From the age of two, I had a childhood passion to join Indian army and serve my mother land, India, but this was shattered when I started losing my eye-sight from the age of seven due to macular degeneration, which causes loss in the centre of the field of vision. It took me about four to five years to understand my limitations and to accept the same. Owing to this, I did face innumerable challenges but with support from my family and a “never die” attitude, I overcame them with courage.
I did my schooling from St. Xavier’s School, Delhi and I did my graduation in BA honours Economics from Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi. All my teachers were very supportive and helped me in whatever possible way they could. In 2005, I did the basic computer application course from the Blind Relief Association, New Delhi and came first in the exams.
Then the quest for a job started; I wrote few competitive exams like banks’ provisionary officer and GAIL. I cleared some of those written exams and was called for the interview but could not crack the same. I could not pursue writing these competitive exams because it was becoming very difficult for me to arrange a scribe to write my exams.
Then, one day, one of my father’s friends, R Shankar visited us. He was working with the Oberoi group as Chief Operating Officer of their printing press and he told me to come to his office. In the week I went to his office where he and the HR Manager interviewed me and offered me a job in their graphics department as a graphics trainee. The management supported me a lot and seeing my zeal and great communication and co-ordination skills, the management promoted me as sales co-coordinator. I developed as a single point of contact for their key client, Standard Chartered Bank (Indian operations) for their printing solutions. Without going to field, I successfully handled all my clients through e-mails and phone calls.
Years passed by and in 2013, my cousins Sundar Ram motivated me to do MBA. He advised me to do the course from an institute that offered classroom learning because through classroom interactions I would benefit a lot.
Learning this, I made up my mind and one day my parents read out a newspaper advertisement to me which was about the MBA admission for the working executives of the premium institute, Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), University of Delhi. It was a two-year course. The online form was available and I applied in November 2013 under the General Persons with Disabilities (PWD) category.
In June 2014, FMS conducted the written aptitude test and the personal interview. I fared well in both but to my surprise I was not selected. Five PWD candidates were selected in total, out of which one was visually impaired and four were orthopedically impaired, and I was first in the waiting list. Seeing this result, I felt that some injustice was done to me and in lieu of the same, I contacted George Abraham, CEO of Score Foundation that runs the Project Eyeway. At Eyeway I was advised to give a written representation to Dean FMS to re-consider my case. The Dean said that he had followed the norms and no injustice was done to me and my case would be considered in the next academic session.
The normal notion about the 3% reservation for the PWD candidates is that maximum of 3% seats would be reserved for them. The available seats for FMS MBA executive programme were about 172 and 3% would mean 5.16 seats for PWD candidates. Therefore, as per the notion the Dean was correct.
But, actually, the PWD Act of 1995 clearly states that not less than 3% seats would be reserved for the PWD candidates. That means, FMS should have considered six candidates instead of five.
Then, as per the advice from Eyeway, I gave a written representation to the office of Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disability (CCPD) so that I didn’t lose an academic year. Considering my plea, the office of CCPD sent a letter to the Registrar of University of Delhi and eventually on August 29th, 2014 FMS gave me admission. But by then I had lost two precious months of classes and the first semester exams were due in another two months.
Seeing the situation, the Dean suggested I take admission in the next academic session with grace because each semester had seven papers to study and it would be too tough for me to handle seven papers from mid semester. But I insisted on taking admission immediately.
To attend classes, my supervisor made appropriate arrangements so that on week days I could leave office at 5:00 pm and on Saturdays I could leave office at 2:00 pm.
Since I lost two months of classes, I did not get disheartened. Instead, I changed my daily routine. I used to get up at 4:00 am. From 6:00 am onwards till 8:30 am my father used to read out the course books to me. Then I used to go to my office. As instructed by Mr Shankar, I used to leave for FMS to attend classes. In the night I used to be back by 9:00 pm and then I used to study till midnight. The hard work, dedication and sincerity paid off and I topped the course with distinction becoming a gold medalist.
I feel honoured to highlight my own accomplishments despite facing obvious challenges and hardships that I faced in my life. The moral of my story is that life poses many challenges but one must never lose hope and self belief. The journey can be very hard but not impossible to finish!
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NEWSD and NEWSD does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
