Kasaragod: Months after Prajith L (21) returned from war-torn Ukraine with his dreams of becoming a doctor shattered, his alma mater in Kanhangad organised a career guidance talk. The guest speaker advised parents to think twice before sending their children to countries such as Ukraine for medical education. Only those who did not clear NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) went to Ukraine and they returned only to marry BSc nurses and live off their wives, the speaker said.
Prajith's mother Mable Rose, a nurse with decades of experience in Saudi Arabia, was livid. She telephoned the principal and the professional counsellor and confronted them. The speaker was not only factually incorrect, but he was also sexist and insulted nurses and students who went abroad for education, she said. "But the talk fired up my son," she said.
Tuesday night, when the National Testing Agency published the NEET results, the mother and son felt vindicated.
Prajith secured an All India rank of 9,154. In the OBC category, his countrywide rank is 3,471 -- good enough to secure him a seat in a government medical college in Kerala. To be sure, 21 lakh students wrote NEET this year.
Prajith's friend Gopikrishnan G (20), who also had to flee from Ukraine, secured an All India rank of 9,119 in the OBC category. Going by last year's admission pattern, he would get into a government medical college in Tamil Nadu or Karnataka. "The counsellor's talk in Prajith's school was not an exception. We were routinely trolled and taunted when we sought government help to continue our education in Indian medical colleges," said Gopikrishnan, an alumnus of Kendriya Vidyalaya in Kanhangad.
Prajith and Gopikrishnan, both from Kanhangad, joined Kharkiv National Medical University in Eastern Ukraine in November 2021. "Almost all the Indian students in our batch had cleared the NEET," said Gopikrishnan.
In 2021, his NEET score was 396 out of 720, and Prajith's was 400. That year, the cut-off was 138. This year, they scored 614 and 642 out of 720. The NEET cut-off for the general category in 2023 is 137 out of 720.
Their NEET scores were way above the qualifying mark but had to go to Ukraine because there weren't enough seats in government medical colleges. "And we could not afford to study in India's deemed medical universities and private medical colleges," said Gopikrishnan. His mother Saritha is a teacher in a private school in Kanhangad and his father Gireesh Babu is an engineer with the state government's Kerala Water Authority.
The fees for MBBS courses in Kerala's government medical colleges were around Rs 27,000 per year, and in Karnataka government colleges, the fees were around Rs 65,000, said Mable Rose. Tamil Nadu government colleges offered the cheapest MBBS course at less than Rs 15,000 per year.
MBBS fees in deemed universities come to around Rs 18 lakh to Rs 20 lakh per year, and self-financing colleges charge anywhere between Rs 6 lakh to Rs 7 lakh.
In contrast, Kharkiv National Medical University, a premier medical institute in Ukraine, charged $4,800 per year or around Rs 4 lakh. Hostel and mess fees would come to another $5,250 (Rs 4.30 lakh). "We did not send our children to Ukraine because we are rich or they are bad students. We sent them because they are good but we could not afford private medical education in India," said Mable Rose.
Prajith and Gopikrishnan paid the full year's tuition and hostel fees at Kharkiv in 2021. On February 24, 2022, four months into their course, Russia invaded Ukraine.
"Kharkiv is a border city, only 40 km from Russia. And ours were the first city to be attacked," said Prajith.
They hid in bunkers. On March 1, Naveen Shekarappa Gyanagaudar, their senior at Kharkiv National Medical University, was killed in Russian shelling. Parents back home had panic attacks.
Once, the boys managed to board a train to Lviv, on the western border close to Poland, Hungary, and Romania. "The security guards caught us by our collar and flung us outside the train," said Gopikrishnan. "They wanted women and their citizens to escape first."
After 12 days in bunkers, they managed to reach Lviv. "We felt safe once we reached Poland and the embassy staff took care of us," said Prajith.
The two were among the last batches of Indians to escape Ukraine. "We were put on a military aircraft and sent to India," he said. They reached home on March 9.
But their humiliation continued on social media. "We had a faint hope the war would end and could return. So we attended our classes online," said Prajith. They gave up after a year and decided to focus on NEET. The result was their perfect riposte.
