Roja was 16 years old. She was hard to miss. Quiet at the start, Roja was passionate about school: “I don’t want to be called a hebbattu (illiterate). I want to be a policewoman like the one in my village. That’s what I want to be when I grow up.”
“Parents think girls will marry and go away to another house,” she told me. “All the money they spend in sending girls to school will only benefit an outside family, so they send their sons to school.” Roja saw no sense in this logic. To her, it was clear that girls had to be allowed to study for families to survive. “Boys don’t care. It’s the girls who will take care of their family. If I study, my family will not be poor anymore.”
Once I got my 10th Grade marks, I asked everyone in my house to give me money for college admission fees. All of them said they didn’t have enough money. There was an annual fee of 380 Rupees (€5.60) to get admission, but no one could give me that. My father has been very ill in the past few months so he doesn’t make any money. My mother washes dishes at a nearby house. She brings the leftover food from the house where she works for us to eat. I didn’t want to bother my family anymore, so I decided to work.”
Roja told her mother about her plan, but her mother said, “You mustn’t give up hope. No one in our family has studied beyond 2nd grade. You have done well in school and you must study further.” Roja had expected her mother to agree to her working in the fields. “I was very encouraged by what my mother said. She urged me to keep trying.”
This girl is remarkable. It’s remarkable that she scored a distinction in high school; remarkable that she never let go of her desire to study; remarkable that she pursued it and looked for a way. And she did find a way. The local chapter of the Rotary Club paid her fee. It embarrassed her to be so poor but there was no shame in her desire to study and reach out for help. “I will become a policewoman and then my family will not be poor anymore.”
This young woman deserves to be heard and her individual success celebrated for its potential to encourage others like herself to tackle seemingly insurmountable odds.
(Adapted from thebetterindia.com)
