Amal Shaji with his mother in their cool bar. (Inset) VighneshKottayam: Behind the façade of grades and marks, SSLC results contain the chronicles of a few students who braved the odds to pass out in flying colours. From Vighnesh who bounced back to life after a kidney transplant to Amal Shaji who ekes out a living by running a cool bar, a few heroes have made it into the winners’ list.
Cool results for Amal
Amal Shaji’s neighbours are incredulous of his achievement. The student was always seen helping out his mother to run a cool bar every morning before school and every evening after school. When did he get time to study so much? his customers wonder.
Amal Shaji is one of the 19 students of the Chethipuzha Christu Jayanti College to secure A plus in all papers. He managed to excel in studies amid his struggle for livelihood.
#Kerala SSLC results 2016 out: Pass percentage lower than last year
The family has been in dire straits since the death of his father M B Shaji five years ago. His mother Valsala has been supporting the family from the income she received from the cool bar she runs inside the Karukachal panchayat bus stand.
The efforts have paid. Amal’s sister Anumol is pursuing BDS and his brother Arun is an engineering student. Now the younger one is ready to follow his dreams.
Diseases flunk before his will
Vighnesh’s report card with two A-pluses and two B-pluses becomes all the more brilliant when you consider the fact that he had undergone a kidney transplant three years ago. He has fought off diseases and crises to excel in the examinations.
A student of the Trikkothamangalam Government High School near Puthuppally was advised to undergo a kidney transplant at the nephrology department of the Kottayam Medical College Hospital. His condition was complicated by a disease affecting heart muscles called cardiomyopathy.
Vighnesh’s father donated him one of his kidneys and the boy had a miraculous return to life after the transplant in 2013. He wants to become a doctor so that he can also be of help to others.
He is the son of Gopalakrishnan and Jayasree from Madurai in Tamil Nadu.
Knowledge lights up their path
They are surrounded by darkness but they tread on a path lit up by knowledge. Three students of the school for the visually impaired at Olassa stand out amid the winners this year.
M A Amina, daughter of Ansari and Regina who live at Chenappadi near Chirakkadavu, did her school proud when she secured A plus in eight papers. S Anandakrishnan from Kavalam and Akash R Nair from Kayamkulam also joined their classmate in the victory podium.
The three students have been staying at the school for the visually impaired and studying at the Kudamaloor school.
