Fifteen-year-old Abhay Gupta did not have a study table or enough space in his one-room home to keep his books. The teen prepared for his ICSE exams under streetlights, perched on a packing case a few yards away from his father’s bookstall on a Park Street pavement. Yet, the braveheart — a student of Harrow Hall School — has secured a remarkable 93% in his first public exam. Abhay now aims to crack the IIT entrance.
His father — Rambabu — has been selling magazines, newspapers and second-hand books near Moulin Rouge on Park Street for the last 20 years. The family did not have enough resources to provide him with the best of facilities. But Abhay worked hard to live up to his father’s dream. “He always wanted my brother and me to study so that we could converse in English and read English novels which he has been selling for the last two decades. My father barely earns enough to make meet both ends meet. We are a joint family and since there isn’t enough space to study at home, I studied under streetlights and sometimes in hotel lobbies and corridors for my board exam. I studied mostly at night after returning from school between 7pm and 10:30pm,” said Abhay.
Read more of this in a report by Somdatta Basu published in The Times of India....
