This is the remarkable story of a newspaper hawking kid who jumped the odds to emerge as a chartered accountant.

Kalyani Ramalingam grew up in a lower-middle-class family. Her father owned a small shop: distributing newspapers, selling periodicals, school notebooks, cigarettes, chocolates, etc., in Chintadripet, Chennai. She was the youngest amongst five siblings: with two elder brothers and two older sisters, the crowd at the 1BHK home was large.

All seven of them (Dad Ramalingam, mom Saroja, elder sisters Banumathi and Kalavathi, elder brothers Gnanasekaran and Balasubramanian) would sit together on the street in front of the shop to segregate papers streetwise and take turns in distributing. Maybe it was her first experience in accounting, tallying numbers! The family drops papers even today, notwithstanding her changed status, and the mantle of leading the charge is on her elder brother. Both the volume and the money are better, as they now distribute to 1000 as against 200 families earlier.

Life in the 1970s and 1980s was a grind. Food was a necessity, and the rest of the things, including education, were a luxury. The government-run ration shops that sold provisions came in handy. India too was in the grip of Fabian socialism. Gnanasekaran wanted to study in a Polytechnic, but the dream never took off. Kalyani was lucky to do graduation, for no one in the family went beyond class XII.

Her studies during the formative years were at a Chintadripet Middle School, a government school for girls. The fee was nominal, but the education was excellent. She studied in the Tamil medium; English institutions were expensive. One day, the kids at school were asked to contribute Rs 30 for the Annual Day function. Kalyani blanched, as this was a significant sum for her. The very understanding headmistress, on her own volition, made an exception for Kalyani and said she could contribute Re 1 a day for 30 days.

Each day would begin at 5 o’clock in the morning with the distribution of newspapers and then attending school. At noon she would be at the shop to relieve her parents for lunch. Then she would cut back to school. Today, you would call it multi-tasking; those days little did she realize she was practicing it. It was not a healthy life for a child like her as she recalls the strenuous hours spent at the shop, and the many caning she received for turning up late to school.

Thus began her journey: a tale of determination, and passion for studying, which pushed her through life to where she stands today.

After her 8th, Kalyani joined the Kalyanam Girls Higher Secondary School, Chintadripet. She scored 75% in the tenth exam and 87% in the twelfth. As luck would have it, she did not stop with that; unlike her siblings, she joined Ethiraj College. Money was still a problem. Her sister Kalavathi took her to the Guild of Services for seeking financial support.