Had it not been for a role in a short film, 14-year-old Neelam would have ended up as a child bride

Till she was cast in the lead role of a film on child marriage, 14-year-old Neelam from Jamiyatpur village in Uttar Pradesh was quite resigned to being married off by her parents. But acting in the movie gave her the courage to speak up and her wedding was called off.

In 2018, Neelam was just 14 years old. Her parents had found a groom for her, and she was soon to be a married woman. When her teachers heard about her impending marriage, they approached her parents who would brook no argument. No amount of persuasion and appealing would change their minds.

“They said they had found a suitable groom after a lot of effort and the boy’s side was not asking for too much dowry. And, that they would never be able to find a better alliance later,” is also not much. They reasoned that they are poor and will not be able to afford their daughter’s marriage later,” Yogendra Pandey, the principal of Jamiyatpur Composite School in Sitapur district, Khairabad block, told Gaon Connection.

“She was just a child. A shy girl who one barely noticed,” Pandey added.

Also Read: 12yo Chimki was married off last year. She is one of the 226 million child brides in India

It just happened that right around that time a team of officials from UNICEF [United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund] visited the school to shoot an awareness video on social malpractices that were still prevalent in the rural areas.

Pandey told the team about Neelam who decided to give Neelam the lead role in a short film based on child marriage.

What transpired was stranger then fiction. As Neelam learnt her lines and rehearsed them time and again, the unfairness of it all began to dawn on her.

The dialogues she had to learn by rote began to make sense to her and she realised what was happening in her real life was wrong and that she should protest just like the girl in the movie did.

Also Read: Teacher’s Diary: Battling Against Child Marriages — One Student At A Time

After days of rehearsing and shooting for the film, on the last day, after the final shoot, Neelam walked up to her principal and told him she was not prepared to get married.

“I was so happy to hear her speak her mind. Playing a role in a movie had achieved no amount of talking and reasoning could do.,” Pandey said.

Neelam went on to convince her parents too and the wedding was called off. She went on to study and became one of the brightest pupils of her school. Finally, after she turned 18, she agreed to get married.