Bhubaneswar: In a world where most of us are busy chasing degrees to make a good living, it is hard to come across someone who wants to study just for the sake of knowledge. One such person is Rajkaran Barua, a 56-year-old security guard and household in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur, who recently earned his second Master’s degree.
Barua earns a meagre Rs 5,000 per month and recently completed his post-graduation degree in mathematics from Jabalpur’s Rani Durgavati University. In 1996, he graduated with a Master’s degree in Archaeology but he always wanted to study Maths and earn a master’s degree in the subject.
He was very passionate about completing the course. It took him 23 failed attempts over a period of 25 years to finally crack the exam. But his focus and dedication were unshakeable. For 25 years, he worked as a security guard by the night and as a house help by the day to earn a living for himself and pay for his education.
In an interview with NDTV, Barua said, “Earlier, I studied a lot from books in English. I studied with the help of a dictionary. Except for one subject, I kept failing in the rest. But in 2021, I finally passed. For the finals, I studied from a book written by an Indian author and passed in one go.”
