Two brain surgeries in 12 days, 31 rounds of radiation and six cycles of chemotherapy. Bikash Kumar Bera's frail body would have been close to breaking point on many occasions as he battled a brain tumour that had made it difficult for him "just to sit and keep my head straight", let alone study.

This was in 2014, a time of tribulation that the 17-year-old chooses to remember as a test meant to put him on the path to triumph rather than misfortune.

Bikash did lose an entire academic year because of his illness but he wouldn't be denied. He scored 90.71 per cent in Madhyamik 2016 and has taken up science for his plus-two at Baranagar Narendranath Vidyamandir.

Until a few months ago, not even the teenager's parents - father Bimal works in a Bowbazar jewellery shop - would have thought this possible.

They had tried to dissuade him from sitting for the examination, fearing it would take a toll on his still fragile health. But Bikash was determined not to lose another year.

"There were days when he could not come to school because of his condition, but he would be back the moment he felt a little better. He came to me with many questions one day and I told him that he could have asked his father to meet me. He replied that his father couldn't sit for the examinations on his behalf," recounted Bikash's biology teacher Dibya Jasovardhan Ray.

One of Bikash's challenges while studying for the board examinations was that he could not keep his head straight for long and so had to study lying in bed most of the time. Loss of appetite, a side effect of his medical treatment, meant he could not eat more than half a chapatti at a time without throwing up and that left him physically weak.

But not for once did the teenager even contemplate giving up.

"Circumstances and my medical condition had forced me to skip a year of studies. I was not ready to lose another year and sit for the exam alone in 2017," Bikash said.

His scores - 90 in Bengali, 85 in English, 97 in mathematics, 90 in physical science, 96 in life science, 87 in history and 90 in geography - only mirror his gargantuan effort, not the pain he went through in this test of perseverance.

The former student of Baranagar Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama High School had been diagnosed with a tumour in the brain in July 2014, when he was in Class X. Bikash's treatment continued for nine months, most of it in Chennai, and he could not attend school for the entire duration.

He would have headaches and be forced to lie down every 10 to 15 minutes because "it was difficult to keep my head straight".

"I initially thought that I would be able to go back home after the first surgery, but my stay in hospital lengthened and a second surgery had to be done. Lying in my hospital bed, I would often think about how my friends would move ahead of me in studies and I would have to put in more effort to catch up," Bikash recalled.

His parents had taken him to a doctor in Calcutta when he started throwing up frequently. A brain scan revealed "fluid accumulation", father Bimal said.

A trip to Chennai to seek a second opinion revealed a tumour in the brain that doctors there said needed to be surgically removed. Bikash was operated on at Apollo Speciality Hospitals the very next day after he was admitted.

Mother Kakoli had fainted when she saw her son after the surgery, his head wrapped in bandage and surrounded by tubes and beeping machines. It was Bikash who gave his mother the confidence to stay calm and believe that he would pull through.

"The treatment had to be continued and I had to accept it. There was no other option. After the tumour was removed, I was told I would suffer from severe headaches. My doctors would joke with me so that I would not think about the pain," Bikash said.

The medical term for Bikash's condition is hydrocephalus. "This is a condition in which cerebrospinal fluid accumulates more than required in a part of the brain. This leads to increased pressure on the brain. The extra fluid needs to be drained out artificially through a shunt (a small tube). In the boy's case, a second surgery was required to remove the tumour," explained neurosurgeon L.N. Tripathi.

If the twin surgeries were painful, the radiation and chemotherapy sessions left Bikash very weak. The cost of treatment had ballooned to Rs 10 lakh-odd by then and the boy's father was forced to take loans from family and friends to meet the expenses.

Bikash's alma mater helped by raising more than Rs 2 lakh, mother Kakoli said.

Help came not only in the form of money, but also support and guidance from the teenager's teachers. "Multiple health and dietary restrictions meant that he could not follow the normal school schedule of 11am to 4.30pm. His teachers stayed back after school hours to teach him whenever he managed to go for an hour and a half or so," Kakoli recounted.

Bikash, a resident of Tobin Road in north Calcutta, may have moved on to a new institute but the legacy of his success in the face of extreme adversity lives on as a source of inspiration for others at Baranagar Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama High School.

What message do you have for Bikash? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com