A seventh grader at a private school in Salem district, Akhilandeswari was a middling student in all the subjects but it was English that was all Greek to her. The bread and butter miss was not in the same street as her classmates in grasping English lessons. After school hours she would go with Meenakshi, her intimate pal and an outstanding student, to lucidly learn the day’s lessons.
It was no easy task for a school girl on the right side of twelve to concentrate on studies at a vespertine hour, what with the attraction of the games some of her classmates were playing. Snatching time from her routine, Meena, as Meenakshi was called by Akhila, would sit with her and teach the day’s lesson in English and see to it that she comprehended it in full.
Most of the days Akhila would return home later than her siblings—three elder sisters, all school-going. Her mom, a housewife, and dad, an upper-division clerk in a private concern, never lavished the degree of love and affection Akhila was expecting from them as she fell out to be the fourth and a female issue dashing their expectations of a son.
Years rolled by and Akhila as a student of the sixth form (the present eleventh standard) was to sit for the English paper of the annual examinations. She squeaked through a half of the paper with the right answers. She told Meena how she had fared. In Meena’s estimate, she would get not less than 45 per cent.
In foreboding of a harsh upbraiding from her dad, she quickly conned the right answers from her textbook and hacked to give him a wide berth that day. As reckoned by Akhila, the geezer summoned her the next morning together with her English question paper. When the old man asked her how she had fared in the English examination the girl reeled off the answers.
When Akhila completed her school finals her dad hung his boots. Her maternal uncle egged her on to continue her scholastic pursuit bearing all the college fees. As Akhila completed her masters in English literature with first division, she felt over the moon and broke the news to her bosom friend Meena. It was then that she told her family members and her uncle about her success.
For all her achievements, the girl owed a debt of gratitude to Meena and her uncle who had assisted her in higher studies. Only then could her dad twig the degree of perseverance in the studies of his neglected youngest daughter whose cup of tea he had never tried to know during her school days. The teen’s achievements proved true the adage, “The fruit of hard labour is sweet”.