Practical Research 1: Lesson 8 Writing the Thesis Statement.pptx
Prema Jaykumar CA Topper 2013
1. Vinodrai Engineers Pvt. Ltd.,
12 Km. Stone, Jalna-Aurangabad Road,
Village Dawalwadi, District : Jalna
Jalna – 431 203 ( India )
Ph: +91-2482-262000 Fax: +91-2482-262400
Web: vinodrai.com , E-Mail : vinodraieng@gmail.com
CA Topper: Proud to say I am my father's daughter: A Report by
Rediffmail.com
All-India CA topper Prema Jayakumar, whose father Jayakumar Perumal drives
an auto rickshaw to make ends meet, shares her success story.
बेटा खाना खा लो ना !!(Please eat some food, my dear daughter).
शु नसीबवान मा-बाप छे ! (Her parents are so very lucky).
These words ring in your ears long after you have left the scene of action: A 300-square
feet, one-room tenement that is part of a labyrinthine settlement so typical of India's
financial capital, home mostly to people from the neo middle class and their sky-high
ambitions.
Overnight, Prema Jayakumar, the 24-year-old daughter of Jayakumar Perumal, an
autorickshaw driver for the last 20 years, who topped her final chartered accountancy
examination by scoring 607 out of 800 marks (75.8 per cent), considered one of India's
toughest competitive exams, has become a shining example of how "hard work, hard
work and hard work" (please see video) can bring success at the doorsteps of anybody
with "a mission in life" irrespective of class.
Overnight, Prema's world has turned upside down, and she is not complaining, as we, the
media, in its zeal for a 'positive story after a long-long time' turn her into a role model
(which she indeed is because of what she has achieved despite odds), a celebrity (which
she is not as she doesn't hide her discomfort while coping with the media's excesses)
whose virtues and scholarly aptitude needs to be minutely examined under a microscope
and highlighted over air waves, ether and bold newsprint sooner than competition.
Pursuing excellence in rotational moulding.
2. Vinodrai Engineers Pvt. Ltd.,
12 Km. Stone, Jalna-Aurangabad Road,
Village Dawalwadi, District : Jalna
Jalna – 431 203 ( India )
Ph: +91-2482-262000 Fax: +91-2482-262400
Web: vinodrai.com , E-Mail : vinodraieng@gmail.com
It is in this context that Prema's mother, Lingammal, a god-fearing woman who had
toiled all her life for this very moment, was beseeching her to come into the house and eat
some food (Beta khana kha lo na!) in their kitchen, just 80 square feet in size that
accommodates a Cudappah platform to cook food, a cabinet full of steel utensils, a plastic
drum to store water, a small bathroom and a toilet.
How Prema and Dhanraj prepared for their CA
The rest of the house makes up for their living and study room, where Prema would
either sit on a five-feet long cot or on the empty floor to study and her 22-year- old
brother Dhanraj, who too cleared the CA exam in his first attempt just like her sister,
would sit on a study table for almost ten to twelve hours a day as they prepared for their
D-day, exchanged notes and discussed their difficulties to find a proper solution to
achieve their mission in life.
"Doing CA was a passion," says
Prema beaming like an innocent
child who had asked for the moon
and got it.
"But topping the exam at the all
India level came as big surprise,"
she says as a retinue of media
persons wait their turn for her
interview.
Exhausted with all the attention
she has attracted ever since the news broke out this Monday about her feat, Prema was
running a slight fever and had to visit a doctor on Wednesday morning for medicines
with Dhanraj.
Non-stop media interviews, felicitations, a steady stream of visitors, local politicians who
wanted to bask in her glory and relatives distant and near is what Prema had been
attending to since Monday and it had taken a toll on her frail built and health which she
had so assiduously conserved during those marathon bouts of studying, discussing and
problem solving with her brother.
"It feels great," says Dhanraj when asked about his sister's achievement "like a double
dhamaka," he quips to anybody who congratulates him.
