The pain that Aruna Jyothi has suffered is too overwhelming to be contained in an 18-year-old’s heart. Securing rank in JNTU’s entrance test for admission into Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a great achievement for this youngster haunted day and night by the image of her mother’s charred body.
Found by the police as a runaway child 10 years ago, and brought up since in a children’s home, this girl is now full of dreams about her future. She met Ranga Reddy district Collector V. Seshadri on Wednesday, and received a pat on her back for the achievement.
Hailing from Kollapadakala village of Maheshwaram mandal, Aruna Jyothi, at eight, suddenly found her mother burnt alive by her own abusive father. As if that was not enough, she would later face daily taunts and abuse from her drunkard father and grandmother.
“I approached my relatives seeking help. But they took my gold earrings and anklets and sent me as domestic help in a house at Karmanghat,” she recalls.
Unable to put up with repeated sneers about her orphaned status, she ran away from there too. After a great deal of wandering, she was spotted by a Good Samaritan and handed over to the police, who in turn got her admitted in a children’s home run by Ankuram Woman and Child Development Society (040-27017446).
“The home is very nice. Noticing my interest in drawing and painting, the ‘akkas’ here sent me to an artist for training, due to which I have got rank in the entrance test,” Aruna Jyothi says. She now aims to become an artist, apart from pursuing MFA, and PhD.
However, mention of her younger brother back at home makes her eyes moist. “My father died. My brother is living with the relatives. They are not sending him with me and treating him like a servant with an eye on our property,” she says with a lump in her throat.
