As a child, Prabhjot Kaur would often look up when a plane flew over the fields near her home in Bathinda. She wondered what it would be like to fly one herself. For a girl growing up in a family where every expense had to be carefully considered, becoming a pilot seemed like a distant dream. But she liked the idea of flying enough to keep thinking about it.
Prabhjot comes from a family where education has always meant making difficult financial choices. Her father is a tailor and the sole regular earning member of the family. Her mother is a homemaker, and with three children to educate, the family has taken on significant debt to meet their educational expenses.
For Prabhjot, however, financial limitations did not mean giving up on education. She scored 93.2% in Class 12 and set her sights on the JEE examinations. She was selected for the National Super 100 programme, which provided her with fully sponsored coaching, accommodation and food while she prepared. The support gave her the opportunity to focus on her studies without adding to the financial strain on her family.
She went on to clear both JEE Main and JEE Advanced. Her achievement was recognised at the state level when she was felicitated by Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann after successfully clearing JEE Advanced under the Sikhiya Kranti framework, which focuses on creating opportunities for students from low-income and rural backgrounds studying through public and state-supported programmes.
Her success earned her a place at NIT Jalandhar, where she is now pursuing a BTech in Mechanical Engineering. Her choice of engineering has its roots in that childhood fascination with aircraft. When becoming a pilot became financially difficult, Prabhjot found another way to stay close to the world she had always been drawn to. If she could not fly a plane, she thought, perhaps she could learn how one is made.
Her ambition to join the Indian Air Force is still very much alive. She has joined the NCC and hopes to clear the AFCAT (Air Force Common Admission Test) examination and serve in the Air Force. Mechanical engineering, she believes, can give her a strong foundation as she works towards that goal.
Alongside her studies, Prabhjot remains closely connected to the realities at home. During her summer vacations, she works in the fields. The work is seasonal, but the money she earns helps her contribute towards her college fees. It is a small but meaningful way of sharing the responsibility of her education with her family.
The Lakshya Scholarship from Shiksha Sankalp Society comes at an important stage in this journey. With her family already carrying substantial educational debt, the scholarship will help ease some of the cost of her engineering education and give Prabhjot greater freedom to focus on her studies and prepare for the future she wants.
Prabhjot’s story is not simply about a childhood dream changing course. It is about what happens when a young person holds on to the larger ambition even when the original path becomes difficult. The plane she once watched from the fields may still be in the sky, but Prabhjot is finding her own way towards it, one that begins with an engineering degree, an NCC uniform, and a determination to keep moving forward.
For now, she is learning to design and build. And somewhere in that journey, the girl who once watched planes crossing the sky is still looking up.