"We studied for 10 to 12 hours at a stretch and at such times maintaining good health is
very important," he says looking at his sister in the narrow verandah that leads to their
Pursuing excellence in rotational moulding.
3. Vinodrai Engineers Pvt. Ltd.,
12 Km. Stone, Jalna-Aurangabad Road,
Village Dawalwadi, District : Jalna
Jalna – 431 203 ( India )
Ph: +91-2482-262000 Fax: +91-2482-262400
Web: vinodrai.com , E-Mail : vinodraieng@gmail.com
house on the first floor of S B Khan Chawl in Malad East, a north-western suburb in
Mumbai.
Dhanraj is all admiration for his sister and her determination and devotion, two things
that, Prema says, kept her going through times thick and thin.
At moments like this day when she is not
keeping well it is this stamina built during
her exam days that helps her bravely face
the media with a smile that is grace
personified.
One can guage Prema's determination as
she patiently poses for photographers,
gives them interviews, turn-by-turn, even
after throwing up medicines she was
trying to consume making Lingammal a
bit anxious as she asks her relatives to give her some sugar.
Just a pinch of sugar and Prema's smile comes back, determined and ever so humble as
she is, to come out and offer her take on her hardships, study methods, and everything
that we the media people ask her.
Though most of her answers to similar type of questions differed in tone and measure,
she answered in the same vein when we asked her about her parents.
"They are my life; they have given me life and I want to give them rest now. The reason
why we siblings did not face many hardships as we grew up was because they silently
toiled while we studied," she says about her father Jayakumar Perumal, an autorickshaw
driver for two decades ever since he migrated from Periyakolliyur village in Tamil
Nadu's Villupuram district and her mother who would work from home for a cottage
industry, a source of daily income to millions of homemakers like Lingammal.
It was as recent as 2010 that Prema and Dhanraj told their mother that enough was
enough and because they earned stipends through their articleships -- a sort of mandatory
apprenticeship that chartered accountants must enroll for as accountants in any firm even
as they prepare for their CA exam -- they would manage the costs that would come their
way en route to achieving their mission in life.
"The fact that we were earning during our articleship also helped. We would defer
unnecessary spends. But we were determined to do our CA at any cost," says Dhanraj
from inside his house that contains a television for entertainment and pictures of gods and
goddesses to keep their faith in their destiny intact.
Pursuing excellence in rotational moulding.
4. Vinodrai Engineers Pvt. Ltd.,
12 Km. Stone, Jalna-Aurangabad Road,
Village Dawalwadi, District : Jalna
Jalna – 431 203 ( India )
Ph: +91-2482-262000 Fax: +91-2482-262400
Web: vinodrai.com , E-Mail : vinodraieng@gmail.com
Jayakumar, however, continued with his 12-hour duty that began at 8 in the morning and
ended at 8 in the night, to ferry people in the city in his autorickshaw, earning him, in
recent times, Rs 15,000 every month.
A simpleton to the core,
Jayakumar, who has studied only
till Class V, answers pointed
queries from the media without
showing a trace of discomfort.
He never utters a word to even
hint that his finances were
stretched as his two children
began their tryst with higher
education.
All he says is this: "I have
studied only till Class V in a remote village. I didn't much understand what Prema and
Dhanraj wanted to do when they said they would like to become CAs one day. But we
never questioned their decisions about what they wanted to do and always stood by
them."
"We would always encourage them to study whatever they wanted, the way they wanted.
We always assured them that we would do all we could to help them achieve their goals
in life."
Now it is time Jayakumar takes it easy and enjoys the small pleasures of life.
"In the next few months Dhanraj and I are sure we will get a good job. Then we would
request father to retire and do all that he could not do because of the pressure of rearing
three children and taking care of their education," says Prema.
Mahalaxmi, the eldest sibling, is a homemaker and hugs her mother, letting her eyes
express her emotions, as she joins the family to celebrate its success.
The odds that the family faced gave birth to Prema's doughty determination.
