CHENNAI: Cooking. That’s what Jaslin Jenisha J, the State topper from Zion Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Madambakkam, is fervid about. If you find it a tad out of the box though, then take it with a pinch of salt. For, the 15-year-old, who scored 499 on 500 in the 10th standard board exams, losing just one mark in Tamil, tells us that listing cooking as one of her career options isn’t something that she would want to do away with.
In fact, the jubilant lass, who prefers reading Shakespeare’s and Milton’s works of fiction over watching television in her free time, says with a guffaw that it was just a day before her Tamil exams that she had to prepare a grand lunch for the guests who had come home. “I prepared Chicken 65 and it took a bit of time from my studies. Nonetheless, it left me rejuvenated,” smiles Jaslin, who can go without food for a day for a bowl of panneer butter masala at night. Really.
Cooking apart, Jaslin, whose mother is a teacher at a government school and father a marketing professional, is pretty serious about what she wants out of her life.
She stresses that she wishes to serve the society at large once she is done with her education.
“I’m planning to take up Science with Biology in Class XI and I’m looking forward to becoming a doctor,” she emphasises, adding that she always aspired to become a doctor from the tender age of five.
But ask the elated young girl if she actually expected to get a State-level rank and she responds, “I wanted to score centum in all the subjects. I studied accordingly. I would have been happier had I scored a 100 in Tamil too,” she tells us, adding that had it not been for her teachers, she wouldn’t have got such high marks. “I never took tuition. My parents encouraged me constantly and my teachers trained me well. I thank them all,” she says, signing off.