D Akshay Kumar started losing his eyesight at the age of 7 and by the time he was in class 6, he lost it completely. It has been an uphill task since, and on Monday, the student of DAV Senior Secondary School, Mogappair, was a proud lad when he scored 92% in commerce of the class 12 CBSE exam. 

After his vision deteriorated, his mother K Selvakumari, a teacher, made geometrical designs from match-sticks to enable him to learn different shapes. She scanned his text books at the Tamil Nadu District Library and converted them into an audio format. They were then uploaded on his mobile phone and he spent most of his time listening. 

"From class VI to XII my mother read aloud every chapter to ensure I didn't overlook or miss the important aspects. Her relentless efforts and the encouragement from my principal and class teacher made me believe I could score good marks," said the boy who was fascinated by numbers as a child.. 

Kumar wants to pursue a five year integrated course in law and commerce and become a legal advisor. When not busy with his lessons, he plays the electronic keyboard and recently cleared the grade-II exam for keyboard from a music school affiliated to Trinity College, London. He is also an avid debator. His principal, Lalitha Thiagarajan, said he had a natural gift for numbers and a sharp memory. "He could grasp the fundamentals by just listening in class," she said. All his classmates took extra efforts to make him comfortable, he said. "I never felt I had any disability," said Kumar. Shripad, his best friend, accompanied him everywhere. "Kumar has a brilliant memory. While we struggled to remember a few phone numbers, he had the phone numbers of each student at the tip of his tongue," he said. It was a proud moment, too, for his father R Dharmalingam, a government employee whose faith in his son's ability was vindicated.

Source: Times of India