Got no hands but she has engineered a feat

Rani Verma writes and draws, and can use a mobile phone and a laptop with ease. Many three-year-olds can do all that, so what’s all the fuss about this 17-year-old’s ‘achievements’?, reports Peeyush Khandelwal.

Rani Verma writes and draws, and can use a mobile phone and a laptop with ease. Many three-year-olds can do all that, so what’s all the fuss about this 17-year-old’s ‘achievements’?

HT Image

Firstly, Verma does this much and more without her hands. She has no hands. She lost both her arms to a pumping set accident when she was nine.

More significantly, this girl from Dallipur village near Varanasi has cleared the Uttar Pradesh Technical University (UPTU) entrance examination and has bagged a seat at a reputed engineering college in Ghaziabad.

Verma is now just a step away from realising her childhood dream — becoming a mechanical engineer. Next week, she begins her mechanical engineering course at RKGIT College in Ghaziabad.

Long struggle

Verma has come this far with a remarkable display of grit over the last eight years. It is her tribute to her late mother.

“Both my arms had to be amputated fully. Even though I was a girl, my mother Suryapati Devi — teacher at a primary school — taught me to write with my toes,” Verma told HT.

But she gradually overcame her reservations. And her father, a smalltime farmer with just half a bigha of land, overcame his financial constraints to let her continue with her studies.

“We never considered her a burden for being a girl. She changed her own destiny and, one day, will change ours too,” said Ramesh Chand Verma, her father.

“We will bear all her expenses — she is a brilliant girl,” said DK Goel, chairman of RKGIT College.

“My mother died of a stroke the day before my Class 10 examination. On her death bed, she told me not to give up my studies. I will definitely become an engineer and join the Indian Administrative Service…,” said Verma with a determined look in her eyes.