One of the one percent in 13 million.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Every inch of the street stall is filled with pendants, prayer beads, and amulets. The cramped lane leads to one of Delhi’s busiest shrines. This rainy afternoon, the friendly young man at the stall often looks up as people pass, meeting their eyes with a slight nod and, occasionally, a quiet “hello.”

Meraj, 22, has been helping his father run the stall while hunting for a job. Among all his brothers and sisters, he is the first to graduate from college. His father never went to school. His mother studied until Class 8. Early this year he completed a Bachelor of Computer Applications from Ambala’s Maharishi Markandeshwar (Deemed to be University).

Getting there was not straightforward. Meraj finished school during the first year of the Covid pandemic and lost a year. He wanted to pursue computer applications, but his father wanted him to help run the family business. (Another street stall was already being looked after by his brother.) Meraj, however, wanted to continue his education. He turned to his mother. She enlisted the help of her husband’s friends, who persuaded him to let their son go to college. Meraj financed his studies through Bihar’s DRCC education loan scheme, as his family is from that state. Repayment begins one year after graduation.

Meraj’s English is fluent, something he consciously worked to improve because he believed it would help him find good jobs. He speaks in a low voice and, noticing there is nowhere to sit in the rain-soaked, crowded lane, offers his plastic stool to his visitor. These days, he says, he spends hours on LinkedIn and other job portals. He had hoped to pursue a master’s degree as well, but doubts that his father would agree to it. Hoping to make a career in software, he says artificial intelligence does not alarm him. He thinks it is a tool that can help rather than replace him if used well.

Asked what it means to be the most educated member of his family, Meraj begins by describing his native village in Bihar’s Darbhanga, which, per him, doesn’t even have a primary school. “The nearest one is about a kilometre away,” he says. “If you want to study beyond primary, you have to then travel seven to eight kilometres every day.”

For generations, Meraj says, education remained beyond his family’s reach. “I don’t want to carry forward that legacy. One day, I’ll marry and have a family. My children will study and be highly educated, that’s my dream.”

[This is the 634th portrait of Mission Delhi project]