oppression

In the ill-lit lanes of Paris, a young boy named Jean-Pierre, an unsuspecting pawn in the great game of revolution, made his living. He hadn't known a life beyond the misery that the French Revolution had dealt him. He knew nothing of the protagonists of 'A Tale of Two Cities', Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. Yet, their destinies were irrevocably intertwined.

One cold winter night, breezes carrying whispers of an indictment rarely known to the world, rattled the windows of the humble attorney Albert Kowalski’s home. Kowalski had just started reading an obscure book named 'The Trial'. It was a haunting tale of a man named Joseph K. who’s arbitrarily arrested for a crime he is not aware of, incessantly pursued by an elusive, faceless, and bureaucratic legal system.

In the gloomy industrial town of Coketown, the dense smoke of factories shrouded the sun, swallowing any rays of hope. Bounderby, the affluent, pompous, self-made businessman, owned the town along with its despair. His philosophy? Facts. Hard, undeniable facts.

Rain was relentlessly assaulting the earth, the rat-tat-tat of water droplets against the windows like a dystopian soundtrack to our reality. It was a grim and yet comforting notion, a reminder that nature continued on, oblivious and unaffected by our societal decay. I sat by the window, the crimson cloak of my attire a stark contrast to the oppressive grey buildings outside. As a Handmaid under Gilead, this cloak was the emblem of my shackles, an obvious label for my role in this new order.