The Hindu : Front Page : For this girl, treatment can wait, not exam

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Thursday, Mar 06, 2008
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For this girl, treatment can wait, not exam

Meera Srinivasan

— PHOTO: K.PICHUMANI

DETERMINED: J. Shalini calls out her answers to her scribe A.I. Nigazh at Asan Memorial Senior Secondary School in Chennai on Wednesday.

CHENNAI: Taking an examination is a stern test in itself, but doing so after an accident is a feat of rare courage and grit. Class X student J. Shalini was hobbling when she took the CBSE Board examination Language (Tamil) paper here on Wednesday.

Shalini, who was riding pillion with her father B. Jeevaraj, fell off the two-wheeler and sustained severe injuries on her right leg after it rammed into a median near Egmore on Wednesday. They were on their way to her school, Asan Memorial Senior Secondary School on Anderson Road, to leave for Kola Saraswathi School in Kilpauk, the centre allotted to her.

While commuters rushed to help them into an autorickshaw, Shalini refused to go to hospital with her father. She feared this would delay her reporting at the exam centre. Her injured father went to hospital in an autorickshaw while motorists helped Shalini to reach her school.

“She was almost fainting,” recalled a teacher. Seeing her bleeding knee, teachers took her to Apollo Hospitals. After first aid, doctors and teachers suggested that she take her examination in August since it was more important for her to get treated immediately. Shalini insisted she be allowed to write the examination on the same day at the scheduled time.

The school requested the CBSE to permit her to take the examination at her school instead of the centre allotted. Doctors sent her in an ambulance along with a six-member team of paramedics to monitor her condition during the three-hour examination. Within minutes, she was eagerly spelling out the answers to her scribe, as she lay in bed with a bandaged leg inside the school’s conference hall.

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