By IANS
Lucknow : A Japanese television channel team is here to make a documentary film on super-intelligent brother and sister of the city who have created academic records.
A team from Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) is currently here to shoot fourteen-year-old Shailendra, the youngest computer graduate and his younger sister Sushma, who created a record by completing her matriculation at a tender age of just 7 years.
The Japanese team plans to take the kids all the way to Japan for a show in which they would have interaction with famous Japanese magician Marik.
“Our objective is to make Japanese children take some inspiration from these wonder kids who have achieved and acquired so much despite their very humble background,” Matsumoto, TBS programme director told IANS here Monday.
“The programme for which we have come here to shoot Shailendra and Sushma is slated for Dec 17 broadcast. We are carrying the kids with us to Japan Dec 13 and should be able to prepare them for the show there,” he added.
The children’s father Tej Bahadur, a daily-wage labourer, has also been invited to accompany the kids.
With an international TV crew busy filming around, Lucknow’s St. Meera High School, where the two kids received free education, has become a centre of attraction.
Significantly, both Shailendra and Sushma were quite comfortable and confident before the cameras.
The siblings come from a family who make a living out of some Rs.70-80 a day.
“I hardly went to a primary school in the village but my children are god’s gift to me, so I was always willing to work overtime to ensure that they could get educated,” Tej Bahadur told IANS.
Without ever going to a formal school, Shailendra studied entirely on his own under the guidance of neighbours and teachers of the school where his father worked as a labourer. At the age of nine, he sought admission in the National Open School from where he took the Class X examination in 2002.
Two years later, Shailendra passed class XII from the same school.
Simultaneously, he cleared both test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) as well as SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) examination. An American University offered him admission for a computer science course, but his family was in no position to fund his admission fee of $1,400. He then sought admission at the Lucknow University where he was granted special relaxation in age to pursue a BCA (Bachelor of Computer Application) course.
“I wish to establish a company like Microsoft or Oracle one day,” a beaming Shailendra told IANS.
“And once I am in some position, my aim would be to provide poor children with opportunities, because it is my firm belief that children from poor families do not need charity but opportunity to prove that they too have it in them,” he added confidently.
Sushma, on the other hand has been reading ever since she was one and a half years old. When she was two-year-old she hit the headlines for reciting verses from the Ramayan as well as other texts, not only in Hindi but also in English and Sanskrit.
Tej Bahadur is all excited about the idea of flying to Japan.
“Well, it is a great moment for all of us, I have not seen any city other than Lucknow and had never even imagined that my children would show me the world,” he said.