The Limca Book of Records included her sister in 2017.
It’s an old saying that some people are born great, some achieve greatness and on some people, it is thrust upon. And, it seems that on the infant, Ananya Verma, who is just four, all three phases are true as she has got direct admission to class XI and this greatness is shared by her siblings as her 15-year-old sister is the youngest PhD scholar in India and her brother passed high school at the age of nine.
Her sister, Sushma Verma passed the 10th grade when she was just seven. Both study in the same school: St Meera’s Inter College, Lucknow.
Moreover, they come from a totally ordinary family as his father, Tej Bahadur Verma, works as a supervisor in the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, where he is a daily wage earner.
Her mother Chhaya says, “Ananya has always been a quick-learner and has read the Ramayana so many times that she remembers it by heart.”
Sushma got admission for a PhD program at BBAU when she was just 15. And, her brother Shailendra graduated in computer science from Lucknow University in 2007 at the age of 14 with 74.93% marks and is now a software engineer in Bangalore.
The Limca Book of Records included her in 20017 as the “youngest student” to clear class X when she was just seven years old.
Little wonder, educationists have been left scratching their heads for an answer as three “prodigious” siblings from one Lucknow family continue to set new academic records.
Dr. Subrata Sinha, director of the National Brain Research Institute in Manesar, has mentored the two older children, says, “Maximizing their potential is the priority, though more in-depth research into what makes them stand out is also required.”
But, no one is able to pin point the reason behind this wonder, maybe it’s all in the genes, but as Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee in his book, The Gene, says environment has a big role to play in shaping an individual’s characters and skills, the question is where the children of a daily wage earner got such enabling environment from?