As I start on a journey of putting my thoughts into words & sharing them with you, it is just befitting that I start from the very beginning. The beginning of me!
I hail from a small town in Bihar (India) called Jamalpur. And, I wouldn’t blame it on you for not having heard of it earlier. I would start with describing it for you as the most beautiful town ever, picturesque, full with its share of hills, lakes & waterfalls. It is best known for hosting India’s first & the largest Railway workshop. It also boasts of churning out in its foothills, the most revered Special Class Railway Apprentices, better understood as the Indian Railways’ top brass, its mighty officers. Thanks to the Railways, Jamalpur has always had a very cosmopolitan feel.
Locals building temporary housing for the railway folk after the 1934 earthquake. Notice the grand, salvaged furniture in the background!
This one was labeled on the back by my grandmother "Temporary buildings for the Europeans to live in" after the earthquake of 1934 demolished many of the railway folks' homes.
May 26, 2010 at 3:03 pm · Filed under Bihar News |
Patna: All 30 students of Super 30, the free coaching institute set up for poor students in Patna, have cracked the entrance test for the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT).
“All the 30 students have cleared IIT-JEE,” said Anand Kumar, the institute’s director-founder, at a press conference on Wednesday.
Kumar said institute’s students are from poor families and studied for 16 hours a day. “We will try to arrange loans for the education of the poor students who qualified for IITs,” he said.
The coaching institute will try to arrange full scholarships including for its students, said Kumar, who claims he missed a chance to study at Cambridge University because he didn’t have money.
Shubham Kumar Gautam, one of the institute’s students, said his father is a poor farmer in Nalanda and earned income less than Rs 2,500 per month. Gautam said he would not have been able to qualify for IIT had Super 30 not helped him.
When quite a child in India I had gathered, from the odd word I happened to overhear, or the odd attitude one observed when the subject of Railways was mentioned there seemed to be an antipathy towards ‘those Railway people’. I found this somewhat mysterious and puzzling : however, not being in contact with any of the Railway Colony; they lived in the extreme north of Delhi and we were housed in the south or ‘Posh’ area as some saw it. I also remember being told to stay clear of the area where they lived. This rather upset me and I thought the attitude was somewhat curious, not to say unfair. I found out as I grew older and a bit more knowledgeable that the Railway people were considered a bit ‘Racy’ and not quite up to the mark or shall we say a bit common. In much later days I was to discover for myself that these opinions were positively unfair and rather, or downright ignorant. I had in my ‘growing up’ days had very little contact with railway people in India, except for the occasional meeting through rail travel.During my service in the Military I was to be Posted to a quite important Railway Station called Jamalpur, in Bihar. Read the rest of this entry »
May 14, 2010 at 10:50 pm · Filed under Bihar News |
PATNA: Super 30, Bihar’s free coaching centre which helps economically backward students crack the Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE), has been selected by The Time Magazine in the list of The Best of Asia 2010.”It is a matter of great pleasure that the Time Magazine has included our school Super 30 in the list of The Best of Asia,” Anand Kumar, the institute’s director-cum-founder, told IANS.
“Time Magazine has described Super 30 as the Best Cram School in its list,” he said.
Every year, about 230,000 students take the exam for a seat in the IITs but only 5,000 grab it. “Last year, 30 of them came from one coaching centre in Patna, capital of the impoverished north Indian state of Bihar. That may not seem like many, but for the Super 30 centre it’s a pass rate of 100 percent,” the magazine said in its latest issue.
“What makes that feat even more remarkable is that these students are the poorest of the poor, who would otherwise never be able to afford full-time coaching,” it added.
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