Deepak Mahajan
“This is a single story in two photos. These photos are a mirror as well as tears. This is a story of yesterday and today. This is music and melody. It is the silence of the past and courage of the present. These are the photos of my student Shivangi. The first photograph is of the time when Shivangi came to study in Super 30 with her father, and the other is of Shivangi today.
While she was in school she sold magazines and newspapers on the roadside shop to help her father, handling the store completely alone when he went home to bring lunch.
But whenever she would get time, she would study.
Shivangi hails from a small place called Deha which is around 60 kms away from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. She completed her secondary education from a government school there.
She would address my mother as ‘dadi’ and we felt she is our daughter. Whenever my mother’s health was impaired, she would help and sleep next to her. IIT Results were announced and she was preparing to go to IIT Roorkee. She had tears in her eyes and all the women in my family were also crying.
It felt as if we were giving away our daughter to someone else. As she was leaving, her father said that people have dreams and sometimes these dreams become reality but he never had such a big dream.
To this day, Shivangi keeps in touch with our family. And now she is also working, hearing which brought a wave of happiness to all of us. My mother was the happiest and all she said with tears in her eyes is that she hopes to be blessed with daughters in her next life too.”
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