As the part of the International Women's Day, the Shanmukhananda Fine Arts Sabha Trust held the felicitation ceremony of young girls, in view of their extraordinary achievements. Eight-year-old Tajamul Islam from Srinagar who won a gold medal at the World Kickboxing Championship in Italy in 2016 along with many other proud achievers were given the award.
27-year-old Prema Jayakumar who secured the first rank in the final chartered accountancy examination in 2013, was also given the prize. According to the organisers, the two were selected for their extraordinary achievements despite all odds.
Other Winners
- Rida Zehra (10) from Meerut, a visually impaired girl who can recite 18 chapters of the Bhagwad Gita
- Malavath Purna (16) from Telangana, the youngest Indian to climb Mount Everest in May 2014
- Child prodigy siblings Sushma (17) and Ananya Verma (4), daughters of labourers who have excelled in education
Prize Money
As per a TOI report, each award carried a cash prize of Rs 50,000, a state of the art laptop, in fact a Braille laptop for blind winner Rida Zehra, brass lamp, trophy and shawl. Maharashtra governor C Vidyasagar Rao presented the awards.
Rida achieved this feat at an age of seven merely by hearing her teachers Praveen and Upasana Sharma at Brijmohan School quote from the holy book. Speaking to TOI from Meerut, Praveen Sharma said, 'She picked up the verses of the Gita as my wife and I would recite them in class. But she is not the only one. We have 33 children in our school, all with varying degrees of blindness, and when we participated in an open competition on the Gita recitation, our students bagged the first three spots.'
Sharma says Rida's parents are faithful Muslims who have understood the true tenets of Islam. 'They took the recitation as an academic exercise. In fact they told me, it is not as if Rida will convert to Hinduism merely by reading them,' he laughs. 'And see how their daughter has outperformed everyone else.