Ummul Kher
It’s a scorching June afternoon, Ummul is in her room getting ready for yet another television interview. She puts on an off-white dress she bought online a few months back. “I am so busy with my studies and media interviews these days that I don’t get time for anything else,” she says, as she looks for a matching pearl earring to go with the dress “I like shopping, and I mostly do it online."
Ummul Kher, was hardly 14 when she was abandoned by her father and step mother in a slum in Trilokpuri because she wanted to continue her studies beyond eight class. Last week she hit the headlines when she cracked the UPSC examination, getting an all-India rank of 420.
“Girls become a snob if they study beyond 5th class,” my step mother used to tell me. “If you want to study, you have to leave the family,” she said.
And Ummul did leave home, and the rest as they is history, which will inspire millions of underprivileged children.
Ummul says she chose to leave the family because her parents wanted to send her back to their village in Rajasthan, which could mean the end of her dream of becoming a civil servant.
Her father had brought 5-year-old Ummul to Delhi in 1994. The family lived in a slum near Nizamuddin Darghah, where her father used to earn his living selling clothes on the pavement. After a few years, the slum was demolished by the civic authorities, and the family moved to Trilokpuri, an east Delhi colony dotted with slums and notorious for high crime rate and violence. It has often been referred to as one of the most unsafe areas for women in the city.
Ummul in her room at JNU
Ummul got admission in the seventh class in Amar Jyoti Charitable School for children with disability. She has suffered from a fragile bone disease since childhood, which often led to multiple fractures. As her father struggled to find a new vocation in a new locality, she started giving tuitions to small children in the neighbourhood to support her family.
By the time she was in the 8th class, her parents asked her to stop her studies and return to her village in Rajasthan where her elder brother and sister lived.
But Ummul was determined to continue her studies in Delhi. So, she decided to move out of her father’s house and rented a room, a few yards away. The room rent was 1000 rupees a month and little Ummul, a bright student in school, knew she could arrange it by giving tuitions.
“Many families in Trilokpuri were progressive enough to send their children for tuitions and were ready to pay for it. I knew I could survive on my own,” says Ummul, sitting in her hostel room in JNU.
But it involved living alone in one of the most unsafe parts of the city. She was willing to take that risk. She had figured out her destination in life and was determined to reach there, no matter what!
The parents of her students used to pay her Rs 50-100 per month. She taught four batches of students during the day, each batch had 7-10 students. The earnings were enough to take of her necessary expenses: room rent, food, books, commute to her own school.
Wasn’t it difficult for Ummul to convince parents to send children of her age to her for tuitions? “I think I grew mature before my age. I knew if I would laugh or smile, they would take me lightly. So, I used to wear this serious look on my face,” she laughs. “It also protected me from the notorious elements of the neighbourhood. However, I was quite a bubbly girl in my school.”
She was so busy with her studies and tutions that she decided not to cook her dinner and preferred to buy it from a roadside eatery popular with laborers and rickshawallahs.
“I could get a roti for a rupee, but I did not always have the time to go there. I often skipped my dinner,” she says. “Those were tough days. When I look back, I ask myself how I did it.”
She knew the only way to change her life was education and she focused on that. And it paid off. She topped her school in class 10th and scored over 90 per cent in her class 12 examination.
She kept giving tuitions as she desperately needed money. “I mostly studied at school and I must say my teachers were very helpful. They not only taught me with great dedication, but gave me the encouragement and emotional support I needed to stay strong,” she says. “There were times when my teachers used to ask to me to teach the class. In tenth, I often taught science to my classmates.”
Her good score in 12 class got her admission in Gargi college, where she chose to study Applied Psychology. “My score at school surprised me as I had always felt that I was not able to find time for my own studies,” she says.
After graduation, she got admission in JNU where she studied International Relations. Till graduation, she continued to live in Trilokpuri as tuitions were the only means of earning a livelihood for her. “At JNU, I got a scholarship of 2000 rupees per month. What also helped was the many cash prizes she often won at various debate competitions. Many certificates and trophies adorn the walls and the desk of her room at JNU.
“Now that I was in JNU campus, I didn’t want to go back to Trilokpuri after completing my masters. And that was possible only if I got an M Phil seat,” she says.
Eventually, she did get an M Phil seat at JNU in 2013. Besides, she cleared Junior Research Fellowship, which brought her a monthly stipend of Rs 16,000. And that was quite a financial turnaround for Ummul who never made more than Rs 5000 a month from tuitions.
She first paid off the loan of 50,000, she had taken for her books from Amar Jyoti Charitable Trust. “And I did some shopping too; I always like to buy good clothes,” says Ummul, whose wardrobe has quite a few chic dresses. “I like to look good and well-turned-out; I tried to groom myself. For me it is not just about personality, but self-belief,” says Ummul.
What Ummul fought was not just poverty and deprivation but also a debilitating disease. She had been diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfect, a fragile bones disease, when she was an infant. Her bones were brittle and weak because of which she suffered multiple fractures in her childhood. She suffered her first fracture when she was one-and-a-half-year old. She underwent eight surgeries to fix the fractures.
The screws and nuts that doctors used to fix the fractures hampered her growth, leaving her right leg slightly shorter than the left one. She wears a pair of specially designed shoes, made for her by a cobbler near JNU. “Thankfully, all this happened before I separated from my family. It would have been difficult for me to deal with the disease on my own,” she says.
In 2012, she had a fall in the JNU canteen and fractured her leg. She was wheelchair-bound for a year. “It reminded me that the childhood disease still had the potential to undo everything I had achieved. I realized, I needed to be careful about my health also,” she says.
Ummul always wanted to become an IAS, a dream she has nurtured since she was 8.
In fact, Ummul was in class 2, when she read a story on the life of Subhash Chandra Bose, whose father wanted him to get into Civil Service. From that story, all little Ummul could make out was that Civil Services were a very prestigious career option. And she decided to become a civil servant.
So, last week when the UPSC results were announced, she was happy. She secured 420th rank.
“But I will appear in the exams again. I hope to get a better rank and become the IAS,” she says.
How her background will help her become good civil servant? “The poor would not have to come and explain their problems to me. I know what it means to be a poor,” she says as she gets into the cab that has come to pick her up for her next interview. She is looking pretty and confident in her off-white gossamer dress!