The COVID-19 Pandemic and the consequent lockdown came as a shock to Urmila and threw her life into turmoil. Her father, a driver by profession was stranded somewhere near the Nepal border and this worried her endlessly. At home, with the rest of the family, she found herself alone and isolated. She could no longer meet her friends or even go to school.
Worst of all, her education had become entirely dependent on online classes which meant she needed access to the single smartphone in the family.
The online classes were long, and her family would think that she was just be whiling away her time on the internet. Her mother decided to keep a tab on the smartphone and asked her brother to take charge of the phone. Her brother would scold her whenever she asked for the phone and soon they stopped letting her use it.
Urmila tried talking to her father, but her mother had already complained to him and he was quite unhappy about the whole situation. To her horror, her father even talked about asking her to drop out of school.
Urmila tried to approach the problem in a calm and level-headed manner as she had leant in the life skills training by Room to Read. To begin with, she took care not to antagonize anyone which would only lead to more trouble. She also asked her Social Mobilizer (SM) didi to talk to her family.
The next day, the SM contacted her father who told her about his concerns. The SM, in turn, explained to him the online measures being taken by the government during the lockdown and that in using the phone Urmila was only trying to continue her online lessons. Needless to say, her father was convinced. He assured the SM that he would not force her to drop out of school. Not just that, he also asked Urmila’s mother to give the phone back to Urmila in order for her studies to continue unhindered. Urmila, too, assured her father that she would use the phone only for her studies.
Now, Urmila regularly attends online classes during the COVID-19 related lockdown. At the same time, she’s also happy to share these lessons with her friends who do not have a smartphone!