Click to play videoLucknow: At first glance, she looks just like any other child.
But Sushma is soon going to become the youngest student in the country to appear for the UP board Class X examination. And all this at just six years of age!
Sushma knows her biology chapters like the back of her hand. Tell her to write the name of a herbivorous dinosaur and it doesn't take her even two seconds to come up with the answer.
"Other students need three to five days to understand things. But in case of her, I just have to tell her once and she gets it," says Khemsree, Sushma's English teacher. Sushma's academic brilliance is a ray of hope for her family. Her father is a daily wage earner, who earns just Rs 60-70 a day. But her does remember the lines of a Hindi poem Sushma once taught him.
"Something on the lines of Mushkilon Se Nahin Darna Hai... Raste Ke Kaaton Ko Nikaal Ke Badhte Rehna Hai, says Tej Bahadur Varma, Sushma's father.
The family is so poor that it does not even have a roof over their head. The family lives in a small room provided by the management of the school, where Sushma is a Class X student. There is no electricity, candles are the only ray of hope. Life is miserable but hope is still alive.
Varma believes Saraswati, the Goddess of Knowledge, has smiled down upon his family. Sushma's 13-year-old brother is already a final year student of the Bachelor of Computer Applications at Lucknow University. The parents have high hopes from both their children.
"Mein 13 saal ka hum, aur computer networking, web designing...(I am all of 13 years and I know web designing, networking etc.)," Shalendra, Sushma's bother, claims.
As for Sushma, she would remind you of that famous quote by Dorothy Thompson: "The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically... It pulls knowledge from God knows where..." That's the only thing one can probably say of this child.
Apart from her brilliance, it's her sheer dedication that has helped this six-year-old excel in her studies. "Hum aise mata pita hain jo tution bahi nahin laga sakte (We are such parents who cannot even afford tutorials for our kids)," Tej Bahadur says.
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