Lucknow :Amid the ongoing controversy over ‘Hijab’ in Karnataka, a Muslim post graduate girl from Lucknow University ( LU) has been awarded the best student prize in the Sanskrit language and has bagged five gold medals in different categories.
In a small one-room house located in the narrow lanes of Nishatganj, Gazala, 23, wakes up at 5am daily to offer namaz, winds up her household chores, and then sits down with her Sanskrit textbooks for seven hours straight in pursuit of her goal to gain in-depth knowledge of the subject. This is all on way to realising her dream to become a Sanskrit professor.
Her two younger brothers gave up their
education to educate her and now she has brought big smiles to their faces by securing five gold medals for being the best student of MA (Sanskrit) at Lucknow University.
Gazala’s name was announced by LU during its convocation ceremony held in November but due to Covid-19, medals could be given only to a few students during the ceremony.
On Thursday, Gazala was awarded the medals by dean arts Prof Shashi Shukla during a faculty-level medal distribution ceremony.
Popular on the campus for reciting Sanskrit shlokas, the Gayatri Mantra, and Saraswati Vandana during LU’s cultural festivals, the daughter of a daily-wager who died to cancer wants to paint the world with lessons peace, unity, and secularism as a professor.
From someone who struggled to pass school-Gazala’s father passed away when she was in class X-she is now a proud postgraduate who knows five languages: English, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, and Sanskrit.
“These medals are won not by me but by my brothers Shadab and Nayab who left school and began working in a garage at the age of 13 and 10 years, respectively, so that I could study. These five medals are for all five of us,” Gazala said.
On why she wants to be a Sanskrit professor, she said, “Of all the languages, God’s own language Sanskrit is the mother: divine, and most lyrical. In Sanskrit, poetry is more melodious wherein good verses hold prime position.”
Gazala’s interest in Sanskrit began at the
government primary school in Nishatganj where her teacher “Meena ma’am” taught her Sanskrit in class V. “Thereafter I got admitted to Aryakanya Inter College and got a brilliant Sanskrit teacher, Archana Dwivedi. As a result, I scored very well,” she added.
“These are Nagma Sultan, who taught me Sanskrit during BA at Karamat Hussain Muslim Girls’ PG College, and Prayag Narayan Mishra, at LU during MA,” she said.
Gazala now has Vedic knowledge and expertise in Agni and Indra Sukta, Rigveda mantra, and Brahma Upanishad.
Expressing her happiness, she said, “You can’t imagine how big these medals are for a person like me who just dreams of getting a study table and laptop one day so that I don’t have to attend online classes on the phone.”
Gazala now wants to pursue a Ph D in Vedic literature. Eventually, she wants to become a civil servant.
