Sixteen-year-old Sabita Thapa is one of the 475,003 students sitting for the SEE this year. But she is different from other students taking the exam.
Thapa’s two wrists are ‘incomplete’. She does not have fingers to hold the pen as her classmates do. She uses both of her limbs to hold a pen and write. This is how she made her way to the SEE.
If you’d med Sabita four years ago, you wouldn’t have seen her this way. Both of her wrists were intact then. She wanted to become a doctor. But when she was in the seventh grade, she received an electric shock. Her dreams lay shattered. Her wrists had to be amputated.
Her family sought a school where she could continue her education, but the search was not easy. While some schools refused her admission outright, there were others that sought extra fees for her enrolling her. The search ended when the family came across Khagendra Nawa Jiwan Kendra, where other students like her learnt to read and write.
On the first day of the SEE, Thapa woke up at 4 am. She prepared her own breakfast.
She then made some final preparations for the exam. She is confident that she will do well.
Her grandmother put a tika on her forehead and wished her good luck.
She has been assigned a writer to help her complete the exam. She tells him what to write and he writes it down for her.
Thapa is happy that her exam went well.
