HER ANGRY TEARS

Kalindi grew up in a rural village in Jharkhand state in India, where girls didn't know anything beyond the sheltered upbringing of their house. 

They didn't even have good sanitation and toilets. God forbid if a girl went alone to get fresh and if she was raped. The village panchayat made sure that either she has to get married to the same guy or the next day, she goes and commits suicide. Nothing uncommon for the quality of life which existed there. 

Kalindi wanted to become an IAS officer. She had pleaded with her parents in every possible way to give her one chance so that she could do something on her own. 

She wanted to escape the hell and made a plan to go to meet her relatives in the city side. This way she'd even inquire about coaching classes. 

While on her way to the city she travelled via a bus and read posters which had a public service announcement about the right to education for the girl child. A tear escaped her eye. 

Those tears weren't just of pain, but of anger as well. Anger, not just for her but for girls in her village too, who weren't given a right to educate themselves or live a dignified life away from social evils. Her angry tears were silent yet her heart thumped the loudest. She slept the next hour till she reached the city because her pain was too much to take for her. 

When she reached there, instead of talking to her relatives. She first went to inquire in the coaching classes. 

She saw the posters of girls who became IAS officers after studying there. She reads their success stories in the pamphlets as how they braved through the storms and helped rural village girls. 

She knew this is what she wanted to do. She wanted to fight for girls' life in her village. She wanted to help them with education and safety and proper hygiene practices. 

She knew she was the only one who could fight for herself first so that she could break free from that shell. She was told could get help from this institute's IAS officers too. But her tears, her angry tears fell down her cheeks once more because she needed them as a source of strength to stand up for herself once against her village and the society. 

Kalindi's story is of many rural village girls.