Using toes to write,boy scores 71 per cent

If you can hold a cigarette between your toes and smoke,you can definitely hold a pen and learn to write. These were the words that changed the life of 17-year-old Rajesh Pilley...

If you can hold a cigarette between your toes and smoke,you can definitely hold a pen and learn to write. These were the words that changed the life of 17-year-old Rajesh Pilley who lost both his arms as a child and was rescued from the street outside CST station by an NGO which found him smoking cigarettes at the age of six.

Conquering his addiction and disability,Rajesh appeared for the Maharashtra SSC exams this February,using his toes to write. In results declared today,he scored 71 per cent. Despite being offered a writer by the Vakola municipal school where he studies,Rajesh used his toes to write all his papers. He can draw accurate diagrams with his toes and also plays carrom and chess.

I had secured 59 per cent in Class IX.. The maximum I thought I would score this time was 65 per cent. I worked extremely hard in the last two months before the exam. This is the first time that I have secured more than 70 per cent marks, said Rajesh. His friends call him Thakur,the character in Bollywood grosser Sholay who did not have both arms. Rajesh says he enjoys being called Thakur.

From Beed district in Maharashtra,he is believed to have been abandoned by his mother after his father’s death. He started begging on the streets of Mumbai. He has no recollection of how and when he lost his arms. He was rescued from the streets by Support.

Despite his disability,the BMC school was very compassionate and let him study with normal students instead of insisting that he join a school for the disabled. During the exam,he even got an extension of half an hour and a carpet on which he could sit and write as he cannot write with his toes sitting on a proper desk and bench, said Sujata Ganega,director of Support.

How pune fared

86.46: Pass %age of girls

80.61: Boys

84.95: Pass %age in

general mathematics

85.44: State

86.02: Pass %age in regular mathematics in distt

90.39: Pass %age of fresh students

33.54: Pass %age of

repeaters

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