Breathtaking: How government school topper beat odds

NEW DELHI: Having gone through tremendous psychological and physical strain in the past year, Prince Kumar still can’t believe he ended up as the government school topper in Delhi with a percentage of 97. In eight months since last July, he has lost 8kg after being diagnosed with early stage tuberculosis.
This meant that not only did his dream of joining the National Defence Academy vanish, but even passing Class XII became fraught with difficulties.

“The physical tests for NDA are not easy, and I still have difficulty breathing but have managed to get back 80% of lung capacity from the initial 40%,” he said grimly. “But my father and mother have urged me not to think of this as a setback.”

Once diagnosed with TB, Kumar was put on an 8-month course during which he had to take a month-long leave from his school, Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya in Dwarka. Burning fever and loss of appetite followed, as did severe weight loss, and he had a spell of hospital stay. “My father pushed me to go out and exercise, not to stay at home and brood over being sick,” the teenager remembered. “I started walking on my terrace and gradually challenged myself to go to the park. My father played with me frequently to help me get my strength back.”

Son of a Delhi Transport Corporation bus driver, Kumar was keen on a defence services career. “I wanted to follow in my Navy engineer grandfather’s footsteps and join the Army,” he told TOI. But with this option on the back burner, the Kumar family encouraged Kumar on academics. Even as his father brought him books, the youngster’s maths teachers told him not to restrict himself to NCERT textbooks. “So I started borrowing books from my school library and from a private library nearby,” said the boy.

The Class XII achievement has come in the face of dire circumstances. Kumar’s elder sister was also preparing for her final year BCom exams, and the two used a tiny, bathroom-turned-study in shifts for the entire year. He studied for four hours every day when his sister took breaks.

The perseverance paid off. Yet last Saturday, when the CBSE Class XII results were declared, he thought he had been wrongly informed about his marks. “I still can’t believe I got such a high score,” exclaimed Kumar. “I was in Najafgarh with my father when my sister called him and told him I had scored 100 in maths. I asked my sister for my aggregate score, and I thought there was something wrong when she said 97%. However, my friends confirmed my percentage and my mother made halwa for everyone in our colony.”

The topper in Delhi’s over 1,000 government schools is thankful to family and teachers. “My teachers helped me catch up on the portions I had missed while on leave. My father, poor as we are, arranged fruits, milk and curd for me every day, which is why my weight is getting back to normal,” Kumar said.

The youngster is still adamant on joining the Army. “I want to pursue electronic communication engineering from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology in Dwarka, and then get into the Army’s communications arm, for which the physical examination is not so testing,” said the optimistic former headboy.