WOMAN SPECIAL THE INDOMITABLES (3)
DAUGHTER OF AUTORICKSHAW DRIVER DOING
HER B TECH IN EMGINEERING
'I want
to work and relieve my family of their financial burden'
Bernita Mondal
can hear her parents snore in the next room. A single bead of sweat trickles
down her temple and lands on her book. It's 2.30am. She's been sitting in the
kitchen without a fan for two hours. Just then the bulb in the kitchen goes
out. “Not again!" Bernita sighs. She lights a candle and goes back to her
book. "Where was I? Yes, the workings of the motor.”
Bernita
prefers studying at night even if it means having to sit in the sweltering heat
in the kitchen (which adjoins the only room in the house). “I fan myself while
studying. And try and not think about anything. Doing well in the exams is my
top priority,” says the 18-year-old student.
Bernita's
father is an autorickshaw driver and her mother a homemaker. They moved out of
a small town in West Bengal to settle in Bengaluru when she was a little girl.
“Both my parents are illiterate. Perhaps that's why they've always encouraged
me to study,” says Bernita.
Her
maternal grandparents never had the wherewithal to pay for her mother's
education. “My mother doesn't want me to suffer the same fate. I think she is
living her dreams through me.”
Her
father's income was just enough to see the family through till Bernita's high
school. He used to do odd jobs at a restaurant - cooking, cleaning dishes,
scrubbing floors till he rented an auto. “To make more money, he would help
carry people's luggage on the railway platform,” says Bernita's mother in
broken Hindi.
But as
Bernita entered high school, her fees and the cost of books also increased. “It
was getting very difficult to manage the cost of education along with the
household expenses,” she says.
That's
when one of the nuns from her Christian school suggested they approach an NGO
called Vidya that funds children from underprivileged backgrounds. “Someone
from the NGO met my parents and after they were convinced, Vidya agreed to pay
half of my fee. They have been funding me since then,” says Bernita.
Her hard
work has paid off – Bernita scored 95 per cent in her class 12 exams.
Bernita
is in her first year of BTech. Her immediate aim is to get the gold medal that
is given to rank-holders in her college every semester. After her engineering
course, Bernita hopes to go abroad for an MTech. “A scholarship would be great.
But if I don't get one, I hope to get a job and relieve my father of the
family's financial burden.”
Bernita prepares in advance for her lessons next day. “I
might not have money to take tuitions but what I have is the ability to work
hard,” she says HTBR 13SEP15
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