Neel and Deep Joshi

Smashing the age barrier, Mumbai-based siblings Neel and Deep Joshi are the youngest ever duo to be admitted into the MBA programme of the Indian Management School & Research Centre, Mumbai (IMSRC, estb. 2001). Concurrently they will continue their studies at Thakur Vidya Mandir School, Mumbai where they are class VIII and class VI students respectively. If all goes according to plan, they will earn their MBA diplomas in January 2011, even before they write their ICSE board exams in 2012 and 2015. This record-breaking achievement has won them a nomination to the Guinness Book of World Records.

“I want to qualify as a cardiac surgeon and will have to start med school after Plus Two. Therefore now is the only time to read for an MBA. Deep wants to become a commercial pilot and though our career choices are radically different, we were both of the opinion that an MBA will enhance our overall education and only make us better at whatever we do,” says Neel.

Affiliated with the University of Northeast Virginia (UNEV), IMSRC conducts several management progra-mmes with 60 specialisations and has an enrolment of 5,000 students. An ORG-MARG survey conducted in 2009 ranked IMSRC among the top 10 distance learning B-schools in India.

Persuading the IMSRC management to admit the brothers took some doing.  “Of course we were apprehensive because they are so young. But when we tested them and saw how brilliant and genuinely interested the brothers were in learning about business, we decided to break with convention and admit them. Once we got the go-ahead from UNEV we were happy to make the exception,” says Dr. Pravin Parmar, founder-director of IMSRC, and a practicing psychotherapist and coun-selor for the past 13 years.

Despite their academic brilliance, the brothers Joshi aren’t bookworms. They have a wide range of extra-curricular interests, from carom, which they play competitively to chanting Sanskrit shlokas and reading the scriptures. Moreover, the brothers have been appointed honorary financial advisors of the Jawahar Bal Bhavan at Charni Road, (Mumbai), where they conduct programmes for gifted children.

Aiming to complete their MBA programme together with their ICSE exams, the brothers Joshi have soaring aspirations. “We hope to get scholar-ship admissions to international univer-sities such as Yale and Harvard for our undergraduate studies. At the same time we are positive our MBA experience will never be a wasted effort,” says Deep.

Way to go bros!

Swati Roy (Mumbai)

Varsha Kumar

Barely into her teens, 13-year-old Varsha Sanjeev Kumar was crowned India’s junior ladies snooker champion in the D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth National Snooker & Billiards Championship staged in Pune between August 28-September 3. In a pulsating see-saw final that lasted an hour, Varsha bested two-time champ Arantxa Sanchis 48-26, 54-53.

Born into a sports-loving family — her elder sister Tejashree (15) is a nationally-ranked archer while her younger sister Nidhishree (4) is a promising squash player — this class VIII student of Bangalore’s Sophia High School is basking in the glow of her latest success. “I owe it to my supportive mother, Usha Rani and Mr. Gowda the marker who introduced me to this fascinating game at a YMCA camp in 2008. With their encouragement, I persisted with playing snooker,” she says.

Luckily after Varsha adopted this esoteric cueists’ sport in July 2009, the Karnataka State Billiards Association (KSBA) bent the rules to grant her membership although she was only 12 years of age. At KSBA, she had the opportunity to observe the finer points of the game by watching green baize maestros Pankaj Advani, B. Bhaskar and Rajkumar in action. A quick learner, in August 2009, she played her first state tournament where she took on 11 veteran woman players. She fared well enough to qualify her for the nationals in Agra in September, where she was ranked third in the ladies sub-junior category.

Since October 2009, Varsha has been learning the nuances of snooker under former national champion and KSBA head coach, M.G. Jayaram. “KSBA has an excellent coaching scheme suppo-rted by adequate infrastructure and exposure. But coaching schemes are expensive. Therefore the best training comes through constant practice and match play,” says Sanjeev Kumar, Varsha’s father, a successful construct-ion engineer.

Intent upon qualifying as an engineer after class XII while continuing her climb up the ladies snooker rankings, this promising cueist has apprehen-sions about striking a balance between academics and snooker, given that educational institutions have a “far from holistic approach to education”. “I heard it was difficult for world snooker champ-ion Pankaj Advani. But he persisted, and I intend to do the same,” she says.

Play on, sister!

Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)