I often have dreams that I am in a quidditch match, flying on a broomstick trying to catch the golden snitch with all my might, solemnly gushing through the clouds, and as I reach my hand out to grab it some unfathomable force hits me like a bludger and I wake up. People kept telling me that it was the consequence of me being a potter head. But having watched Harry Potter only once, I understood that while human beings dream to escape into fantasies my dream was the replica of my reality.

As a child born in an orthodox family I was never advised to dream big. As a child, I was silenced by fear and I barely expressed myself in my school. The situation at my house was never a stable one and its effects overshadowed my life constantly. I was advised to silence my urge to explore and possibly defer my ‘worldly’ wants. As a child I thought that the world was unfair to me, there was an extreme urge to blame my life circumstances for everything. Every time I would strive to achieve the recurring dream would seem like a reality and the fear of being hit by the bludger would pull me back. 

 I was slowly enlightened about the fact that grim realities are shared by the human race as a whole. The need to escape is not mine alone but of the entire humankind. I understood that suffering and failures are universal. Coming from a patriarchal society and male-dominated family background I have observed how women in my world are disregarded. As they grow they are taught how to sacrifice, first their wants and desires for morals and values and then subsequently their careers and achievement due to the overbearing demands of society. I refused to be submerged by such forces and decided to shape my future and my rules on my terms.

My future is mine to shape and all I want to become is a torchbearer of hope for women in my community. I want to become career-oriented women for my mother who entirely sacrificed her occupation due to oppressive societal demands, I want to become an example for all my sisters to showcase that the chains of patriarchy cannot possibly restrict our aspirations and I want to live the dream of all those women who had to lock away all their potentials to attend to their assigned duties.

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