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Brothers beat financial odds, handicap to crack IIT exam
KOTA: Eighteen-year-old Basant Kumar has been carrying his elder brother Krishna Kumar on his back for the last 15 years, ever since the 19-year-old contracted polio.
KOTA: Eighteen-year-old Basant Kumar has been carrying his elder brother Krishna Kumar on his back for the last 15 years, ever since the 19-year-old contracted polio.
“Basant serves food to me, even helps me attend my nature calls daily and performs all my daily routine work apart from taking me to classes,” Krishna said.
Basant said that he liked to carry his brother on his back as he enjoyed working and serving his brother.
Born to an impoverished family in Bihar, the brothers struggled through school and later coaching centres in Rajasthan’s Kota.
Both brothers have now defied all odds to crack the IIT-JEE Advanced exam, realizing their IIT dreams.
Krishna is ranked 38 in the Physically Challenged category while Basant is ranked 3,675 in the Other Backward Caste (OBC) category.
Though the brothers are concerned about being separated because of the gap in their ranks, they are planning to study together by opting for same IIT during admissions.
Basant wants to study mechanical engineering at IIT Kanpur and Krishna wants to study computer science at any IIT. Basant wants to become civil servant.
Polio crippled Krishna when he was a year old and he couldn’t join school for two years. “When I grew up, I started to take Krishna with me to school and that’s how the journey of education started together”, Basant said.
They shifted from the village school – which was till class 8 only – to a secondary school in a neighbouring village. Two of their elder brothers worked in a Mumbai motor garage to put Basant and Krishna to school.
“It is our aim to make our brothers engineers. Despite physical challenges, Krishna will succeed in life on the basis of his own talent,” said Rajesh, Basant and Krishna’s elder brother.
