'If your death could bring your family a happier life, what would you do?'

Mrs. Roy woke up with the same question in her mind in the middle of the night, not finding her husband beside her. The bed was cold beside her and the pillow was flat. The children were asleep in the same room, one bedroom was the most they could afford. The bedroom door was locked from the outside. Mrs. Roy started knocking. The knocks turned into bangs. The bangs got louder.

'If your death could bring your family a happier life…'

The girls woke up and watched their mother thump the door with her palm. They could hear her cry and see tears rolling down her cheeks. But what could they do? They were just kids.

'…what would you do?'

The door broke open, the lights turned on, and there was a scream…
A fallen chair, below a hanging body, below the ceiling. Mr. Roy gave his answer.

'I choose to die'

Mr. Roy was not the only one who committed suicide that night. The government thought they were supporting farmers by providing their families with compensation after their death. But what that ended up doing, was gifting the farmers ropes to hang themselves with.

Mrs. Roy stopped eating properly, and hardly spoke to the girls. Fourteen-year-old Aarthi was the only moral support to her Eight-year-old sister Deepti.

“Look, up there! Our dad is one of those stars. He is still watching over us from there”, she said to Deepti one night, pointing to the sky.
“Don’t lie. Those stars are up there from long before”, little Deepti couldn’t be fooled easily. She would spend an hour every night looking at the stars since she was five. She knew exactly which star appeared in which part of the sky.
“They are very far from us. When a new one is born, it would take a very long time for light from them to reach our eyes. So we can’t see new ones yet”, Aarti explained.
“But I want to see dad right now”, little Deepti asked.
“Then you would have to go closer to him, up there in the sky”, Aarti said, stretching her hand and pointing at the sky above her.
That's when Deepti made up her mind. When she grew up, she would become an astronaut and meet her dad in the sky.

But Roy family was very poor. Even with the compensation from the government, Mrs. Roy could barely support the education of her children. Aarti dropped out of high school and worked on the farm with her mother. Deepti eventually realized, she would not be able to afford to study in...