Kolkata, July 03: At first sight, Anurag Verma looks like any other fresher on the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) campus. Tall and stout,
the 23-year-old melts easily into the crowd of new arrivals. It’s tough to spot him actually, but when one does so, he is a show stealer. For, Anurag is a travelling ticket examiner (TTE) with Northern Railway on lien to study at the prestigious B-school.
Down-to-earth and rustic in parts, the lad from Kanpur was checking tickets on trains till May 30. He was actually on a train in the Moradabad-Kanpur sector when the news reached his home. He had cracked this year’s Common Admission Test (CAT) and found a place on the IIM-C rolls.
Anurag did his schooling from Vidya Niketan Inter-College, Kanpur. After passing his board exam in 2001, he appeared for a special railway board examination and was selected for a vocational course. Anurag joined it and did his Class XII from Ludlow Castle No.4 in Delhi, a CBSE-affiliated school.
“The railways sponsored my Plus-II studies and also provided for hostel accommodation,” Anurag said in chaste Hindi. He speaks English haltingly, but is confident it will not come in the way of his studies at the institute. “I will work on improving my English language skills and this can never pose any hindrance,” he said.
After passing Class XII in 2003, Anurag joined the railways as a ticket collector. “I was posted at Moradabad station.”
In 2006, he got a promotion and became a TTE. “Since then, I’ve been travelling on trains like Punjab Mail, Shramjeevi Express, Sealdah Mail, Himgiri Express and Akal Takht,” he said. Alongside his job, Anurag enrolled for a pass course in Bachelor of Arts (BA) under Kanpur University and studied as a private candidate. In 2008, he sat for the CAT examination.
