SRINAGAR: Forty-five-year-old Renu Hans, a Kashmiri Pandit woman who is deaf and non-speaking, has cleared her Class 10 examination with 82 per cent, returning to education 22 years after she first appeared for the examination.
Reports appeared in the media suggest that Hans secured 406 marks out of 500 in the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (JKBOSE) examination. Her result, declared on September 10, marked the fulfilment of a long-standing educational ambition that had remained unfinished since before her marriage.
According to the reports, Hans had appeared for the Class 10 examination before her marriage but could not clear it. Her formal education then came to a halt, although her desire to study and eventually find a job remained.
Her return to the classroom was made possible in large measure by her only son, Naman Koul, a Class 12 Science student. Reports said that Koul took it upon himself to help his mother prepare for the examination, tutoring her, clearing her doubts and arranging her studies around his own academic schedule.
“I felt that my mother should not be confined to the house. If she studies, she can move forward in life,” Koul was quoted as having said. He said his mother had always dreamt of studying and getting a good job, and that completing Class 10 was the first step towards fulfilling that dream.
Koul would schedule his mother’s lessons in the evenings and help her with questions at night while continuing with his own Class 12 studies. The reports said he also learnt to communicate with his parents through gestures while growing up, with support from his maternal grandparents and an aunt.
Getting Hans registered for the examination was itself a hurdle. Koul told the media that he initially knew little about the scheme under which his mother could enrol. When he approached the JKBOSE office, he was told that the scheme had been discontinued. He continued following developments and eventually managed to get her registered for the biannual examination held in April.
Hans was reportedly anxious when she reached the examination centre, where she found herself among candidates considerably younger as well as older than her. Her son said she gradually became comfortable and completed the examination.
Hans and her husband, Bablu Koul, who is also deaf and non-speaking, live in a government flat in Lower Roop Nagar on the outskirts of Jammu. The family migrated from Chawalgam village in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district during the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in the early 1990s, according to PTI and India Today.
Bablu earns a livelihood as a tailor working from home. Despite limited means, the couple supported their son’s education, the reports said. Years later, it was Naman who helped his mother return to hers.
Naman also recalled that his father had fully supported Renu’s decision to resume her education. “He told her that even if she wanted to work, he would stand by her,” he said, adding that his father encouraged her not to be afraid and to remain confident.
For Hans, the 82 per cent result is more than a Class 10 certificate. The reports portray it as the completion of a journey interrupted more than two decades ago, and a first step towards the education and independence she had continued to aspire to.
