Reach for the Top

📚 Explained

Part I — A childhood that began with disappointment

Santosh Yadav was born in a small village called Joniyawas in the Rewari district of Haryana, a state where families traditionally prayed for sons, not daughters. She was the only girl among six brothers in a large landowning family. Her very name is a small story in itself: when she was born, a holy woman who happened to be visiting blessed the family with the wish that they should have a daughter, and so the baby was lovingly named Santosh, meaning contentment. From the start she refused to follow the path society had marked out for girls.

Part I — Breaking the rules, one decision at a time

Even as a young girl, Santosh had a mind of her own. While girls in her area wore traditional Indian dresses, she preferred to wear shorts. She decided that she would not accept the customary way of life for a girl in her village. The norm was for girls to marry at the age of about sixteen or eighteen, but Santosh threatened her parents that she would simply never marry if they did not allow her a proper education. She left her village to study in a school in Delhi, and when her parents would not pay for her higher studies, she politely informed them that she would earn the money herself by working part-time. Her firmness and quiet courage finally won her parents over.

Part I — The mountains call

The turning point came while she was living in Kasturba Hostel in Jaipur during her studies. From her room she could watch villagers going up the Aravalli Hills and disappearing after a while. Curious, she went up to investigate and found mountaineers. Their adventure thrilled her. Encouraged by them, she saved money, joined the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in Uttarkashi, and began training in earnest. From then on she never looked back.

Part I — Conquering Everest — twice

Santosh made steady, fast progress as a mountaineer. In 1992, at the remarkably young age of about twenty, she reached the summit of Mount Everest and became one of the youngest women in the world to do so. A year later, in 1993, she joined an Indo-Nepalese women's expedition and climbed Everest a second time, becoming the only woman in the world to have scaled Everest twice. The Indian government honoured her with the Padmashri, one of the highest civilian awards, in recognition of her outstanding courage and achievement.

Part I — A brave and caring human being

Santosh was admired not only for her toughness but also for her warmth and concern for others. She had a great spirit of teamwork and a deep care for the welfare of fellow climbers and for the environment. During one of her climbs she gave her own oxygen to a dying climber and tried hard to save him. She was also concerned about cleanliness on the mountain and brought down rubbish from the slopes of Everest. This blend of grit and gentleness is what makes her truly inspiring.

Part II — Maria Sharapova: success born from sacrifice

The second part of the chapter turns to Maria Sharapova, the Russian tennis player who climbed to the number one position in women's tennis on 22 August 2005, at just eighteen years of age. Though she looks gentle and fragile, she is steely and single-minded behind her dazzling looks. Her rise to the top was anything but easy and was paid for with painful sacrifices.

Part II — The painful journey to America

Maria's journey began when she was just nine years old. To train at a top tennis academy in the United States, she had to leave her home in Russia and, most painfully, leave behind her mother, who could not accompany her because of visa restrictions. She travelled to America with her father, Yuri, who worked at low-paying jobs to fund her training. The long separation from her mother was the hardest part. Maria felt deeply lonely, but rather than crumble under it, she let that loneliness make her tougher and more determined to succeed and prove that the sacrifice was worth it.

Part II — Bullied but unbroken

At the training academy the older girls bullied the little newcomer, even throwing her things around. But Maria refused to be crushed. She channelled her hurt and homesickness into a fierce resolve. She trained with total discipline and a businesslike attitude towards her sport. Her favourite pastimes — fashion, singing and dancing — never distracted her from her one burning ambition: to be the very best in tennis. When asked which country she played for, she made it clear she was proud to be Russian and intended to compete at the Olympics for Russia, even though she lived and trained in the United States.

Theme analysis

Both sketches share one powerful message: extraordinary success is the child of hard work, sacrifice and unbreakable willpower. Santosh battled the prejudice of a society that valued boys over girls; Maria battled loneliness, poverty and bullying. Neither allowed her circumstances to define her. A second theme is the courage of women who break stereotypes — both girls did what people said girls could not or should not do. A third theme is the importance of focus and single-mindedness: each girl had one clear goal and refused to be distracted from it. The chapter teaches young readers that ordinary backgrounds can produce extraordinary achievers if they 'reach for the top' with determination.

Comparison of the two girls

Santosh and Maria came from very different worlds — one from a conservative Indian village, the other from Russia — and chose very different fields, mountaineering and tennis. Yet their stories rhyme. Both were strong-willed from childhood, both faced obstacles that would have stopped most people, both made sacrifices, and both reached the absolute peak of their fields at a young age. Their lives prove that the will to win is the same everywhere, whatever the language, country or sport.