Determination Defeats Disability: Meet Wheelchair-Bound Sherin Shahana TK Who Cleared UPSC Exam

UPSC Success Story: Emerging victorious in the civil services examinations was a bigger deal for 26-year-old Sherin Shahana TK than crossing seven seas. Read her inspiring story.

UPSC Success Story: Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out. We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope. Emerging victorious in the civil services examinations was a bigger deal for 26-year-old Sherin Shahana TK than crossing seven seas. A resident of Kambalakkad village in Kerala’s Wayanad district, Sherin Shahana TK, who secured 913th rank in the civil service examinations, was bound to a wheelchair following a freak accident. Shahana accidentally fell from her home’s terrace in 2017. She was about to set sail for her childhood civil service dream when she took a fall. She spent a year and a half in bed and later resumed her life in a wheelchair.

“I had to accept myself and my life. I realised that the life in front of me is more important. While confined to the bed and later to the wheelchair, I had only a dream. I had no world outside. No friends or no social gatherings. Me and my mother only. I realised that I have only my willpower to support me,” Shahana was quoted as saying to Indian Express.

Shahana’s mother Anima studied until Class 4, while her father Usman, who passed away in 2015, never went to school. Due to financial difficulties, Sherin’s two older sisters had to stop their studies in Class 10, but their other older sister Jalisha continued and is now a Research Scholar in Mathematics. But it takes — courage — a seven-letter word — to explore the darkness and discover the infinite power of the light.

It is rightly said that people are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. This renewed the flicker of hope in her and Shahana decided that she would shine brighter. She picked up the thread for her dream from the neighbourhood. “Our village had a person selected to the Indian Railway Management Service. I had seen how people watched him with awe. That has inspired me and kindled a dream for civil services during my school days,” she added.

Sherin Shahana TK Schooling

She attended a local government school for her formal education before enrolling in a college in Sulthan Bathery, Wayanad, where she completed her post-graduate degree in political science. After a fall in 2017, Sherin became quadriplegic. But she was not alone. Her friends and well-wishers stepped in with support. Sherin successfully completed the UGC-NET examination and returned to her academic career after the tragedy. She joined as a research scholar in International Relations at the University of Calicut.

Earlier in 2020, she joined Thiruvananthapuram-based Absolute IAS Academy. The academy offered a special programme called “Butterfly” for students with physical disabilities who wanted to work in the civil service. Shahana had to attend coaching classes amidst the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic.

For the purpose of preparing aspirants for the civil services exam, Absolute Academy enrolled 25 differently-abled students. Shahana was the 25th student but the first one to clear the examination. Months ago, she attended the UPSC CSE Mock test and emerged victorious. In the end, we can say, “Hard things are put in our way, not to stop us, but to call out our courage and strength.”