Keshavpur, Sitapur
I was born in difficult circumstances in a poor household and my vulnerabilities resulted in me being underweight in my childhood. Frequent diseases in my childhood made me so weak that I weighed 20 kilogrammes when I was 10-years-old.
My failing health also impeded my education and when I reached class five, I had no option but to leave studying because I could not catch up with the increasing difficulty of my classroom lessons.
In such circumstances, I got to know about a teacher named Krishna Dixit who barely charged his students for the tuition and had ensured admission of more than 100 students to the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya.
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Admission to the Navodaya Vidyalaya was crucial for me to continue education as the quality of education at the local village school was terrible.
I requested my father to go to the teacher who lived about two kilometres away and enquire about the qualification criteria for his tuition classes. He returned to tell me that a test will be conducted and I’ll have to score at least 70 per cent marks in order to get admitted to his class which was run under a thatched roof.
Three days later, I gave the test and luckily scored exactly 70 per cent marks. Now, 37 days were left for the examinations for the admission to the Navodaya Vidyalaya.
My guruji worked hard to teach me for four hours every day and prepare me for the admission to Navodaya Vidyalaya. He also motivated me to make me believe in myself.
He used to distribute the class into two batches of 10 students each and conducted quiz competitions which helped the students develop competitive skills. I successfully qualified the admission process of the Navodaya Vidyalaya. Later, I was also sent to for a training session at the National Institute of Technology in New Delhi for my meritorious performance.
What was unique to my guru ji was that he never scolded or reprimanded his students. I have been able to come this far only because of his tuition classes.