“It was my parents’ dream to see me pass Plus Two with good marks. But they are not here to see this…” trailed off 17-year-old Gopika G as she spoke to TNM, a day after she passed the Higher Secondary examination with flying colours. “I am sure they would be watching me from somewhere happily,” she adds. Last year, on August 6, Gopika lost 24 family members, including her parents, to the tragic landslide that hit layams (line houses) of plantation workers in Pettimudi in Kerala’s Idukki district. Despite the trauma of the tragic incident, Gopika triumphed in her Plus Two examination securing A+ in all subjects.
When the landslide occurred in Pettimudi, a small plantation village deep in the Eravikulam National Park near Munnar, in the wee hours of August 6, 2020, Gopika was away from her home. Her house was one of the three layams swept away in the disaster. She was at her relative’s house in Thiruvananthapuram district, from where she attended her Plus One classes at the Government Model Girls Higher Secondary School in the district, along with her sister. The disaster took away her mother, father, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. A total of 71 people who lived in the layams were killed in the disaster.
After this massive loss, Gopika says she could not excel in her Plus One examination held last year. “It was during the time of my improvement exam last year that the landslide occurred. I could not fare as well as I had wished. It was a traumatic time. I took a lot of time to at least partially come out of the tragedy with the support of friends and everyone else,” says Gopika.
However, she secured full marks in all the subjects in the Plus Two examination. It is by adding the Plus One and Plus Two exam that the final result is calculated – in that, she secured A+ grade for all subjects.
Hailing from a place where one needs to travel about 50 km to reach a government taluk hospital, Gopika says she wishes to be a doctor. “I’m currently preparing for NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test). My parents would have been happy,” she says.
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