Paving her way towards her dreams: Asma from Mysore city

“All my siblings are married. My brothers continue to work odd jobs after marriage. My sisters are homemakers. My father was never in favour of girls’ working outside their homes. That way, my siblings are living to our father’s wishes,” Asma (21) says with a shy smile.

Asma lives at Rajiv Nagar in Mysore City with her family. She has seven siblings. Earlier they used to live together in a rented house. The rent was Rs. 3000 per month. With time, as her siblings married and started their own family, they moved away to live on their own.

Asma is the only girl in her family to have completed a pre-University course and work as an insurance agent, earning Rs.4000 per month. Her father is a scrap-dealer. “He is 65 years old now. When he had just entered the profession, he would make Rs. 300 per day. Now he barely manages to make Rs 100 a day,” she explains. 

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“Girls in my community are married off before they reach 18 years of age. Throughout our childhood we are taught household chores. Our aspirations to work and earn are never encouraged. It took me a great deal of convincing to get my father to agree to a job for me. None of my five sisters were allowed this freedom,” she explains.

She remembers the time her mother used to roll beedis to pay for school fees. “Somewhere deep down, my mother knew that I dreamt of working one day,” she remarks.

Convincing her parents to let her study and work wasn’t Asma’s only challenge.

“I have not done much walking and running around since a polio attack at the age of five. It made people around me look at me with a lot of pity. No one likes to be pitied,” her voice grows serious. Asma’s family perpetually fell short of the money required for her many surgeries. They borrowed from the relatives. The burden of debt followed them around like their own shadows.

“When I heard about the Magic Bus' Livelihoods Centre from a friend in my neighbourhood, I was eager to join,” she says. “The Centre appeared to be the only way I could get a job, be independent and support my family financially." The Centre was 5kms away from her house. She would hop on to the tri-cycle she had received from the government and drive down to her classes.

At the Centre, Asma devoted herself to picking up skills that would help her find a job. “Since my childhood I wanted to stand on my own feet. With this job I am a little closer to my dreams,” she says.

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Her determination paid off. She was rejected multiple times, all on account of her disability. But these experiences made her more determined to give her best to each interview she faced.

“There is a difference in believing in yourself and getting the world to believe in you. With this job, I have done the latter. I want to go on. One day, I will have a business of my own,” she shares.