KOLHAPUR: It was a crisp winter morning at Harrison’s Folly, a stunning cliffside viewpoint 5km from Panchgani, and Samarth Mahangade was busy serving freshly pressed sugarcane juice at his roadside stall. Then came a frantic call.
“Samarth, where are you? The exam’s already starting!”
The 19-year-old BCom first-year student froze. His natural dissolution management paper—a university exam that had been postponed—was today. And he had no idea, as his hall ticket hadn’t been updated. Panic surged.
The exam centre was 15km away, in Pasarni village, at the base of the steep and winding Pasarni Ghat. The road was notorious for slow-moving traffic, and the journey would take at least 30 minutes—time he didn’t have.
His mind raced for a solution. Then it hit him—the sky.
A Leap of Faith
Nearby stood paragliding instructor Govind Yewale, who ran adventure flights from Harrison’s Folly. Samarth sprinted toward him.
“Bhau, I have an exam in 10 minutes. Can you take me down there?”
Yewale frowned. “An exam? And you forgot the date?” He shook his head, exasperated. But the urgency in Samarth’s eyes was impossible to ignore. After a brief pause, he signaled to one of his paragliders.
“Strap in,” he ordered. “Hold on tight.”
Heart pounding, Samarth buckled in. With a running start, they leapt off the cliff. The ground vanished beneath them as they soared over the valley. In just five minutes, they were above the exam centre.
Meanwhile, a friend rushed to Samarth’s house, grabbing his hall ticket, writing pad, and pens.
The Final Sprint
As the glider descended onto the school grounds, Samarth unbuckled mid-stride and took off running. His lungs burned as he sprinted to the exam hall, bursting through the doors just as question papers were being distributed.
A pause. Then, a nod from the examiner. He was allowed in.
Later, reflecting on the whirlwind morning, Samarth said, “I work to support my family, but my education is just as important.”
While Satara SP Samir Shaikh noted that traffic along Pasarni Ghat wasn’t unusually severe that day, for one determined student, every second counted.
