They named me Durga.
Not because I was born fierce - but because life taught me to rise.
Quietly. Painfully. And with purpose.

At age 10, I scrubbed floors in the headmaster’s house while other boys scribbled dreams into notebooks.
At age 12, they tried to they tried to sell my body masked as marriage that too to a man thrice of my age. They called it culture.
At age 13 , I ran. Not toward freedom, but away from a future I never chose.
           “I didn't just run away from home. I ran from the misogyny and patriarchy that scripted a woman’s fate and dared to label it as tradition and culture.”

My mother, a widow locked inside invisible walls, kissed my forehead the night I fled. She held held my face in her hands and whispered through tears,
“Go, my champa… break the chains that broke me.”

I boarded a train without a ticket, without a plan,without knowing a destination to reach.Just hunger in my belly, fire in my chest, and hope clenched in my fists.
Two days without food. Two days with only memories to hold me.

Memories of Anay - the headmaster’s son.
The boy who spoke to me like I mattered.
Who once slipped me a stolen guava and said, “One day, you’ll write your own story, Pari.”
He saw me… long before I saw myself.

In the chaos of a city I didn’t know, I collapsed.
And that’s when two strangers found me.
They had no child of their own, but they had space in their hearts.
I overheard their words in the hospital room:
“Let’s give her our name, our world. We didn’t give her birth but we can give her life.”

They took me in , not as a burden, but as a blessing.
First, I called them Sir and Madam.
Then, as the days passed into , I called them Amma and Appa.
They gave me food, books, warmth, dignity, and dreams.

I studied. I rose.
And one day, I stood tall as an officer in uniform, signing documents with the name they gave me.
But the girl who once swept floors and slept in shadows,the girl they called untouchable ,those memories never left me.

This story is not just mine.
It’s for every girl who was told to stay silent.
For every mother who swallowed her voice.
For every Anay who saw a spark behind dust.
And for every Amma and Appa who chose to love a child they didn’t create, but completely called their own.

I didn’t just survive.
I didn’t just break rules.
I shattered the silence.
I broke the chains.

And love came - not wrapped in perfection, but wrapped in the memories that shaped me.