Inspiration
Rickshaw-puller’s daughter bags sixth place in class XII board exam merit list
Shivani Prajapat, daughter of a rickshaw-puller from Alwar has become a hero not only in her colony where her family lives in a rented room but for all class XII aspirants. She stood sixth in the state merit list (Arts) after battling typhoid and her frugal lifestyle.
Life has the strange capacity to plant brilliance in the most unlikely of all places. Who would have thought that a girl hailing from an under-privileged background, living in a 12-feet-by-nine-feet room will take the sixth position in the State merit list of the class XII (Arts) exam? But yes, that’s exactly what’s happened.
Shivani Prajapat, 17, daughter of a rickshaw-puller from Alwar, clinched the sixth place on the state’s merit list of Class 12 (Arts) exam. Satish Singh, the principal of Rajasthan Academy Senior Secondary School, personally called up Shivani to congratulate her after the results were declared on Saturday evening. It wasn’t long before the news of her achievement brought a horde of journalists and photographers to her small rented house in Alwar’s NIA Colony.
“My principal only told me that I scored 88% in political science and that I was sixth in the state merit list,” said Shivani. She didn’t know her subject-wise marks until Sunday evening. “I thought I’d score more in drawing,” she said when she heard she got 94% in the subject.
Her overall score was an impressive 468 out of 500, or 93.6%, but like a true champion she is not satisfied. She shared that she had contracted typhoid during exams and was very sick on the day of the political science exam. “It’s my favourite subject and I had studied well,” she said.
The beauty of dreams is that they need not have a connection with the reality and here too dreaming big was not hindered by either her illness or even her frugal lifestyle. Shivani lives in a single, almost bare room in Alwar’s, NIA colony with her 2 siblings and a cousin. Her mother, Santara Devi, does odd stitching jobs to contribute to the family income.
“My father earns around Rs 5,000 a month and pays Rs 2,500 as house rent. We are very poor but my school supported me in studies,” she said.
“We don’t take fees from them and provide them books free of cost,” said Singh, adding that it was the school’s policy to support poor students.
Encouraged by her father, Tejram Prajapat, and her school, Shivani now has her sights trained on becoming an IAS officer. “I want to become an IAS officer so that my parents don’t have to work in their old age,” she said.
Shivani’s younger brother, Vishesh, is awaiting his Class 10 results, and the youngest, Gyandeep, is in Class 8. Singh said he expected them to follow Shivani’s footsteps and land a place on the merit list as well.