This picks up where my earlier piece 'Born unwelcome' left off. After the unwelcome birth of a girl comes her next unforgivable crime: the right to be educated. And what a crime it is!

There are all kinds of parents. Some don't even toy with the idea of educating their daughters. A boy is born and before his umbilical cord is cut, he's already a future doctor or a shaandaar pilot — even if he ends up pushing a vendor cart with one hand and a dream long dead in the other. Still, he's called a qismat ka maara while the girl never even gets a foot in the door.

Some refuse to educate her out of spite, unable to stomach her enriching someone else's home one day. After all, why pour into a cup that others will drink from?

Some school her until the first financial bump — that's when the axe falls on her education. Never mind if she's in matric or doing a master's, her dreams are the first to be axed, shelved, forgotten. Not the son's bat, the satellite dish or the daily pack of cigarettes.

Then come the........

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