Shiva Kumar cracked one of India's toughest entrance exams to get into the premier Indian business school - the IIM's.
N Shiva Kumar is one blissful soul who never in his wildest dreams imagined of being splashed on the front pages of the every newspaper he was selling as a vendor.
In actuality, with a life no short of a fairytale, he felt a strange mix of pride, dignity added with belonging in supplying the copies of the dailies featuring his own eventful saga.
Story of self-belief and determination
Shiva Kumar's story is that of self-belief and determination because of which he was able to crack one of the toughest entrance exams, the Common Aptitude Test (CAT), at the same time succeed in gaining admission to the premier Indian business school - the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) - at Kolkata.
Shiva Kumar, an engineering student from Banaswadi, Shiva, is the son of illiterate parents who had no means to run the family of four. Seeing the misery at home, Shiva started working as a newspaper delivery boy at the age of 11 earning a meager salary of Rs150 per month.
Shiva Kumar expressed that he have worked as a delivery boy since the time he got into Class VI and he continued doing that till he cleared Class X Board exams as a matter of fact it this helped him earn some money to run his family on the contrary he wanted to make it bigger for him. That moment he decided to start his own agency as well as become an independent vendor. Shiva used to read a lot, mostly the newspapers and journals he sold. In the final year of his engineering session, he appeared for the CAT in order to be able to get into some business school for higher education. Furthering with his life Shiva narrates that his mother was a simple housewife and father a truck driver, who could barely earn enough for a square meal for the family. He would see people coming to their door every morning asking for the money back borrowed by his father which was really painful because of which he even sold flowers that his mother strung into garlands by the roadside for a couple of years before becoming a delivery boy.
An eighth semester computer-science student of Bangalore Institute of Technology, Shiva is now taking an education loan to fund his IIM studies. On the contrary he still gets up early along with other four boys working in his agency, stacks bicycles with newspapers at the same time delivers them from door to door.
Shiva added that there is no doubt about the fact that it is hard managing work along with studies, with the two always clashing with each other. In school, he would get up at 4am every day, deliver the papers and head to school because of which he had to skip breakfast every day. Furthermore, after skipping breakfast, he would still be late. While in college, he always sat on the last bench to catch up on some sleep.
Another noteworthy factor in his life was when one of Shiva’s daily clients became his benefactor once when he ran out of money to fund his school education.
Shiva explained his painful truth
Shiva explained that in standard nine, he was asked to stop coming to school as he had not paid his tuition fees. Due that fact he was totally disillusioned at the thought of having to quit school.
The next day, Shiva was known to have approached the first customer he was delivering the newspaper to and requested him to fund his education. His name was Krishna Veda Vyasa.
Despite of having some hesitation, he agreed to pay for his education. Even though he had asked him to pay only for the continuing term, he obliged as well as paid for the entire year. Moreover, he would come to his school from time to time to check his progress while also speak to his teachers at the same time have their opinion about him.
Subsequent to his realisation about the prominent factor that he was a top student all through, he gradually funded his higher education as well, and to date he is supporting his studies. On one side he is under obligation to repay his success to him, more than to anyone and anything else.
Shiva has highly ambitious plans to return to the very society which gave him so much in actuality. While he proceeded explaining that after graduating from the Indian Institute of Management, he would want to start with a charitable institution naming it Educate India where his prominent focus would be to help educate the underprivileged children. People similar to him who have to experience intense challenge for the reason that their dreams are much bigger than their means.
Shiva will always remain as a strong source of inspiration for the humankind!
Content Source: Gulf newspapers
Image Source:N Shiva Kumar
(AW:Samrat Biswas)
