Prema Jayakumar, daughter of an autorickshaw driver becomes all-India topper of CA exam
“Keep your dreams alive. Understand that to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember, all things are possible for those who believe.”
—Gail Devers
There is hustle-bustle of activity in the first floor of S. B. Khan Chawl in Malad East, a north-western suburb of Mumbai.
Media persons with camera crew are jostling with each other to catch a glimpse of Prema who lives here. Overnight, Prema Jayakumar, the 24-year-old daughter of Jayakumar Perumal, an autorickshaw driver for the past 20 years, has become a celebrity. She topped the final chartered accountancy (CA) examination by scoring 607 out of 800 marks (75.8 per cent), and has become a shining example of how “hard work, hard work and hard work” can bring success at the doorstep of anybody with “a mission in life”, irrespective of class.
Overnight, Prema’s world has turned upside down. She is looked upon as a role model, which she indeed is because of what she has achieved despite odds, and a celebrity in her own right. It is in this context that Prema’s mother, Lingammal, a God-fearing woman, who had toiled all her life for this very moment, was beseeching her to come into the house and eat some food. Surprisingly, their kitchen is just 80 square feet in size. It accommodates a Cuddapah platform to cook food, a cabinet full of steel utensils, a plastic drum to store water, a small bathroom and a toilet. The rest of the house makes up for their living and study room. Usually, Prema would either sit on a five-feet-long cot or on the empty floor to study. Her 22-year-old brother, Dhanraj, who too cleared the CA exam in his first attempt just like his sister, would sit on a study table for almost 10 to 12 hours a day as they prepared for their examination.
“Doing CA was a passion,” says Prema, beaming like an innocent child who had asked for the moon and got it. “But topping the exam at the all-India-level came as a big surprise,” she says. Exhausted with all the attention, she has attracted ever since the news broke out about her feat, Prema was running a slight fever and had to visit a doctor for medicines with her brother Dhanraj.
Non-stop media interviews, felicitations, a steady stream of visitors, local politicians who wanted to bask in her glory and relatives distant and near, is what Prema had been attending to since the last week. “It feels great,” says Dhanraj when asked about his sister’s achievement “like a double dhamaka,” he quips to anybody who congratulates him. Dhanraj is all admiration for his sister and her determination and devotion two things that, Prema says, kept her going through times thick and thin.
"When a former ICAI president called and asked, if I had seen my result, I trembled with nervousness. I said I hadn’t. Then he told me that I had topped the all-India CA exam. I began to cry. He asked me to hand over the phone to my father and informed him about the result"
Prema with her father
At moments like this day when she is not keeping well, it is this stamina built during her exam days that helps her bravely face the media with a smile. One can gauge Prema’s determination as she patiently poses for photographers, gives them interviews, turn by turn. When asked about her parents: “They are my life; they have given me life and I want to give them rest now. The reason why we siblings did not face many hardships as we grew up was because they silently toiled while we studied,” she says about her father, an autorickshaw driver, and her mother, who would work from home for a cottage industry. It was as recent as 2010 that Prema and Dhanraj told their mother that enough was enough, because they earned stipends through their articleships, even as they prepared for their CA exam, they would contribute in the household expenditure.
Jayakumar, however, continued with his 12- hour duty from 8 am to 8 pm to ferry people in the city in his autorickshaw, earning him about Rs.15,000 every month. A simpleton to the core, Jayakumar, who has studied only till Class V, answers pointed queries from the media without showing a trace of discomfort. He never utters a word to even hints that his finances were stretched as his two children began their tryst with higher education. All he says is this: “I have studied only till Class V in a remote village. I didn’t much understand what Prema and Dhanraj wanted to do when they said they would like to become CAs one day. But we never questioned their decisions about what they wanted to do, and always stood by them.” “We would always encourage them to study whatever they wanted, the way they wanted. We always assured them that we would do all we could to help them achieve their goals in life.”
Now it is time Jayakumar takes it easy and enjoys the small pleasures of life. “In the next few months, Dhanraj and I are sure to get a good job. Then we would request father to retire and do all that he could not do because of the pressure of rearing three children and taking care of their education,” says Prema. The odds that the family faced gave birth to Prema’s doughty determination. “I had seen my mother and father struggle to make ends meet when we were kids. I was always determined that one day when we grew up, we would have to help them with their everyday struggle,” says Prema, who studied in Tamil till Class VIII from a Tamil-medium municipal school in Malad. Talking about the challenges, she says, “It was only in the ninth standard that I began to learn and understand English. The switch was difficult, but then if you have the determination to do something, hurdles look small,” Prema says about how she was introduced to an alien language, but yet adapted quickly. It was this determination that got her 79 per cent marks in the Class Xth, 80 per cent marks in Class XIIth and later 90 per cent marks in her final year of graduation to emerge second in Mumbai University.
Despite her academic record, Prema humbly offers that she was confident to pass the CA exam, but emerging as the national topper has completely floored her. “Two days before the results, everybody had huge expectations from me. People would ask what rank I would get. That built a huge pressure on me, not only to pass, but pass with a good rank,” she says of the nail-biting moments before the results were declared. “When a former ICAI president called and asked, if I had seen my result, I trembled with nervousness. I said I hadn’t. Then he told me that I had topped the all-India CA exam. I began to cry. He asked me to hand over the phone to my father and informed him about the result,” Prema recalls.
by Maj Pradeep Khare
