Awarded by Prez, this ‘Shahenshah’ toils in a shoe unit
AGRA: His parents had fondly named him ‘Shahenshah’ (king of kings) at birth, little knowing it would become a gross misnomer in later life.
The young Shahenshah Hussain, a resident of a makeshift hutment en route Mehtab Bagh, had dreams to make it big and proved his mettle at the age of 11 when he single handed saved two older youths from drowning in the Yamuna.
This act of bravery fetched him an award from the then President of India Pratibha Patil.
But his dream to become an engineer could never materialise as destiny had other plans. Today, he pastes soles in shoe making units here.
Shahenshah Hussain, 22, who has six brothers and sisters, was given the name as his parents were fans of Amitabh Bachchan and his movie with the same name.
“On September 2, 2007, eight youths from good family background had come to river Yamuna for picnic and four of them decided to go for a bath. They began drowning and an alarm was raised. I saw all this and jumped in the water to save them. I brought out two of them but could not save the others,” Shahenshah told HT.
“This act of bravery brought me appreciation and recognition and apart from other medals and certificates, I was honoured with a certificate by the then President of India Pratibha Patil during a ceremony at Delhi which was attended by big wigs like Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, minister Renuka Chaudhary and the then Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit,” said Shahenshah who was a teenager then.
Shahenshah took admission in a good school in Agra and got financial support but all stopped when he reached Class 11.
Consequently Shahenshah had to quit school and landed up as a labourer in shoe manufacturing units where he works on daily wages and earns about ₹2000 to 3000 per month.
“My son always wanted to become an engineer but all hopes crashed due to paucity of funds. He got married and is a father of two kids. To feed his family, he works at different shoe making units,” said his father Bassi Hussain, who is known as an expert diver.
“I have no space left in this shabby house to keep the certificates and medals of my son Shahenshah and so I keep them in a box. They turned out to be of no use. One day we might even lose our house which is said to be built on land owned by the railways,” said Shahenshah’s mother Aneesa.