My name is Aishwarya and I want to be a police officer - a story of grit

It was in the year 2014 and the month of summer, when I got a chance to visit the Trichy district in Tamil Nadu. I was there on an official visit accompanied by a camera crew and our director, Satya Vivek to film the CSR initiatives of Dalmia Group around one of its manufacturing plants.

One such initiative was to provide solar lanterns to the villages and help them overcome the darkness in their lives.

But on one fateful day, on stopping by a mud house in the village, I realized that there was a prevailing darkness of a deeper kind than the one which our solar lantern could take away.

It was around 8.45 pm, when I saw a young girl sitting inside a mud house engrossed in her books. The humbly built mud house had a thatched roof measuring just 3x5 ft and was adjacent to a noisy highway that rattled it each time a lorry passed by. But surprisingly, the rattle of her house would not break her concentration.I surveyed her house - scattered clothes, dirty bed linen, black utensils at one corner with wooden logs was all that she could call as her belongings. The penury of the studious girl inside the thatched mud house moved me.

And then all of a sudden, something different caught my eyes. Amidst those sights of extreme penury was a gleaming line of certificates and medals staring back at me. My attention was aroused by the girl and those trophies. I stepped forward to speak to her. She raised her head and told me her name, ‘Aishwarya’, and with this curt response again submerged herself in her books.

I persisted and asked her about the books she was reading and her school to which she replied that she was studying in class IX and assiduously preparing for her upcoming board examinations. I enquired about the medals and certificates and to my utter surprise she said they were her trophies won from various sports competitions.

Again, I looked at her surroundings and then towards her face which was radiant with self confidence and pride.

Suddenly, I felt that she was exuding a luminous light that made the solar lantern look pale in comparison.

“My name is Aishwarya and I want to become a police officer.” Her words have never stopped ringing in my ears.

It inspired me enough to take a snap of her along with her medals and certificates to later show them to my colleagues at Dalmiapuram. But when I offered her some money she politely refused. Somehow, I managed to hand over some amount saying that it may help her in realizing her dream.

This was a true story in the making that deserved to be shared with everyone. A story that might become an inspiration for many girls in India fighting against all odds - poverty, oppression, discrimination, and what not!

I resolved to adopt the girl and ensure her dreams are realized and not get restricted midway. But her parents were too fond of her to let her go. They told me, they would do everything to make their daughter a police officer. Her parents were daily wage earners with a family of six to feed but were courageous enough to send their brilliant daughter to school.

On my part, I narrated the incident to my colleagues who were more than happy to learn about the strong focus and determination of the poor girl, Aishwarya, towards her dream. Some of them stepped forward to help her.

Today, Aishwarya has scored a distinction in her board examinations and is pursuing higher studies in a bigger school near her village.

Her parents are proud of her and so is her village.

With Inputs from Gautam Sikdar