It was my childhood dream to go abroad and see the outside world. Whenever I heard the sound of a plane, I would run out in our corridor to see the plane until it went off my sight. I was crazy to see a plane in the sky, a weird happiness.
In my 6th grade, I would read big advertisements in newspapers about tourism schemes by famous travel agencies. From that time onwards, I started thinking about it. I insisted my father to go abroad for a trip. And we somehow managed a tour to Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia in 2006.
I was the first kid in my school and also in our whole family to go out of the country. Of course, the trip was a wonderful learning experience.
Since then, I always dreamt to pursue higher education, and I always wanted to do something different and flow in the opposite direction of the crowd. I was known as a ‘Revolutionary kid.’
In 2015, after graduating I decided to fulfil my dream. I knew it was not easy. No one from my family had even thought of leaving the hometown for education and I was supposed to take a bold step. There was a stark possibility of people in my society to ‘remove the ladder’ which I was about to climb. So we kept it a secret until it was final. My parents and my brother supported me fully. And I wanted to make them proud.
It was hard to keep this secret as my hometown is not big enough and people knew me very well because of my previous social work in the city. They started to talk about it. Being a girl, I was supposed to get an average education and get married in the ‘so-called right age.’ People also said that girls are anyway going to someone’s place after marriage so why should we ‘waste money’ for them. After marriage there is no use of education for girls, said the so called society.
My parents replied saying that they want both of their kids to pursue their dreams and do what they love to do.
My parents had admitted me in an english-medium school and my brother was admitted in a regional language and only-boys’ school. People often asked, “why did you admit your Daughter in English school and your Son in a regional language school, shouldn’t it be vice versa?”, My parents would say, “we love both of them, but we want our daughter to be highly educated, independent and lead her own life.”
All this was running into my head while I was in the sky about to land in the new country known as Australia.
I was happy about my bold step. The journey to pursue my dream had begun….
It was my bold step to chase my dream, what was your Bold Step?