nagpur she wanted to be a pilot but an attack of meningitis fever shattered her dream as she lost her eyesight at the age of 13 that though didnt stop gunjan shakya from aiming high currently gunjan 30 is a scalei officer with bank of baroda she completed her master of arts in english 65 and bachelor of arts honours in english from indira gandhi national open university ignougunjan was a bright student in school and junior college as well she scored 68 in std xii and 73 in std x she was a student of kendriya vidylaya chandrapur and later switched to national institue of open schooling for std xi and xii the list does not end here she is currently doing phd on the works of pakistani activist and author tehmina durani i am looking at subaltern concerns in her works she told toi on sunday at her sneh nagar apartmentwhen asked how she coped with the visual impairment she said i found recourse in arts and literature on the mismatch between her interest and career she said i had volunteered for an ngo to teach language and reasoning to blind students preparing for competitive banking exams while doing this i realized i too should appear for the written exam i did and i made the cutshe is also pursuing mba from ignou by june next year i would be articulating projects for mbaher parents and school teachers played a crucial role in ensuring that gunjan continued her studies from regular schools she wrote exams with the help of writersher father jaswant singh said anita deshpande a teacher from blind school had asked us not to put her in blind schools and hence we retained her in kendriya vidyalaya deshpande had told them that gunjan would get isolated in blind schools my parents would read out lessons which were simultaneously recorded on tapes later i would revise listening them she recalledbefore her visual impairment she had seen how a triangle looks and its image was in her we stressed on derivations while theroticial subjects would be recorded for her to listen and study said her father jaswant singhgunjan used tape recorders only till ba in ma they converted books into audio files using a special software while her father is a wcl engineer her mother shashiprabha singh is homemakergunjan is a role model it is the mental disability and not physical disability that holds a person back from achieving something as a student she was exceptionally good and had clarity of thought i remember she telling me that no one questioned her degrees when she got the job