'I remember the doctor saying, ‘Madam, what he has is stun.ted growth.’ Then he wrote something on a report, and I saw another word: growth retar.dation. I didn’t even know how to pronounce it. That was when I started hearing those words over and over again. My mom always told me, ‘You are small; you cannot start carrying cement or doing furniture work. The best thing for you is to go and study.’

“So I knew that the only weapon I had to conquer the world was education. But it was pa.inful. People tau.nted me. I cr.ied several times. They called me names. It got so bad that, at times, I thought of ending it all”.