The marks they scored in the board exams are not a testament of what they wrote in their answer scripts alone, but of their grit, patience and resilience.

Metro spoke to two boys who braved the odds and emerged successful.

Sk Sagar

Julien Day School Calcutta
(ICSE, 86.6 per cent)

A Class X boy who wrote two board exams from the hospital and scored 86.6 per cent in ICSE.

Sk Sagar needed an urgent appendicitis surgery the evening before he wrote the English language paper the next day at 11am with an intravenous cannula on his left hand.

He scored 85 in the English language.

“I am grateful that I could write my exam. If that hadn’t been possible, I would have lost a year, something I wasn’t prepared for,” said Sagar.

His marks are 82 in English, 85 in Bengali, 91 in History-Geography, 77 in mathematics and science and 98 in computer applications.

Many would have given up, but not him. He did not let the pain of the surgery get the better of him.

Sagar found it difficult to sit for two hours at a stretch and shifted from the desk to the bed to manage the pain during the exam.

“There was no pressure on him from the family to write the exam. He was determined to go for it,” said his sister, Muskaan Parvin.

Stavan Jain

La Martiniere for Boys
(ICSE, 93 per cent)

Months before the Class X exams, Stavan got injured during the football selection in his school and tore his anterior cruciate ligament, which required surgery in his knee and bed rest for one and a half months.

But that was not all.

After six weeks of complete bed rest, when he had just started walking at home, he fell again and broke his right shoulder.

“I had not got my balance back and slipped,” he said.

The doctor gave him a sling, and though he could attend school, he couldn’t write for another month and couldn’t take notes.

The Class X boy scored a 93 per cent in the board exam. He got 91 in English, 89 in Science, 88 in History- Geography, 93 in Hindi and 96 in math and computer science.

“I could manage the pain, but I was missing out on class lectures, notes and the pointers that teachers give during the class,” he said.

A black belt in taekwondo, Stavan is also a Hindustani classical singer.