The year before last, Lipi, a 14-year old girl, was in class 9 in a rural school in Rangpur. Lipi is the eldest of five children-three daughters and two sons. Their father is a day labourer working on other people’s land and mother is homemaker and a part-time worker at other people’s house. The parents particularly the mother, found it  real difficult to raise five children on the small income the father could earn. Perhaps that is why Lipi’s father wanted to marry her off. But Lipi was not ready to accept what her parents wanted to impose on her. She wanted to pursue her education. So long her mother stood beside her, though secretly. But when her father arranged her marriage with Tara Mia, the only son of a farmer in the same village, she became a little upset. Tara Mia was a widower illiterate, but well ff. His father has afew acres of arable land and was influential in the village. The marriage seemed to be inevitable.