Anshuman Panda at home. Picture by Chandreyee Chatterjee

Bankura, May 4: Illness spoiled his IIT dream but Anshuman Panda has hit back by grabbing a seat at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The 17-year-old Higher Secondary examinee from Bankura Zilla School is used to springing back from poor starts.

He’s never had a TV at home: Anshuman’s father, a private tutor, earns Rs 3,500 a month. And till six months ago, the boy was computer-illiterate and didn’t know that the MIT existed — although he was a Madhyamik rank-holder and dreamt of being a scientist.

“Getting into the IITs was my dream… I never knew I could go abroad to study,” Anshuman, who was stopped from taking the IIT entrance exam by a bout of sinusitis, said.

Surrounded by books in his room, the boy gives you the impression of being slightly unworldly.

It was a chance glance at a newspaper late last year that taught him about the US Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). He was excited but there was a problem. The form had to be filled in online.

So Anshuman enrolled in a cyber café 1km from the family’s two-room house in Panchbagha on Bankura’s outskirts, about 270km from Calcutta.

After scanning the Internet, he chose the top four universities — MIT, Harvard, Stanford and Caltech — unaware that these were the toughest to get into.

“I had no idea how difficult it was…. I wasn’t even sure if they all offered scholarships,” Anshuman said.

Fortunately for him, MIT does and he will be heading there this autumn on a full scholarship that will take care of his tuition and living costs.

The Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking fan, who has always wanted to do research, will be studying for a BSc and hopes to bag a double degree in mathematics and physics.

His father Bidhan Chandra Panda and mother Swapna Panda, a homemaker, are preparing for the day their only son flies the nest.

“I wanted to study medicine but couldn’t afford it,” Bidhan said. “I had pledged to myself my son would never have to make any compromises…. All the same, it has been tough paying for his education.”

Well-wishers and the local club have helped with the books.

Anshuman’s room has a desk and a wall shelf lined with books, mostly on math and physics although the biographies of his childhood idols find space, too.

“He studies at least 12 hours every day,” Swapna said. “When he’s studying he forgets everything else, even meals. At other times he reads storybooks -- his passion is Satyajit Ray. He has hardly any other interests.”

With no TV Anshuman hasn’t had the chance to be a cricket fan. And the last movie he watched was Blood Diamond a couple of months ago when he visited his aunt.

“I never scored more than 52 per cent in work education and physical training,” the boy grinned, looking up from the math problems he was cracking for fun.

Anshuman ranked sixth in Madhyamik, scoring 779, and his teachers expect him to be on the HS merit list.

“It’s not just because he studies hard. He has potential and I’m not surprised that he has cracked MIT,” said Partha Meyur, his physics teacher.

Anshuman had practised on a borrowed computer for all of 10 days before taking his SAT in December. His perfect score of 2400 in his SAT subject, and the recommendation from his school, helped bag the full scholarship despite lower scores in critical reading and writing.

Purnachandra Jana, inspector of schools from the district where the literacy rate is 70 per cent, said: “Bankura does well in Madhyamik and HS but to my knowledge, Anshuman is the first to have made it to MIT straight from school here.”

Anshuman’s experience of the world outside Bengal is limited to Kanpur, where he spent the first six years of his life, and a trip to Delhi last year. But he isn’t worried about living in the US.

“I know that language will be a bit of a problem, but they have a department for international students and they’ll help.”

Father Bidhan has one worry, though. “I’m still trying to figure out how to arrange the money for his US trip.”