When her ICSE results came out on April 30, Debotri Majumder was busy with her online chemistry coaching class. So it was her motherDipanjana who checked the result on the board’s website and found that her daughter had achieved a mind-numbing perfect score — 100 per cent. But knowing her daughter’s priorities, she did not barge into the room with the news.

“My class ended about 15-20 minutes later. I was not that bothered about the result as there was nothing I could do about it anymore. Ja hobar tai hoto. My focus is on the Class XI syllabus now,” said the national topper, seated in her home at Siddha Galaxia, in Rajarhat.

Debotri was expecting to do well but did not think she would get full marks. “But the way ICSE answers are checked, I did not think it impossible either though I was not expecting it myself,” the student of DPS Megacity said.

ICSE topper Debotri Majumder in her grandmother's sari

Lens on languages

Her review of her own performance had revealed just one weak link — a question in her Bengali paper. “I had chosen a question on Subhas Mukhopadhyay’s poem Phul phutuk na phutuk, aj bosonto. It was somewhat subjective and required an interpretation of a phrase. Since my Bengali teacher Papiya ma’am (Rakshit) had explained it just the day before over phone, I attempted it. But I later learnt all my friends had chosen the more factual option. So I was unsure if I made the right choice,” said Debotri. Her marksheet proved she need not have worried as she has scored full marks in both English and Bengali.

Debotri is aware of the reactions her perfect score might elicit. “Even our teachers say that the 80 per cent of their student life is the 99 per cent of today.

But their answers were descriptive while we answer to the point. Our questions are like that. Whoever covers all the points in the answer, there is no scope to deduct his or her marks even in literature," she said.

Debotri, in fact, has another argument in favour of giving high marks even in the language papers. "If they are not scoring, students will not give them enough importance and be unwilling to continue with those subjects," she said.

Countdown

Her preparation for the Boards was "nothing extraordinary". Her mother Dipanjana feels her daughter is "not that studious". "We don't stay up beyond midnight. Nor is she an early riser except on school days. On holidays, she wakes up no earlier than 8.30am. She continued with the same routine before her exams as she did through Class X," she said.

She did not have any home tutor. "I was completely dependent on school," she said naming some teachers for special mention, like mathematics teachers Anindita (Chowdhury) ma'am and Saswati (Sarkar) ma'am. "Saswati ma'am had told me she wanted to see my name on the honours list," she said. She also called up her Class II class teacher Susmita Halder. "She is the one who motivated me during the parent-teacher meeting at the end of the term, saying she had better expectations from me. That changed my attitude towards studies. Before that, I had little interest," she recalled.

Prizes & plaudits

While her grandmother had thrown a party in celebration, her school gifted her a laptop. "Neighbors in our complex have dropped by with chocolates and sweets as have friends. Two government representatives came with a box of sweets and a letter from the chief minister. Several TV channel crew came home. But my daughter is getting wary of the attention. All we managed was a trip to Puri, so short was the window between her examination ending on March 24 and coaching class starting on April 4. Even her school has been on since April 16. She wants to focus on studies now," her mother said.

Debotri wants to follow in her parents footsteps and become an engineer. "I knew that since Class X," she said. But she has not decided yet whether it is computers that beckon her, like in the case of her mother who works in a tech firm, or civil engineering, like her father who is with a construction major. "There is enough time to decide that as long as I do well in the competitive exams."