Aapni Dikri Ro Hak

When you meet Kabbu, you cannot stop watching her eyes. When you look into them, you feel as if you are scuba diving. She is in eighth class. Her father and mother are labourers. She lives with her parents, five siblings and twelve goats in Haathma village. She has attended WCI’s comics workshops and we have prepared a comics poster based on her story. This particular poster is very popular. It tells the story of a girl who is married at a very young age and becomes a mother at a young age. She dies while giving birth to her child.

This story might become Kabbu’s own story. That is what she fears. There is no school in Haathma beyond eighth class. And while boys are sent to a school in a nearby village, her parents, like others, are not willing to send her to that school. Moreover, they are keen to marry her off next year. Because a girl who hapens to be a relative is getting married next year and marrying off Kabbu along with that girl would save a lot of expenses.

And Kabbu, she desperately wants to study further. You can see that desperation in her eyes. And in her stories.

We speak to Kabbu’s mother and try convincing her. She counts her difficulties and we offer her a measurement of Kabbu’s abilities. We tell her that Kabbu will be speaking in front of a huge gathering in Barmer. There is a gleam in her eyes while Kabbu scratches earth with her toe nail, her head held downwards. Kabbu’s mother promises us that she will make Kabbu study till tenth class.

Kabbu wants to be a doctor. She laughs while telling us this. She almost treats her dream like a joke. Because the reality is in front of her. Her friend Santosh stopped going to school after passing eighth class last year. She wanted to be a ‘Madam’.

We have to change that ‘reality’. Because it is high time dreams become a reality.