Bengaluru: Students around him celebrated with their family and friends, Raghu B., overjoyed at having scored 86.5% in the II PUC exams, spent much of Thursday evening trying to locate his parents and tell them the good news. In vain. "I don't have a mobile phone and neither do they," he said, but he was smiling!
The son of construction workers, Raghu was rescued from bonded child labour back in 2012 by the Sparsha Trust. "I have hope now but my parents still have nothing. They live on construction sites and I think they're in Vidyaranyapura at the moment. The mestri (contractor) will help me find them."
The PUC results brought happiness and despair in equal measure, but to Raghu, they mean a new lease on life. Crippled by poverty and the lack of a formal education, Raghu, who had always hoped to be a Chartered Accountant, said, "I thought I would never leave the construction sites. In all my life, I never dared to believe I could have a dream."
Raised as he was in an atmosphere marked by poverty and turmoil, Raghu's first tryst with formal education proved brief and unfruitful. "My parents put me in class 6 straightaway, because of my age," he recalled. "I quit a year later due to financial constraints." He was then sent to work as a bonded child labourer - "The mestri would pay my father and I had to work for it," he said. "I thought that would be my life. I never dared to believe I could have a dream."
In 2015, three years after he was rescued by the Sparsha Trust, attempts were made to let him write his Std X SSLC board exam. He found himself turned away because he didn't have a formal education. Undeterred by these challenges, Raghu attempted the exam anyway as an independent candidate, scoring 64%. "This is an important milestone in his life," said Manjunath SP, coordinator, Sparsha Trust. "He has seen a lot - his parents are still daily wage coolies."
Raghu was rescued from Magadi Road in 2012. "We provided him with an informal education for about a year, but schools turned him away nevertheless. So he appeared for the SSLC exam as an external candidate and received a first class." This landed him a Commerce seat at Sheshadripuram College, Yelahanka. "He has scored great results and wants to become a Chartered Accountant," said Manjunath, adding, "We will support his education."
