When you wake up in the morning, you may be a person who looks forward to the day and the many adventures it could bring you or you may be a person who enjoys sleeping all day and every day. For a seventeen year old girl, it may be unusual for me to say that I lie in the former category. I want to experience life, I want to learn everything I can and I don’t want to waste a single moment of this glorious life. My name is Palak and this is my story.
When you talk to me, you may not realize where I come from. I was born in Jharkhand. There, my parents worked as sweepers. Unsatisfied with their lives, they decided to test out their luck in a big city as Delhi. We, now, live a more luxurious life than before.
You may not be surprised when I tell you that I am already engaged for marriage. My parents got me engaged to a boy who was five years older than me and managed his father’s business and would soon inherit it. What I thought or what I wanted, did not matter at all for obvious reasons. They wanted me to marry him as early as possible before a better ‘rishta’ came along. What I wanted or thought didn’t really major role in the planning. My mother could not understand my dissatisfaction as she had never attended a school and was married off at the age of sixteen.
My parents and I cut a deal; they would let me finish school if I got married to someone when I turn eighteen. At the time, I just wanted to get away from home so I agreed but high school changed everything for me.
Over the years, I started internalizing the values, the ethos and local culture. The change in me wasn’t major, my parents didn’t see it but I felt it. I was no longer afraid of what life had in the cards for me but I would welcome it. Life was meant to enjoy every single moment of it and that is what I decided to do. I learnt so much, I was an enlightened self. The people in school changed my perspective about everything. I no longer needed anyone to dictate what my life could be. I could be an astronaut or a pilot, an engineer or a doctor, I felt as if I had no boundaries.
I wish my parents would at least try to listen to me and understand my perspective on the matter but my mother just told me that I was lucky to have finished school and this is what girls must be prepared for their whole lives and I am fortunate I got a husband with such a big business. She failed to understand that I didn’t want a husband with a big business; I wanted to build the big business myself. She failed to acknowledge my newly attained understanding of life beyond marriage. I want to pursue my hobbies and interests at a larger scale than school. I want to study Psychology in college, I want to apply for scholarships abroad and see the world. I want to make my own destiny.
My little brother, would go through the same ordeal? Would he struggle as I had to? The thought of it horrified me but when come to think of it, the answer was an obvious NO. My brother would have everything I never had; he would have the license to dream without being pulled down. He will be free to love and to hate, to cry and to laugh. He will be free.
However, I will create my own freedom and pave my own way step by step. I would create my own opportunities and I would succeed under my free will. And sometimes, you and your freedom is all that matters.
Education has set me free. It has given the courage to dream, to fly and touch the sky. It has given me the spirit to fall, and stand up, to fail and not to give up.
I would have never had the thought or courage to confront my parents and take my life in my hands, had it not been my SCHOOL.
I study Psychology in New York University with a full scholarship. I do talk to my parents sometimes on the phone, mainly my mother. Dad is too busy angry with me to actually join me in my celebration but I think he will come around. I have a boyfriend too. NO, I am not going to marry him, or maybe I am but the best part is, it is nobody’s business other than mine and his. I have reached further than I ever expected to go and I credit everything to the people in school who taught me a whole lot about FREEDOM.
(This post was written as part of #Selfies4School campaign by Breakthrough TV)
