The mother-of-three had already lost her husband after he had killed himself in a fit of desperation amid mounting debts and a failed dream.

Even then, she still had hope.

But after selling her hair, she was faced with the prospect of having nothing more of value, no way to pay the creditors demanding their money, and no food in the cupboard.

Before his death, Prema and her husband had worked in a brick kiln in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, making just enough to scrape a living together for their young family. But they had hoped for more. Her husband took out a loan to start his own brick kiln, but the plans failed to take off. In a moment of desperation last year, he killed himself.

The pressure fell solely on Prema to not only earn enough to feed, clothe and house herself and her three children, but also to pay back the money they owed for the failed business venture. And for a while she managed, taking her two youngest to work with her.

"When I go to work I get 200 rupees ($2.80) per day, which is enough to run our family," Prema explains to the BBC.

But she became ill, which meant she couldn't earn as much.

"I couldn't carry a heavy load of bricks. I stayed home for most of the time due to a fever."

For many years, Jennifer’s parents thought she was a good student. In reality, Jennifer got mostly C’s in her classes. Her parents expected perfection from her, and she knew that she had no choice but to get A’s. In order to achieve this, Jennifer ended up forging her grades on her report cards and tricked her parents into believing that she was the straight-A student they expected her to be.

Like most overbearing and extremely controlling parents, they did not allow Jennifer to have any free time. They dropped her off at school in the mornings and picked her up when she was finished with her day so that they could monitor her time. Her parents did not let her do anything without them knowing and they certainly did not let her talk to boys. As she got older, they became more terrified that Jennifer would get distracted from her studies or goals by boys and forbid her from going on dates or even to her own school dance. It was no surprise that Jennifer felt trapped and could not make any decisions for herself.