A ConneXions Artisan Story

She Was Never Expected to Go Far. She Went Anyway

Some children grow up being told, in ways big and small, that not much is expected of them. Soma Yadav grew up that way. She was one of three daughters, and in her father’s eyes, daughters simply did not carry the same weight as sons. It is a quiet kind of wound, the sort that does not leave bruises but shapes a person’s sense of their own worth for years to come.

Today, Soma is 32 years old, married, a mother of two, and someone who pays for her children’s education with money she earns through her own skill and effort. Somewhere between the girl who was not expected to amount to much, and the woman she is now, Soma simply decided to become more than what was expected of her.

Daughters in a House That Favoured Sons

Soma’s father worked as a security guard, and her mother was a housewife who was not permitted to work outside the home. Between his modest income and the family’s needs, money was always tight — not enough for daily living, and certainly not enough to properly fund three daughters’ education, especially in a household where sons were favoured over girls from the very start.

Soma did not even complete Class 8. Schooling, for a daughter whose father did not expect much from her in the first place, was one of the first things to fall away when the family’s finances grew tight. It is a familiar story in households where girls are seen as less of a priority — but familiar does not mean it hurts any less to live through.

By the time she was 19, Soma had dropped out of school entirely. On paper, it might have looked like the end of her chances. It was not.

A Year of Learning, A Lifetime of Change

At 19, Soma came to ConneXions to learn sewing and tailoring. She gave herself fully to the training, and after a year, she joined as an artisan, creating beautiful bags through her own steady hands and growing skill. It was the first time in her life that her effort translated directly into something she could be proud of — a craft entirely her own.

But what Soma did next is what truly reveals her character. Having left formal schooling years before, she did not simply settle into her new craft and stop there. She enrolled at a private institute and completed her Class 10 studies — going back for the education that had been taken from her, on her own terms, in her own time.

There is something deeply moving about a young woman who was told, implicitly and explicitly, that she was not worth investing in — choosing, all on her own, to invest in herself anyway.

Becoming the Support She Never Had

As her skill and confidence grew, Soma began helping her parents financially — the same parents whose limited resources had once meant her schooling was cut short. There is no bitterness in this turn of events, only a quiet kind of grace: the daughter who was not expected to amount to much became one of the family’s sources of strength.

Soma is now married and has two children of her own. She has spoken about not finding the kind of support from her own family that she might have hoped for growing up. But rather than letting that absence define her, she has built the very thing she once lacked — becoming, for her own children, the support and belief that she did not always receive herself.

“She was the daughter no one expected much from. Now she is the mother making sure her children never have to wonder the same.”

— On Soma Yadav

Happiness, Earned and Chosen

Today, Soma earns money that goes directly toward her children’s education — the very thing she was denied as a girl growing up in a household that did not see her potential. She says she is very happy to be able to contribute to her family, and that happiness carries real weight. It is the happiness of a person who has rewritten, through years of quiet determination, a story that was once written for her by other people.

Soma Yadav’s story is not about anger toward a father who favoured sons, or a childhood that asked too little of her. It is about what happens when a woman, given even one real opportunity — a year of training, a craft to call her own — decides to keep building long after others expected her to stop.

ConneXions is a social enterprise based in Kolkata, India, empowering women from slum communities through dignified work and skills training.

www.connexions.org.in