Life has been a steeplechase for Bareilly-born Rohit Gupta. But the hurdles couldn’t force him to lose focus and he nailed the most prestigious exam in the country and secured a 1,826th rank in JEE. The son of a supplier of Mother Dairy products, whose monthly earnings are somewhere close to `12,000, Rohit always knew that the road to a better life can only be laid through education.
Living in a one-room accommodation in Mandawali and sharing it with his mother, father and two sisters, he immersed himself more deeply in studies. He scored 94 per cent in Class 10, followed by 90.8 per cent in Class 12.
Rohit has been a bright student throughout, and earned the top position in all his exams. But he needed a direction in life, which he got from his tutor Atul when he was in Class 8. It was his Atul sir who gave him a dream. “After he introduced me to the world of learning, I realised I was interested in machinery. Then he briefed me about the essentials and the responsibilities of the trade. My target was set. I had to enter IIT come what may. I wanted to be a mechanical engineer. I befriended books and embarked on my quest,” says Rohit.
Rohit got a seat in Mother Teresa Public School in Preet Vihar reserved for the economically weaker sections and took the first step towards his engineering goal. Then he enrolled with Brilliant Tutorials where he got a 100 per cent scholarship for further coaching. His life underwent a sea change. At school, he had to cope with the change in the medium of education and faced difficulties in grasping the lessons in English, a language he was not well versed in. He also found it hard to strike a conversation with his classmates. He confesses he didn’t make many friends because of this communication gap. But he worked really hard to overcome this.
After coming home in the afternoon, he straightaway headed to his coaching institute. He took buses and walked miles to reach the center in Preet Vihar. Back home, he’d be buried in the heavy volumes of various subjects. There was no room for hobbies or fun activities as he thought that his love for the melodies of the 80s and Bollywood blockbusters could prove fatal for his ambition. “Initially it was Herculean to pack everything in a day, but I never lost focus. I was determined to pursue what I had planned,” he says.
Rohit managed to clear the other engineering exams but could not crack the JEE in the first attempt. But he would not settle for anything less than that. So he approached the famous Super 30’s Abhayanand and under his guidance, for the next 10 months surrounded by like-minded and equally passionate fellow aspirants, he ran towards his aim with all his might.
When the results were declared, he was in Patna. “When I saw the result, all I wanted to do was hug my mom and cry. Now the future looks exciting. I want to give my parents a life they have always dreamt of. And after I have fulfilled their dreams, I will think of mine,” he sums up.