Khushboo’s Story: I want to study! I want to study!

Khushboo was born into a poor family in Lucknow, India. Her mother died when she was two. Her father remarried but her stepmother also died a few years later and as the eldest daughter Khushboo had to drop out of school in second grade to clean the house, cook, and look after her younger siblings.

In 2013 she had the opportunity to attend the Prerna girl school, a program of Study Hall Educational Foundation and supported by Mona in Lucknow, India. She was very talented and blossomed at school and even received a scholarship to attend a drama workshop in London but her father refused to allow her to continue her education despite the intervention by the school. Instead he contracted her to be married the following year. 

When Khushboo refused and kept crying, “I want to study, I want to study,” he threatened to burn her alive and severely beat her with an iron rod. When Khushboo did not yield, he threw her out of their home. “My whole body was black and blue,” Khushboo recalls. “I sometimes feel that if I hadn’t gained consciousness the next day, he might have burned me alive because he was convinced nobody could touch him.”

Khushboo’s grandmother took her in and so she was able to continue her education, graduated from high school with honors, completed her Master’s degree in Women Studies and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. program.  This past year and as COVID19 crisis crippled India and closed all the school, Khushboo transformed herself to a digital activist. Children in urban slums of Lucknow, India do not have access to smartphones and the internet. Using her computer, Khushboo gathered 11 children from her neighborhood and started teaching them by leveraging the assignments, instructions and mentoring she received from the Prerna teachers through WhatsApp. She is now managing a multi grade classroom in her courtyard. The children love their 2 hour morning session with Khushboo and come to her home with pencil, copy and a small handkerchief to cover their mouth.

“This lockdown has kept the children away from their schools. They miss their classes and their friends. Unlike children from rich families they do not have access to smartphones, laptops and the internet. They cannot do online classes. Seeing them doing nothing during lockdown I decided to share my smartphone with them and help them study…. it’s been a joy for me to fulfill my long unfulfilled dream of being a teacher.” Khushboo