Assam, 5th February 2022: Rahul Das, a 24-year-old tea seller, from Assam cleared the NEET exam in his very first attempt. He is now preparing to take admission in Delhi AIIMS.
Rahul, a resident of Assam’s Bajli district studied while serving tea to the customers at the tea stall run by his mother.
This journey of Rahul was not effortless. Rahul and his brother were raised by their mother, who was left alone to care for two sons after her husband abandoned her nearly 11 years ago. Rahul was forced to drop out after class 12 due to poverty, but he never gave up on his dream of becoming a doctor.
Rahul said that he used to sit at his mother’s shop in the Patacharkuchi Chowk area and take out time for studies even amid work. He stated, “I have seen my mother working hard for us. We could not even hire a helper at the shop. After school, I decided to help them in some way or the other. I used to make and sell tea and whenever possible, I would sit at the shop to study.”
However, two years later his passion for higher education encouraged Rahul to join the Central Institute of Petrochemicals Engineering and Technology (CIPET) to pursue a diploma in plastic engineering. He passed the exam three years later with 85 per cent marks and started working as a ‘quality engineer’ in a multi-national company in Guwahati in October 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rahul said, “I was not satisfied with my job. I always wanted to be a doctor. One of my cousins is a dental surgeon and he became my inspiration. I decided to quit my job and started preparing for NEET using whatever resources were available online as I did not have money to buy books.”
He secured 12,068th rank in NEET, but his Scheduled Caste (SC) and Person with Disabilities (PWD) certificates helped him get admission in Delhi AIIMS.
Rahul expressed his gratitude to all those who helped him financially or by other means for his success.
Rahul told that his mother’s shop is on land owned by Mantu Kumar Sharma, who has a big hardware shop at Patacharkuchi Chowk, but he never took rent from them. They have now booked tickets for him to go to Delhi. He said that they live in the vicinity of the residence of District Deputy Commissioner Bharat Bhushan Devchoudhary. He has helped them in many ways. Assam minister Ranjit Kumar Das visited their shop two days ago and gave Rahul Rs 10,000 for his immediate needs.
District Deputy Commissioner Bharat Bhushan Devchoudhary said that the family lives in the premises of their ancestral house in Patacharkuchi and they never charged rent for it. The Deputy Commissioner said that they are very proud of Rahul as he is the first person from the Bajli district to get a seat in AIIMS, New Delhi. Devchoudhary said that Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had announced on Friday that the state government would bear all the expenses of Das’s education.