HYDERABAD: Hyderabad girl Nandini Jayakumar dons many hats. Besides being an IIT Madras student and a consummate Bharatnatyam dancer, she recently received the renowned European scholarship, Erasmus Mundus. Mundus.
It is an international fully funded programme that obtains over 25,000 applicants yearly with a 5per cent selection rate offering multiple courses for students who dream of pursuing higher studies in different countries. Earlier, she had received the Charpak scholarship offered by the government of France.
She is the daughter of N Jayakumar, retired yet following his dream of studying law at the age of 62, and VP Vijayalakshmi, a senior section officer in Secunderabad railway headquarters. A HPS and St Ann’s alumnus, Nandini moved to IIT Madras for an integrated masters’ course in development studies and a minor in Economics. She learnt classical dance in a strict Gurukul-like set-up, under the tutelage of her aunt Rajeshwari Sainath and her grandmother.
Nandini says: “I am inspired by my brother Arvind Jayakumar, who is a Weidenfeld scholar from Oxford University. He has worked extensively on bringing clean drinking water to over 100 villages. .”
This 22-year-old was also chosen as India’s youth representative to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 2016 and has given over 100 performances across India in the last five yearsng act in Saarang 2017.” Her dream: To perform at Royal Albert Hall in London