I am from the musahar caste (a community of rat-eaters, considered one of the lowest castes in India), where our people usually do not study. Musahars don't eat rats so much now as they did before.
Since I was a child I wanted to study. My parents did not allow me or want me to study. So I went to this didi at the Mahila Samkhya (an all woman project run by the government aimed at assisting the most disadvantaged women in areas with lowest literacy rates). I didn't know how to hold a pen and she taught me how to start writing.
I did not have a pen or a note book, so I stole Rs 5 from my home and bought a pen for Rs 2 and copy for Rs 2. I used to tell my parents that I was going to my elder sister's house but I went to the Mahila Samkhya didi instead.
One day I just left home in the clothes I was wearing for the government-run residential school for girls which is from Class I to V. I stayed at the school for two months without telling my parents or going back to them.
Then one day my parents came to that didi and asked her if she had sold me. On hearing that I had been enrolled in school, they came to see me. I think they are now happy that I am in school.
I have three brothers who dropped out of school very early on. They are labourers at a road construction site. I am the youngest, so no one in my family has had an education.
My brothers tell my parents that 'you have allowed your daughter to go to school, we'll see what she achieves. It's not as if she'll get a BA degree, just because she has started going to school.' Now I am determined to pass my BA exam and show them that I can do it.
Image: Prabha Kumari, right, from a community of rat-eaters, one of India's so-called lowest castes, is the only one in her family to go to school.
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