An Indian body who once begged along with his family in Chennai and lived on the pavement has reached Cambridge university to study enhancing performance of racing cars. This amazing pavement to world’s best university story is what you need today for believing in the power of destiny, hard work and talent.

Jayavel’s family was poverty ridden after a season of crop failure in 1980s and migrated from their village in Nellore in Tamil Nadu to Chennai city. His family started begging to make ends meet.

“We used to sleep on one such pavement. If it would rain, we would try to find other shelter in any nearby shop until the cops came and chased us out of there,” Jayavel told India Today.

Life was tough, Jayavel would beg in the streets all day as a child but his all earning would go into his mother’s alcoholic addiction. The 22-year-old boy’s dream run to study advanced automobile engineering at Cambridge University wouldn’t have happened without a NGOs support.

According to India Today, Jayavel’s father died when he was young and his mother took to alcoholic addiction. He was dressed dirty the whole day to attract the kindness of people on the pavement until social workers Uma and her husband Muthuraman met him.

The couple were working to depict the lives of street children in Chennai and were shooting for a video called the ‘pavement flower’. “My people actually didn’t like them. We even tried to hurt them as we had so many people approaching us under the pretext of helping. But they only used our name to get government funds,” Jayavel shared.

Gradually Jayavel understood that Uma and Muthuraman were genuine and meant the best for them. They took Jayavel under their care in 1999. “Jayavel somehow inspired us. After seeing him, we believed that we could help bring a change in his life with him,” Uma told India Today.

Uma and Muthuraman run Suyam Charitable Trust that is credited with helping many children like Jayavel. As for Jayavel life started to change gradually as he started to go to school, supported by Suyam.

“Everyone in the school knew about me and my family. As we used to live right on the corner of the school on the pavement but that didn’t make any difference to me. Though I hated to study in the beginning and only wished to play, my attitude changed as I began to see the difference in life of other people and mine and how Uma and Muthuraman were struggling to educate me,” added Jayavel.

Jayavel gradually picked up interest in studies and became very good at it. He scored good marks in 12th grade and this encouraged more donations towards his further education.  And then in 2013 he cleared the Cambridge University’s entrance examination and got admission in Glendwr University, Wales, United Kingdom to study ‘Performance Car Enhancement Technology Engineering’. A guarantee of Rs 16 lakh (Rs 1.6 million) by a kind donor ensured that he has his UK visa.

“He knew the struggles and efforts we put in for his entire community. We want to project him as a role model in front of his entire community,” explained Muthuraman to India Today. Suyam has worked hard to convince 95 percent of begging families to take up better ways of earning and living.

“Everything started with Jayavel. He started studying well and that inspired other kids. Now, they are pursuing their dreams; some of them are in aviation; some in engineering; some pursuing nursing and one has left to Phillipines to study aircraft maintenance. The inspiration was Jayavel,” said Muthuraman.

Jayavel’s mother continues to live on streets and hopes that once settled he’ll take care of his siblings.

“Some years ago, it was Uma ma’am’s dream. She is my inspiration and now her dream is also my dream. When people read my story, they should feel inspired to chase success,” he told Rediff.

Stories like that of Jayavel prove that life is a series of events and no single event can determine the entire course of life. Life starts to change, not only with opportunities alone but it requires goodwill, big heart, talent, hard work and humility to achieve big. There would have been no Jayavel at Cambridge if there were no Uma and Muthuraman to help him on the streets of Chennai.

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