Susheela, a child bride, left her husband four years ago, caught a bus home and told her parents that she wanted to divorce him and go back to school. She became an instant celebrity. Her unusual act of defiance exposed the prevalence of child marriage among poor Indians in the countryside. Married at 14 by her parents - who wanted one fewer mouth to feed - just outside Hyderabad, south India, Susheela's feelings were irrelevant against the two brute forces underlying child marriage - poverty and culture.
Poverty dictates that parents marry girls off early to free themselves from the responsibility of feeding them.
Culture demands a girl's speedy marriage lest she disgrace the family name by having premarital sex.
Susheela's story was similar to those of the nearly 25 million girls who feature in the latest report by the UN children's agency Unicef, on Indian girls who were married off in 2007 before the age of 18. The report, 'Progress for Children: A Report Card on Child Protection', says that one-third of the world's child brides live in India. Despite rising literacy levels and legal prohibition, social tradition keeps child marriage alive.
Susheela was lucky because the publicity around her courageous move played a part in persuading her parents, bemused at the controversy, to let her leave her husband and go back to school.
But few child brides escape this deep-rooted custom. Government campaigns to eliminate it have failed. Social workers who campaign against it do so at their peril. Last year, a 48-year-old social worker who tried to persuade a village in Rajasthan to stop child marriage had her arms cut off. Had it not been for her astonishing determination to get an education, Susheela too would have ended up as one of Unicef's dismal statistics.