Obstacles in their path do not make them change course, only more determined to reach their destination. Metro speaks to three students who have overcome odds to do well in the Higher Secondary.

Md. Sahidul Haque

The 17-year-old says he owes his score of 460 in HS to his father Sufiur Rahman, who has a grocery store in their village in Labpur in Birbhum district.

“My father earns only about Rs 4,000 a month. He has not only been running the store but has also been cooking and doing household chores since 2000, when my mother passed away, but he never complains,” says the student at the Khalatpur centre of Al-Ameen Mission in Howrah.

Sufiur also never asked his son to help him out at the shop. Sahidul has repaid his father’s faith in him with a mark sheet that reads Bengali 85, English 84, physics 97, math 80, biology 96 and chemistry 98.

The teenager, who lost his mother when he was in Class II, aspires to become a doctor. “My mother died because she did not get proper treatment and many other villagers meet the same fate. If I can save some lives that are lost to lack of treatment, I would consider it an achievement,” says Sahidul.

Sandhya Mondal

Sandhya’s aim in life is to study medicine, get a job and repay her father’s loan. “To educate my sister (studying engineering) and me, my father has had to borrow about Rs 2 lakh from various people. I will pay back that loan,” says the girl who scored 435 in HS, with 80 in Bengali, 83 in English, 85 in physics, 92 in chemistry, 95 in biology and 67 in math.

After passing Madhyamik from a school in her village, Kulgachhi in Nadia, Sandhya took admission in the Memari branch of Al-Ameen Mission. “Preparing for the joint entrance is easier at the Mission than at home,” she explains.

For years, Sandhya has been trying to demand as little as possible from her father, who has a fertiliser shop in the village. “He earns only about Rs 3,500 and hence I cannot keep making demands. I borrowed many text and reference books from my sister’s friends. The others I got in the library,” she says.

Amartya Baidya

During the HS exams, Amartya would write for 55 minutes, take a break, wash his eyes and then start writing again. If he did not, his eyes would start swelling and watering.

The South Point High School boy suffers from parallel nystagmus, a congenital eye disease that prevents him from distinguishing one object from another and reading or writing for over an hour at a stretch. He had the option of using a writer but scored 392 in HS without using one. “If I had used a writer, my speed would have been affected. Also, it is easy to write out a difficult word than spelling it out,” says the boy, who has to hold a book only 3 inches away from his eyes to read it.

The math paper presented many hurdles. “In calculus, we have to write dx at the beginning of several lines. Because of my eye problem, I often could not make out whether I had written it at the beginning of a line or the one before it.” Despite that, Amartya scored 83 in the subject. “When you have a passion for something, it is easy to do it,” he says.