Thiruvananthapuram. Till now we have heard that there is no age for studying, it can start anytime, there just needs to be a passion. We must have seen many examples of this. 105 year old Bhagirathi Amma, who lives in Kollam, Kerala State Literacy Mission She took the exam equivalent to fourth class under the scheme. Bhagirathi has set an example by fulfilling her childhood desire to study at the age of 105.
She always wanted to study, but due to her mother’s death, she had to give up this dream because after that, the responsibility of taking care of her siblings fell on her. By the time she recovered from all this, her husband died at the age of 30 and then the responsibility of six children fell on her.
How Bhagirathi became an example for the world
The struggles of life may have kept her away from studies, but she had kept her dream buried somewhere and when she got the opportunity, she decided to fulfill it. When she was giving the fourth grade equivalent examination at her home in Kollam, she was not just giving an exam but was setting an example for people in the world who want to study.
Bhagarathi is the oldest person associated with the mission
Literacy Mission Director PS Sreekala said that Bhagirathi Amma has become the oldest person to have ‘acquired equivalent education’ in the history of Kerala Literacy Mission. Mission expert Vasant Kumar said that Bhagirathi Amma has difficulty in writing, so she wrote the solutions of three question papers of Environment, Mathematics and Malayalam in 3 days and her younger daughter helped her in this.
Amma’s memory is very sharp
Kumar said that even at this age her memory is sharp and she has no problem in seeing or hearing. She can still sing very well. He said that Amma is very happy to have taken part in the examination. Amma was studying in class 3 when she was nine years old and she left her studies after that. According to the data of 2011, 18.5 lakh people are illiterate in the state.
105 year old Amma is deprived of pension
Amma, who studied so hard and diligently, does not have an Aadhaar card, so she neither gets a widow pension nor an old age pension. She hopes that the authorities will take steps to get her a pension. Last year, 96-year-old Karthiyani Amma had scored the highest marks in the literacy test conducted in the state. She had scored 98 out of 100 marks. The goal of this literacy mission of the state is to make the state completely literate in the next four years. (With Bhasha input)
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Tags: Kerala, Modern Education, Kerala
FIRST PUBLISHED : November 20, 2019, 14:49 IST