Fatima and her husband(Khabrein.info Exclusive) Himmate mardan madade khuda. Efforts bring God’s help. The proverb rarely looked so true. It would have never looked true without the bravado and efforts put up by people like Fatima and her husband Shaik Salar, a young pani puri vendor who along with a young bride nurtured a dream. A dream of making his young wife, all of 15 years an engineer.
But the difference with this couple from ordinary dreams that never materialise was that both Fatima and her husband toiled for it for several years, at times sleeping without food, for they had to buy a book for her engineering course the next day, and Shaik putting in more hours at his pani puri cart to get some extra rupees to fund his wife’s college fee.
“But it all was worth it”, says Shaik Salar with full smile. People wanted to dissuade me from sending my wife first to school and then to engineering college saying that “my wife would leave me if she completes her engineering” Salar goes on to say.
Fatima, a brilliant student throughout was married off to Shaik Salar when she was all of 15. Her parents forcibly took her out of school and arranged her marriage with a young boy who sold pani puri on his hand cart. Not very uncommon throughout India. Fatima thought that with her marriage it was an end of her dreams. But dreams at times materialize from very unlikely places. When she shared her dream with her husband she found that he agreed readily. “When I shared my dreams with my husband to become an engineer some day he was very supportive” says Fatima. He started saving money from his meager income.
It was all the more difficult in an impoverished slum with majority of them Muslims to convince people that she was not doing an un-Islamic job by pursuing a course in engineering even after her marriage. “It is un-Islamic to go to college for a Muslim woman after marriage. She should stay home and look after her household work” people would suggest to both Salar and Fatima. The neighbours even went to the extent of approaching her mother to ask her daughter not to join the college, says Fatima. But her mother Razia stood with the young couple and never asked her what her neighbours were demanding.
Despite all odds Fatima was able to complete her course at Gayatri Vidya Parishad College of Engineering with high marks and was given a plum posting by Infosys, the software giant in a campus selection. The girl whose husbands was hardly able to get Rs 150 a day after working with his pani puri hand cart would be drawing an initial salary of around Rs 25000 a month. In fact, she is the first student from the college to get into Infosys.
Though Fatima was assisted by Andhra Pradesh State Minorities Finance Corporation that helped her pay her fee, it was Salar who paid Rs 60000 from his meager savings and some loan that he got from his friends.
Fatima would be joining Infosys after a three months training. And then both of them would relocate to her new office. Fatima is all praise for her husband. “It was only he who made it possible. He happily faced all the hardship only because he wanted to make my dream true” says she.
But the difference with this couple from ordinary dreams that never materialise was that both Fatima and her husband toiled for it for several years, at times sleeping without food, for they had to buy a book for her engineering course the next day, and Shaik putting in more hours at his pani puri cart to get some extra rupees to fund his wife’s college fee.
“But it all was worth it”, says Shaik Salar with full smile. People wanted to dissuade me from sending my wife first to school and then to engineering college saying that “my wife would leave me if she completes her engineering” Salar goes on to say.
Fatima, a brilliant student throughout was married off to Shaik Salar when she was all of 15. Her parents forcibly took her out of school and arranged her marriage with a young boy who sold pani puri on his hand cart. Not very uncommon throughout India. Fatima thought that with her marriage it was an end of her dreams. But dreams at times materialize from very unlikely places. When she shared her dream with her husband she found that he agreed readily. “When I shared my dreams with my husband to become an engineer some day he was very supportive” says Fatima. He started saving money from his meager income.
It was all the more difficult in an impoverished slum with majority of them Muslims to convince people that she was not doing an un-Islamic job by pursuing a course in engineering even after her marriage. “It is un-Islamic to go to college for a Muslim woman after marriage. She should stay home and look after her household work” people would suggest to both Salar and Fatima. The neighbours even went to the extent of approaching her mother to ask her daughter not to join the college, says Fatima. But her mother Razia stood with the young couple and never asked her what her neighbours were demanding.
Despite all odds Fatima was able to complete her course at Gayatri Vidya Parishad College of Engineering with high marks and was given a plum posting by Infosys, the software giant in a campus selection. The girl whose husbands was hardly able to get Rs 150 a day after working with his pani puri hand cart would be drawing an initial salary of around Rs 25000 a month. In fact, she is the first student from the college to get into Infosys.
Though Fatima was assisted by Andhra Pradesh State Minorities Finance Corporation that helped her pay her fee, it was Salar who paid Rs 60000 from his meager savings and some loan that he got from his friends.
Fatima would be joining Infosys after a three months training. And then both of them would relocate to her new office. Fatima is all praise for her husband. “It was only he who made it possible. He happily faced all the hardship only because he wanted to make my dream true” says she.
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