Prema, daughter of an Auto Driver tops CA exams

Prema’s achievement is creditable as she comes from a family with modest means. Her father, who migrated from Tamil Nadu to Mumbai about two decades ago, is an autorickshaw driver earning a monthly income of about Rs 15,000 to support a family of four.

Prema and her brother, who also cleared the chartered accountancy exam, burned the midnight oil to come out in flying colours.

Prema Jayakumar, the 24-year-old daughter of Jayakumar Perumal, an autorickshaw driver for the last 20 years, who topped her final chartered accountancy examination by scoring 607 out of 800 marks (75.8 per cent), considered one of India's toughest competitive exams, has become a shining example of how "hard work, hard work and hard work" can bring success at the doorsteps of anybody with "a mission in life" irrespective of class.

Overnight, Prema's world has turned upside down, and she is not complaining, as we, the media, in its zeal for a 'positive story after a long-long time' turn her into a role model (which she indeed is because of what she has achieved despite odds), a celebrity (which she is not as she doesn't hide her discomfort while coping with the media's excesses) whose virtues and scholarly aptitude needs to be minutely examined under a microscope and highlighted over air waves, ether and bold newsprint sooner than competition.

It is in this context that Prema's mother, Lingammal, a god-fearing woman who had toiled all her life for this very moment, was beseeching her to come into the house and eat some food (Beta khana kha lo na!) in their kitchen, just 80 square feet in size that accommodates a Cudappah platform to cook food, a cabinet full of steel utensils, a plastic drum to store water, a small bathroom and a toilet.