Aug. 13: Sushneta Bose, 17, has spent much of her growing years worrying about whether she would be able to continue her education in the face of financial hardship. Masuma Zainab, also 17, confronted this fear last year when a congenital heart condition kept her away from school for almost the entire session.
On Saturday, the two girls stood triumphant on a stage as examples of what spirit, determination and courage can achieve. The event was the prelims of the 22nd edition of IIHM presents The Telegraph School Awards for Excellence 2017, in association with Adamas University, and the venue was the auditorium at Ballygunge Shiksha Sadan School.
Sushneta, who would make do with photocopies of texts because she could not afford new books, scored 89 per cent in the higher secondary examination this year. She now teaches at a private coaching institute and earns Rs 100 per class. The money is not much but helps ease the burden on her father, who makes Rs 4,500 a month working for a courier company.
"I am trying to fund a part of my education so that I don't have to give up my dream of becoming a professor," said the first-year student of history at Women's Christian College.
Sushneta received The Smt Karabi Sen Memorial Scholarship at the school awards.
For Masuma, recipient of The Surrendra Paul Memorial Award for Courage, appearing for ICSE 2016 had looked impossible at one point because of her medical condition. She needed open-heart surgery in November to repair a valve, but it wasn't enough to keep her from giving the board exams "a shot".
Masuma could not lie down or sit straight. She could not call out answers to a writer either because that would make her breathless. But determination never deserted her. She scored 76 per cent from Saifee Golden Jubilee English Public School.
"One day in April I felt so sick in school that I could not move my limbs. The sensation was of ants crawling under my skin and it would come back every alternate day. The entire year was spent travelling to different cities and keeping appointments with doctors. But I still had about a couple of months to prepare for my board exams and so decided to go for it," Masuma recalled.
Shreya Saha, who scored 93 per cent in the Class XII board exams and has qualified to study history at Presidency University, also received The Surrendra Paul Memorial Award for Courage. The 18-year-old former student of Kalyani Public School has a congenital retina disorder and needs a video pocket magnifier to enlarge letters, a digital voice recorder to make notes and the JAWS (Job Access With Speech) screen reader to use a computer.
"I did not attend a special school because I never felt isolated from the mainstream," Shreya said.
The honours list included Debanjan Sarkar, son of a typist at Barasat court who earns barely Rs 5,000 a month. Debanjan, who aspires to become a doctor, scored 97.4 per cent in Madhyamik from Ashokenagar Boys Secondary School and received The Rina Bhattacharyya Scholarship for his effort. "I try not to think about what we do not have. I focus on what we can have if I do well in my studies," he said.
Puspa Naskar, who lives in a slum with her grandfather, was conferred The Contai Public School Scholarship for scoring 83 per cent in higher secondary from Paresh Nath Balika Vidyalaya in Dhakuria.
The school awards also recognised the efforts of parents like Smita Sinha, a single mother with a six-year-old girl studying in Class II. Smita, human resource head at Asian International School, received The Abhirup Bhadra Memorial Thank You Baba-Ma Award.
Suraj and Gita Sharma were also conferred the Thank You Baba-Ma Award. Suraj, a who dropped out of school in Class V, is a driver by profession who has made his son Gautam's education the focus of his life. Gautam cleared ISC with 90.7 per cent from Calcutta Public School, Kalikapur, and has represented his school in the all-Bengal throwball championship.
Amitabha Datta, chairman of The Telegraph Education Foundation, called the school awards "a movement" that goes beyond rewards for excellence. "The award ceremony per se is just to create an interest in the movement. The encouraging thing is that a lot of schools actually contribute to scholarships on their own and not from school funds. The teachers and students get together and collect money to institute scholarships and that is one of the successful things that has happened (over the past two decades)."
Many more success stories are waiting to unfold in the final leg of the awards at the Science City auditorium on August 26.
