R Umeshwari, a 17-year-old with significant locomotor disability, was teased for most of her childhood due to her stumbling gait. To make matters worse, she was born into a low-income tribal family. To make ends meet, her father frequently takes out informal loans at high interest rates.
But no one is making fun of Umeshwari today. In the most recent JEE Advanced results, she achieved an All-India Rank of 2 in the Scheduled Tribe persons with disability (PwD) category.
A student of a Telangana government-run tribal welfare school at Kalwakurthy, she is keen to get admission to the prestigious IIT, Madras, in the computer science stream.
Dream of becoming an IITian
But her dream of becoming an IITian is a classic case of so-near-yet-so-far. “For our family the fight is far from over,” she says. “A day after the results, my entire family is tense. Sending me away to a new state and financing my education is not going to be easy. For us, getting the rank is only the first step in the journey of the next few years of hard work before we can celebrate success.”
She adds that even being able to consider the possibility of making it to one of the top IITs in the country is surreal.
“I come from a small village called Peddavemoloni Bavi Thanda in Kadthal where my parents struggle to make ends meet, for our family of six, with paddy farming. My father and two of my siblings are also disabled, which has made things tough for us, but my admission to an IIT will hopefully change our destiny.”
She adds that till about two years ago, she did not even know what “IIT” stood for. “I didn’t know much about the IITs back then, in Inter first year,” she says. “It is difficult to know about such things because my father studied only till Class 10 and my mother is illiterate. I am the first person to even study till Intermediate. So, clearing JEE is a dream for all of us.”
The journey so far was also fraught with challenges and discrimination. “It was hard to put up with all the taunts and jeers, as I grew up,” Umeshwari says.
