How Dreams Come True ( a true story)
Saji Thomas
was from Kerala, India. He was born deaf and dumb. He can’t hear. He can’t speak. He pursued schooling till 7th standard. Because of financial constraints in the family, he couldn’t pursue further education. But he had a great interest in making toys of buses, cars and airplanes using cardboards.
When he was a teenager, he saw a helicopter which was spraying pesticides in agricultural fields. When the helicopter landed, he ran to the pilot and requested him to get in. The pilot liked his enthusiasm and offered him a ride. Saji Thomas felt a great deal of happiness with the helicopter ride.
That day he decided to make his own aeroplane.
He took the address of that pilot. After a few days, he went to Mumbai to meet the pilot. He was introduced to some more pilots. They gave him some books about aeroplanes and a list of aviation companies.
But Saji Thomas was almost uneducated. He was not able to understand those English books. But slowly he learned English on his own by reading English grammar books and dictionaries. Gradually he read and understood the books of aeronautical engineering.
His aim was to make an aeroplane. But it was not easy. It was a highly laborious task. It needed a huge amount of money. But Saji was very poor.
So he decided to use recycled items. He used cheap and good quality material.
Usually, expensive fibreglass is used for propellers. But Saji used locally available wood. He used shock absorbers which are used in scooters. (He worked as a scooter & motorbike mechanic). He used aluminium pipes and metal sheets to build the body of the aeroplane.
Finally, he built an aeroplane. But there was no runway in the village for take-off and landing of the aeroplane. Again he worked hard and made a runway. In November 2014, his flight started running on the runway. It took off. It started flying in the sky. All the villagers were shocked. They could not believe their eyes. Before that time, nobody cared about Saji Thomas. But after people saw his flying aeroplane, all the people understood that Saji was not a normal person. People understood he was extraordinary. All newspapers published his grand success in front pages.
His name was registered in the Indian book of records.
His success was displayed on Discovery Channel in a program called HRX Superheroes, anchored by Hrithik Roshan.
In 2016, a German-based Aviation company recruited him as a technician at their Research and development department in Kolkata. They offered him 40,000 rupees of salary per month. The company offered a house without rent in Kolkata for Saji and his family. Now his wife and his son are very happy.
Saji Thomas is deaf and dumb. He never went to any college and any university. He does not have any degrees. He was poor. But now he is an Aeronautical Engineer in a multinational company.
Your dreams will become true if you keep on trying every day..
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Pursue (verb) = do something over a period of time
Schooling (noun) = the education you receive at school
Constraint (noun) = a thing that limits/restricts something, or your freedom to do something
Further (adjective) = more; additional
Pesticide (noun) = a chemical used for killing pests/ insects in agricultural fields
Enthusiasm (noun) = a strong interest in something
A great deal of (Idiom) = a large amount of
Aeronautical (adjective) = connected with the science of building and flying aircraft
Laborious (adjective) = taking a lot of time and effort
On the other hand (Idiom) = in a way that is different from the first thing you mentioned
Take-off (noun) = The action of leaving the ground and flying (of an aeroplane etc)
Take off (phrasal verb) = leave the ground and begin to fly (of an aeroplane etc)
Landing (noun) = an act of bringing down to the ground after a journey (of an aeroplane etc)
Aviation (noun) = the designing, building and flying of aircraft
Recruit (verb) = take a person into a company as an employee
