Girl, interrupted

I tried very hard. I even threatened to get them arrested if they contemplated getting their little girl married. I was actually beginning t...

I tried very hard. I even threatened to get them arrested if they contemplated getting their little girl married. I was actually beginning to believe that I had made a dent in their psyche 8212; smug in my conviction that I had saved another little girl from the terror of early marriage, early child bearing and the whole caboodle of pain and suffering which ensues. I was wrong and that, I guess, hurts more than the fact of the matter.

About a year and a half ago, the family of a driver, his wife and two children, moved into our outhouse. The little boy was in the local 8220;English medium school8221; and the daughter was repeating class V in a Telugu government school. One day we saw the girl hanging around the compound. When I asked the mother why the child was not in school, I was told that she was going to marry her off. I saw red. Thirteen and all set to be wed.

That was when my husband and I talked and talked to the parents and convinced them to put the child back in school. That was when we also threatened to call the police if they even spoke about the marriage 8212; we threw the whole rule book at them. They quietened down. She was put in school and she began to score 8212; in fact she was better at her studies than her brother who was finding it very tough to cope with three languages, math, science, etc. She began to give Telugu lessons to her brother and he actually managed to scrape through. I visited her school and spoke to the teachers. I visited his school and did the same.

Then recently, I found the girl hanging around again. The mother said she was putting her in a hostel in the village. With a start I realised how much she had grown and had begun to look pretty. Last week, the family went to the village for a week. The milkman told us that she was going to get her daughter married. He said that the mother had cautioned him not to say anything to me as I would get very angry. I was dumbstruck.

Then I looked back and thought to myself 8212; the last time she had gone to the village, she had made sure she said goodbye to me. Even the kids had come and touched my feet. This time she had slunk away. She had it all planned.

As a concerned citizen, is there anything I can do? I have been trying to figure it out. We talk so much about the girl child and all that should be done for her. But when it comes to this kind of a situation, is there some NGO or a local body where an individual can report and stop the parents from committing such a crime? I have always believed that we the educated middle class can make a difference, but for the first time, I am hit by the full force of a mindset, a cultural barrier that frustrates and allows inhuman treatment of girls in our society.