Let her also dream…… Its her space… Its her dream… Let her also dream.
Just a different write-up from my usual ones. It is going to be a quick read story.
She was so afraid of outside people when she was in a home run kindergarten. At the age of three and half, once she was crying continuously, the teacher said “if you cry i will put you into well”. She did not go there afterwards.
She was put into first standard directly at the age of five in a government elementary school, which did not even have toilet facility. However, the school provided lot of space and freedom for individual thinking. She was allowed to think big and learn more of world knowledge looking at her surroundings. Slowly she developed love for reading and used to visit the only library in the village, which took more than 3 km of cycling one way to reach. This at the time when a girl cycling to the library was against the so-called village rules.
She had some of best teachers in school who were more interested in making her class topper than her parents. However, the school used to have hardly five teachers including a sports and an arts teacher. Parent teachers association used to appoint some youngsters from village to teach high school kids with very less or no salary. Such young teachers were actually more active and helped students in all possible ways. With the great guidance of some bunch of good teachers, she scored 472/500 in the 10th standard board exam.
As the local govt school was only till 10th standard, she was ready to join in a new school for higher secondary. Somehow, her parents and relatives convinced her to join in a private school with hostel facility thinking that was best. Once, there was a mistake in a physics record writing and the teacher remarked that the govt school girls are irresponsible in everything. Teacher did not stop there, and she just threw the notebook on her face. That moment, she decided that this school is not a right place for her. Further, she wanted to join a government school, which would give better freedom of thinking. That was the first ever decision which she made against parent’s wish. Mother supported her in this matter and she joined a govt girl’s higher secondary school for which she had to cycle 3 km to catch town bus, 10 km travel in that town bus and finally walk 1 km along with a very heavy school bag. That higher secondary school had only one class per specialization. She had 150+ girls in her Maths & Biology specialization. Attending to that school was not much help other than the official mark sheet. Private tuition was a mandatory.
In midst of all this, she had tough days at home. Parents were always having lot of love for her but not among themselves. Every single minute at home used to be like a war zone. Parents had lot of misunderstanding with each other and they never thought how serious their fight was affecting their daughter. As a higher secondary girl, she was struggling to handle the emotions around. So she used to stay mostly away from home by engaging more to school and tuition. Starting morning 5 am from home – morning tuition, regular school classes, evening tuition and reaching home night around 8 pm. This was her schedule for two years. Board exams started and she was busy and suddenly a day came with a life changing evening. A day, which was before two days of chemistry board exam. Parents fight reached a peak and mother was getting ready to leave the house. Father asked her to accompany mother to avoid any unexpected problems. With full of tears and two volumes of chemistry book in hand, she left along with mother and reached grandparent’s house. However, she managed to score 1071/1200 with Maths 196/200 and biology 198/200.
Cut-off marks were not much favorable after receiving the entrance exam results. The story of entrance exams and govt school kids are very interesting which is very tough to explain here. Entrance results and marks were one side. On the other side, her parents were separated since the day mother left home. Actually saying parents are separated until today and its more than 15 years now.
Biology cut-off was not enough to get a free medical seat in counselling and she was forced to choose engineering. In addition, she was clearly asked by her father to choose electronics and communication engineering in a nearby college with hostel during the engineering counselling process. However, she did not follow everything that her father told. As father was not accompanying her to the counselling, she choose electronics course but not in a nearby college. She choose a college, which was 400 km away from hometown. During those four years of college, she visited hometown hardly 4 times.
Hostel and its atmosphere with mountains around were giving new energy to her every day. That energy was not enough for her to understand the Engineering subjects as it was on English. Friends and senior students in the hostel were helping her to understand the subject. In the first semester exams, she failed in two subjects and that was her first ever academic failure. She went into a deep depression thinking about her own achievements in school days. When she tried to come out of depression, she got to know that her marks had already reached the village post office in open postal card. Knowing her marks, few relatives already started scolding her mother for supporting her. Friends always stood with her in all good and bad days. And she got her engineering degree with 77% marks in first class.
In her third year of college itself, top companies started pouring in for recruitment. She participated in all the interview process and failed in the group discussion round due to poor English communication. Most probably, it was her 15th company to attend and she cleared the whole interview process including the group discussion round. She was offered with 2.5 lakhs annual package in that multinational company. During this whole interview process, she was grappling with high fever. Was it because of slight drizzle the previous day that she got drenched in or due to her fear of facing things? Nobody knows.
Facing the heat of parent’s separation hit in any of the many ways possible. As a lower middle class family, father was the one who paid for everything in college days and he struggled a lot to make money for her studies. She became guilty of not helping father financially after getting a job. She was unable to help father because he gave a choice to choose between father and mother. She knew very well that father can manage somehow without anyone’s help but mother’s case was not same. Mother had no financial support ever since she was separated and was struggling very badly. Thinking all that, she choose to bring mother along with her to the working city and father stopped talking to her. After that, it took few years for her to talk to her father.
Her city life started with new job. For few months, everything was challenging for her. In middle of all these, she had a regular love story and breakup too. Regular love story but had some unexpected turns here and there.
While working, she enrolled herself into her dream course and got M.sc degree on the same. Adventures are all around in life. Even though earning was there, she did not save much of money. Money was spent on buying books and traveling most of the India.
She was so afraid of marriage and love after seeing many failed marriages around and a breakup of her own. Time changes everything and she was convinced into marriage by an office friend who wanted to marry her. They decided to have a simple wedding and the same took place in a registrar office only with both parents around. Few years after the marriage, career break became unavoidable to be with baby.
Now she again wants to take a bold decision in life about switching career. However, our society is more about implicit rules and challenges. Everywhere people ask why to switch career when you can earn more in old IT job, why to take risky job, what about financial safety, what if new career does not become successful.
Even after so many struggles in the past, a girl is not hearing much positive talks about her new career choice. Career switch needs strength and effort. Even though she is ready to put efforts, challenges are too big in front of her. Marks and academics are very small part in life. How much ever good or bad the marks are, strong mind and smart work is the key to move forward in life. That is the purpose of mentioning her marks on this story.
This is not a story of one girl. This is the common story for most rural background girls who are coming into job leaving behind all their struggles.
Let her also dream and let her walk towards her goals in her space.
