JEE result brings cheers to daily wager, two sons make it to IIT
LUCKNOW: Sons of a daily wage labourer, Brijesh Kumar Saroj and Raju Saroj, did not have even basic amenities like television and refrigerator at their tworoom semi-pucca hovel in a Pratapgarh village.
But their goal in life was always clear: Pass the JEE and make it to one of the IITs of the country.
Wednesday brought double delight to the family as both the boys cleared the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), Advanced, results for which were announced in the afternoon.
As media persons and friends kept dropping by to congratulate the duo, who secured 410th and 167th ranks respectively, their mother — a simple, rural woman— remained clueless about the magnitude of her boys’ achievement.
Says Brijesh, the elder brother, “My father works in a cloth mill while my mother is an illiterate woman. Both of them do not even know what IIT means. But still, they are happy that their children have done something good and will now be pursuing their engineering.”
Elucidating the condition of their household further, he says, “Leave alone TV and fridge, we never even had a radio in the house. With a meagre income of my father, it was always a struggle for the family of eight people to have two square meals a day.”
But now, when the brothers are set to change the course of their life with admissions to the IITs, welfare of their fellow youngsters tops their agenda. “Facilities for education are really bad in our village. We have decided to teach children and prepare them for admission to Navodaya Vidyalayas so that they can have access to quality education and better exposure. We teach them during vaca- tions,” says Raju, younger of the two. Once their graduation gets complete, the brothers want to pursue research and thereafter, get into the field of education.
Similar are the plans of another promising boy, Abhishek Kamal of a Mainpuri hamlet, who has become the first in his village to crack the JEE. Son of a landless farmer, Abhishek started learning the alphabet only after taking admission in Class 6 at Navodaya Vidyalaya.
“Schools in villages are bad. However, I am glad I have set an example for children in the village who will now know that there is a college called IIT for bright students. I will motivate them to study,” says Abhishek, who secured 874th rank.
Abhishek and Brijesh prepared for the tough exam at Super 30— the famous coaching for 30 bright, underprivileged students in Bihar. Anand Kumar, founder of Super 30, says, “Their hard work has paid off and Super 30 has again proved that talent requires nothing but the right encouragement and opportunity to blossom.”
Having experienced acute poverty during his student days, which prevented him from going to Cambridge University for higher education, Kumar set up the Super 30 over 14 years ago to provide free-of-cost residential coaching to 30 talented students from poor families.
This year, 25 of his students made it to the IITs while one got admission in Tokyo University.