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Assam SEBA HSLC Class 10 boards 2017: Truck driver’s topper son doesn’t let father’s labours go in vain
Nurul Hoque Ali is the number two topper in Assam’s SEBA HSLC Class 10 board exam 2017. His father is a truck driver
Guwahati: Mustafa Ali of Mukalmua in western Assam spends most of his time away from home, transporting goods in his second-hand truck. What keeps him on the road for days is the need to earn more to enable his children to get a decent education. Ali’s youngest son, Nurul Hoque Ali, has just made sure that his father’s labours have been well rewarded.
The 16-year-old shared the second spot in Assam’s SEBA HSLC Class 10 board exam 2017 with two others from high-end English medium schools in faraway Dibrugarh.
The Board of Secondary Education, Assam declared the Class 10 results on Wednesday.
Nurul, 16, did not just make his father proud. He also made a statement for government-run schools often derided by educationists for falling standards of teaching.
“Nurul has earned fame for our school after 13 years. We had two students in the top 10 earlier – one in 1997 and the other in 2004 – but Nurul’s result is the sweetest,” Sudarshan Pathak, principal of Mukalmua’s Raghunath Choudhury HS School told HT.
The toast of Mukalmua town, Nurul missed being the topper by just one mark. He scored 588 out of 600 marks while topper Parthapratim Bhuyan of Jatiya Vidyalaya in Tihu scored 589.
Both Mukalmua and Tihu are in Nalbari district, once the hotbed of extremism led by groups such as the United Liberation Front of Asom.
“I couldn’t have asked for more,” Mustafa said, adding that his other children too had made him proud. The eldest two are daughters pursuing masters and bachelors in humanities.
“All my children are doing what I could not because of poverty,” Mustafa, who had to drop out of school to earn a living, said.
He became a truck driver while in his teens, and worked overtime to be able to save enough as collateral for a loan to buy a truck.
Nurul was happy to have not let his father down. But he knows his real test is two years away, when he appears for the Class 12 exams. “I will think of a career after that,” he said.