"I had seen my mother and father struggle to make ends meet when we were kids. I was
always determined that one day when we grew up we would have to help them with their
everyday struggle," says Prema, who studied in Tamil till Class VIII from a Tamil
medium municipal school in Malad, about how she felt when she was in school.
Pursuing excellence in rotational moulding.
5. Vinodrai Engineers Pvt. Ltd.,
12 Km. Stone, Jalna-Aurangabad Road,
Village Dawalwadi, District : Jalna
Jalna – 431 203 ( India )
Ph: +91-2482-262000 Fax: +91-2482-262400
Web: vinodrai.com , E-Mail : vinodraieng@gmail.com
"It was only in the ninth standard that I began
to learn and understand English. The switch
was difficult, but then if you have the
determination to do something, hurdles look
small," Prema says about how she was
introduced to an alien language, but yet
adapted quickly.
It was this determination that got her 79 per
cent marks in the tenth standard, 80 per cent in
the twelfth standard and later 90 per cent marks in her final year of graduation to emerge
second in Mumbai University.
Despite her academic record Prema humbly offers that she was confident to pass the CA
exam, but emerging the national topper has completely floored her.
"Two days before the results, everybody had huge expectations from me. People would
ask what rank I would get as if I had already got my rank before writing my exams. That
built huge pressure on me not only to pass, but pass with good rank," she says of the nail
biting moments before the results on January 21.
"When a former ICAI president called and asked if I had seen my results, I trembled with
nervousness. I said I hadn't. Then he told me that I had topped the all-India CA exam. I
began to cry. He asked me to hand over the phone to my father and informed him about
the result," Prema recalls.
"My mother and I are very emotional. We always cry when we hear good or bad news.
We all cried when the news broke," she adds.
Dhanraj, who is still soaking in the kind of affection bestowed upon the two siblings and
their parents – people, total strangers, who come to meet them affectionately bow down
before Jayakumar and Lingammal – says, "We were determined to do our CA at any cost.
When you have the determination and devotion to excel in any field huge hurdles only
look very small."
While Dhanraj too cleared the exam with 450 out of 800 marks in the CA exam, he is
clearly in awe of his elder sister and he makes no effort to hide his happiness as he gets
busy distributing sweets to family, friends, relatives and, of course, the media.
He knows his sister has set a precedent that has catapulted his family into the national
limelight with his sister being referred to as a role model for India's youth.
Pursuing excellence in rotational moulding.
6. Vinodrai Engineers Pvt. Ltd.,
12 Km. Stone, Jalna-Aurangabad Road,
Village Dawalwadi, District : Jalna
Jalna – 431 203 ( India )
Ph: +91-2482-262000 Fax: +91-2482-262400
Web: vinodrai.com , E-Mail : vinodraieng@gmail.com
Prema now knows that the focus would be on her not only because she has topped the
exam nationally despite her modest financial background but also because she has done it
at a time when women are increasingly under attack from sex predators on one hand and
a section of society that would want women stereotyped and tethered to the kitchen.
And she has a fitting reply to such forces.
"Nobody today should think that only men can make their families proud by excelling in
academics or sports or any other field and take care of families. Today, women too are
getting empowered because of their education and can do all things that boys can do.
Girls too have begun to excel in all fields," she says convincingly.
To those men who look down upon women as objects of their desire she has this to say:
Change your attitude NOW and don't look upon women from that point of view.
Expressing her disbelief that she has topped the CA exam, Prema says, "It is very
difficult to believe that one would top the CA exam. But when I started I was sure of just
one thing: come what may I have to pass in my CA exam. Once I had walked a step
forward I knew I could not go backwards. And I did it," she says without pausing to
breathe.
"You must have the determination that I want to achieve my goal in life. I had worked a
lot for excelling in academics and today my efforts have been paid for with god's grace
and my family's blessings," she says.
"I am proud to say that I am my father's daughter," she says when asked how she feels
after being projected as a role model to nation's youth.
It is then while walking back from the Jayakumar household towards home one gets to
hear: शु नसीबवान मा-बाप छे !!
Pursuing excellence in rotational moulding.