Seventeen-year-old Pradeep Gowda cannot stand up on his own and has to crawl on all fours to reach the classroom. His physical deformity caused due to endosulfan makes it difficult for him to write in a normal way. But this boy from Golitottu village, near Uppinangady, 60 km from here, has kept the hardship aside to pursue his dream of joining the civil service.
“I hope to join the civil service and serve the people,” he tells The Hindu on phone from his house. Pradeep, a student of Government PU College, Uppinangady, has scored 81 per cent marks in the I PU exam in commerce stream. He had secured 518 marks in the SSLC exam. He was allowed an additional 30 minutes to write the two exams.
Pradeep, the elder son of Janardhan Gowda and Baby, has this physical deformity since his birth. He did his primary education in a government school and joined Venkata Subramanya Memorial High School in Kanchana.
“There he received good support from the teaching staff,” says Mr. Gowda while recalling the services of physical education teacher Venkatarama Karanth, who regularly took Pradeep from his house to school. Mr. Karanth died in an accident a few weeks before Pradeep wrote the Class 10 exam. All teachers were involved in preparing him for the examination, school’s headmaster Subramanya Bhat said.
Pradeep continued to get support at the Government Pre University College in Uppainangady too. “The in-charge principal T.R. Manjunath moved the classroom from the second floor to the ground floor just to help my son,” says Mr. Gowda. Pradeep’s schoolmates, who are also his classmates in the college, are also helping him.
Mr. Gowda, a small farmer, has been dropping his son to college in the morning and bringing him back on his motorcycle every day. Just a few days ago, he purchased a second hand car for the purpose. “We are spending Rs. 500 every day for his travel. We hope somebody funds this expense,” Mr. Gowda says.
