Boy, who lost two limbs at 4, scores 437 in class X exam

Disability does not deter Kriti Varma, who has scored 437 marks in the SSLC board exams despite losing two of his limbs at the age of 4

A. Kriti Varma lost his limbs at the age of 4, when he suffered an electric shock while needling an overhead power line with a stick. Kriti was playing outside the poultry farm, where his parents were labouring. That was Independence Day of 2013. He had just moved from LKG to UKG, when his world was turned upside down.

Ten years later, the 15-year-old student of the Government Higher Secondary School in Nedumaruthi has scored 437 marks in the SSLC board exams. It was a long, arduous journey for Kriti, his mother Kasthuri, and his primary school headmistress S. Anandhi. He wrote his exam holding the pen in-between his amputated limbs.

“The day he wrote the Tamil alphabet “Aaah” with the complicated curve was the day I knew my purpose as a teacher saw fruition,” says S. Anandhi, who was the headmistress of the Jeenur panchayat union primary school at that time.  “Any other English alphabet is easy, but when he wrote “Aaah” in Tamil, I knew I had done my job. Today, Kriti’s handwriting will put a normal person’s handwriting to shame,” she says.

Ms. Anandhi was canvassing for school admissions when she spotted Kriti playing on the street with his amputated limbs.  “I convinced his grandmother to send him to school, and assured her that I will teach him,” she says.

“He avoided rice, and I realized it was because he could not eat without being fed. We fed him in school, I taught him to eat with a spoon, and assigned other students to feed him. I taught him how to unbutton his trousers without help, so that he gains confidence,” Ms. Anandhi says.

“When I joined Class I, I found writing very difficult. But Anandhi ma’am put me on physiotherapy, after which I started to love writing. I then began to draw, play chess and dance,” Kriti says, expressing his disappointment at not having scored more marks.  

Kriti’s mother Kasthuri, 40, breaks down as she recounts the surgeries Kriti underwent in the first two months after his limbs got infected, needing amputation, followed by the trials of learning. “Kriti’s father told the doctor that he didn’t want a son like this anymore, and that he should kill him. He abandoned us soon after. I had to work to fend for the two of us, and didn’t know how to restart his life. Anandhi madam helped him,” she says.  The mother-son duo live with her parents and brother’s family, who have been a pillar of support to them.