Noida, India (BBN)-It's not often that one comes across a boy sitting in a metro station busy doing his homework.
So, when a passenger, who got off at the busy Noida City Centre metro station, saw this boy, she stopped, reports The Times of India.
Beside the boy, was a portable weighing scale, and a cloth on which people had put money, the charge for checking their weight on that scale.
It turned out the 13-year-old boy, Harendra Singh Chauhan, was a class IX student at Sri Krishna Inter College in Noida's Sector 122.
He needed the money he made from the station to pay for his education.
She was touched by his story and posted it on Facebook, along with the boy's picture she clicked.
This post got shared and soon enough people were talking about the unusual determination of this boy.
This one social media post can yet change the life of the boy, who lives in a tiny one-room house in Noida's Sector 51. And they are a family of five.
Several people have since promised to help Harendra.
Two days back, Ashray Gupta, president of the Samajwadi Party's Noida Youth Brigade, promised to fund his studies.
In return, Gupta asked him not to sit at the Metro station.
But when TOI visited Harendra at his home on Saturday, he was yet to receive any help.
The boy was busy with his computer classes. Every day, he said, he wakes up at 6, and then walks 5 km to school.
"After school, I study computer operations and at 7 pm I used to go to the Metro station and sit there till 9:00 pm," he said.
"My father lost his job in 2013. After that, he bought a weighing scale and would sit where I did at the station to earn a living. In June, both my parents went to our village in Etawah and I realised I had to complete some projects for my holiday homework. For this I needed to buy some paper, colours and files but had no money. So, I picked up my father's weighing machine and set off for the station. I took my books along as I did not want to waste my time waiting for customers. The first day I earned Rs 60, and slowly I was able to save about Rs 200 for my project work," he said.
His father has polio and walks with difficulty. Harendra has two siblings, Vivek (17) and Himanshu (7), and they all live in a 7x7 square metre room in Hoshairpur village near sector 51.
His favourite subjects is maths, and Harendra always manages to be among the top three in class.
Things, however, are anything but easy.
There's always money to worry about while chasing that dream of becoming an Army officer one day.
"But I will not give up at any cost. This is what I have learnt from my parents," Harendra said. And he did look determined.
BBN/SK/AD