She can’t see but Shila Patra was within earshot when a relative remarked that she would be better off begging on the streets.
Her response? The Mahadevi Birla Girls’ Higher Secondary School Scholarship at the 15th edition of the Techno India Group presents The Telegraph School Awards for Excellence 2011 on Saturday.
Shila, blind since birth, is the daughter of a rickshaw-puller earning barely Rs 1,000 a month. The 21-year-old post-graduate student of Bengali braves an hour and a half of commuting from Ramrajatala, in Howrah, to attend classes at Calcutta University. She uses a dictaphone to record every lecture because she can’t make notes in Braille fast enough to keep pace with classmates who can see. She takes examinations by dictating her answers to an authorised helper so that she can complete a paper within the time limit.
For all her hard work, the sacrifices she has made and the insults she has had to brave, the only thing that Shila wants is a job that will earn her the respect she deserves.
“The remark that I should take to begging still rings in my ears. I intend proving all my doubting relatives wrong. My fight won’t be over till I get a job,” Shila, who hopes to take the School Service Commission exam, told Metro.
If Shila’s is an inspiring story, 18-year-old Bapan Halder’s battle against poverty to study civil engineering has been no less a triumph over odds.
The first-year student of Bengal Engineering and Science University (Besu) was rewarded for his talent and tenacity with the Nirmal Varma Memorial Scholarship during the first leg of the school awards at the Vidya Mandir auditorium.
Bapan scored 85 per cent in Madhyamik and 74.2 percent in Higher Secondary, but engineering had seemed a distant dream with his father’s monthly income of Rs 1,200 supporting the entire family.
“I hadn’t considered engineering as a career option until a neighbour bought me books to prepare for the joint entrance exam. I gave it my best shot and am glad to have cracked the exam with a rank of 260 (in the Scheduled Caste category),” recalled Bapan, whose family lives in a one-room house at Radhakantapur in South 24-Parganas.
According to Sukanta Chaudhuri, the chairman of The Telegraph Education Foundation, those like Bapan epitomise the struggle to get an education that so many take for granted.
“At least 10 million children in India have not attended a day in school and many more have dropped out at various stages…therefore, the privileged ones should value our prize…and bear it in our minds to do whatever we can to set right the balance,” he said.
Some like 19-year-old Subhasish Chanda, the recipient of The Telegraph Education Foundation Scholarship, go beyond that.
The first-year BA student at Prafulla Chandra College supplements his mother’s income — she is a domestic help — by working part-time with a catering agency and sometimes as a videographer’s apprentice.
Subhasish also gives tuitions to two schoolchildren for Rs 300 a month. “Their parents cannot afford more…. They are poor, just like me,” he said with a smile.
Saturday’s roll of honour also included Kalidas Hembram, who is only the second resident of Sahabazar village, in Birbhum district, to clear Madhyamik.
Kalidas, 16, toiled in the fields at daytime and studied at night to score 81 per cent in Madhyamik from Nagri SB Siksha Niketan.
Ayan Paul, a Class VII student of St. Xavier’s Institution, Panihati, won the Surrendra Paul Memorial Award for Courage. Ayan suffers from Guillain Barre Syndrome, a disorder that strikes the nervous system.
The 12-year-old had trouble climbing four steps to reach the Vidya Mandir stage, but insisting on doing so to accept his award.
Purendu Mukherjee, a first-year student of Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, received the Kanti Prasad Chaudhuri Memorial Scholarship for academic excellence in the face of adversity. The 18-year-old from Bankura scored 87.5 per cent in Madhyamik and 85 per cent in higher secondary.
“My father runs a small watch repair shop in Sihar village and earns Rs 1,600 a month. My hostel charges are a burden on him, but my father won’t give up and neither will I,” Purnendu said.
Proneet De of La Martiniere for Boys received the Balrampur Chini Mills Award for Outstanding Talent at Saturday’s function, highlighting how the school awards cut across the social spectrum.
As Barry O’ Brien, the convener of the awards, said: “Schools that are well known, whose names come in the newspapers every day, will be present today and schools, teachers and students that you and I have not heard of but are doing incredible work or achieving, they too will share the same stage and stand shoulder to shoulder.”
O’ Brien said the first leg of the annual awards was “just a trailer”.
The finale is slated for August 27 at the Science City auditorium.
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