When she boarded an Indigo flight from Ranchi to Bengaluru to share her story with the world little over one month ago and settled down in her seat, she was in tears. Tears of pain which she recalled she went through day in and day out as trafficked kid, a rebellion of early child marriage and how she fought from all those heart-chilling and killing moments…tears of pleasure of fighting against all those bad times and surviving.
And the moment flight took off, Rumi in her last year of teenage peeped out of the window only to get confirmed that she had synced her wings with the plane and sky was hers forever. “Keep flying apart, no one could ever imagine in my small village called Pahantoli in Budhmu (Ranchi) that any of village children would ever afford the luxury of seeing an airplane from close. I had also not thought anything like that in my wildest dreams in the days of my trafficking, performing all the tasks of a domestic help in a house in Simdega. This is why I was in tears in airplane,” says Rumi Kumari who is by now a celebrity in her village. In fact, 6th child of Sanicharwa Mahto and lalo Devi among eight, Rumi found herself being brought up in extreme poverty. She had seen all her elder sisters getting married in very early ages as the family of 10 found it difficult to manage even daily bread and butter.
“Before I was sent to Simdega at an age of 8 years, I had seen all my elders, four sisters and one brother getting married due to poverty. All of them remained illiterate as there was no possibility of schooling, no resources at all. I did manage to go to nearby school for three years and passed class 4 exams, but couldn’t continue due to extreme shortage of resources,” recalled Rumi who has passed her Intermediate examination from Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) in Burhmu only last month. “But I decided to fight against my early marriage. Then I was sent to Simdega with someone who was familiar to my father and pretended providing me education. But soon I came to know that my father was deceived and I was thrown into domestic work. I remained there for over 9 months doing every household work, and even faced something occasionally which could be called as physical exploitation in learned society. But my master was not as cruel as portrayed in stories, and one day he left me in a bus coming to Ranchi from Simdega with no money in hand,” said Rumi, who now wants to serve society as a police professional.
Rumi managed to reach back to her home, and decided not to break down. But getting enrolled in class 6 was very difficult due to various reasons. However, she approached to the Government officials in Budhmu who managed her to take to KGBV there and she got one vacant seat in class 8.
But to cover three unattended classes, 5, 6 and 7 was not easy, hence my class 8 result was not good. I found ample time for study in KGBV as I received everything for free there, and performed well in class 9. Then I passed class 10 in first division,” said beaming Rumi. It was there in KGBV only where a team of Save the Children came across Rumi and decided to take her story to the world. Since then, Rumi has received numerous awards and acknowledgments not only at State level from Ministers Neera Yadav and luis Marandi, but also in national level events organised to felicitate children with killing instinct. “I want to become a brand ambassador of education in rural areas. I am working for that. I don’t want any child of the State to be trafficked,” said Rumi.