silence. Her mother had died. Her father, a farmer, grew fragile and fearful. With no support system, no means of security, and no one to protect his daughter, he made a decision that would define the next twenty years of her life.
He locked her inside their mud house believing the darkness would keep danger away. A room with no window became her world.
No sunlight. No conversations. No human touch. Just a plate of food at the door, and the echo of a life shrinking day by day.
What was meant to save her ultimately swallowed her whole.
When the Social Welfare Department team entered the hut, they found a woman whose eyesight had deteriorated beyond recovery. According to doctors, prolonged isolation without exposure to natural light has made the chances of regaining vision extremely slim. Her mental development, too, has been severely affected. She behaves like someone much younger than her age.
She could not recognise her name. She could not stand comfortably.
She feared every sound and resisted every touch.
Following her rescue, she was taken to the medical college hospital in Jagdalpur for a detailed physical and mental evaluation. The initial medical findings highlight a childhood stalled by trauma and an adulthood shaped by sensory deprivation.
The Social Welfare Department has launched a formal inquiry. Officials are questioning her family members and neighbours to understand why she remained confined for 20 years and if the confinement amounts to unlawful detention.
District administration officials said, "We will initiate action once the inquiry report is filed."
Authorities are also examining whether her father, out of fear and ignorance, failed to seek help from schools, panchayat bodies, or health services despite signs that the child was withdrawing dangerously from the world.
Lisa is now living at Gharaunda Ashram, where care workers and counsellors are helping her rediscover life. Here, in a place filled with voices, footsteps, and gentle guidance, she is slowly learning to smile again, trust human presence, step forward without flinching, eat, bathe with assistance and respond when spoken to.
Doctors and caregivers are cautious but hopeful. Her eyesight may not return, but they believe emotional, cognitive and behavioural recovery is still possible though it may take years.
"We learned that the girl was in the Bakawand block. She was a little mentally disturbed. We rescued her and now she's in a shelter," said Suchitra Lakra, Deputy Director, Social Welfare Department.
"She lost everything in solitude. When we rescued her, she was afraid of people. Her father is old and has kept her locked in a room so that no one can look at her. She is safe now. She eats, bathes, and talks on her own at the shelter," Lakra said, and added, "Lisa's brother and sister-in-law used to live next door but they did not take care of her. Her mother died long ago. Initially she was a normal girl, she used to go to school, probably in the second class. At that time a man told her that he would kill her. Since then she stopped going to school, stopped meeting people. Her father himself came to meet her and said, I have become old, please take care of me. That is how we came to know about her."
Her words reveal a childhood frozen in trauma and the woman now trying to thaw back into life.
They say even the deepest wounds soften when touched with compassion. Lisa may never see the world again. She may never fully reclaim the twenty years she lost. But her tomorrow does not have to resemble her yesterday. Not if society, state institutions, and humanity stand beside her.
