Father battling cancer, village without a doctor: How Alik beat the odds to crack NEET

Alik Mandal cleared NEET in his second attempt (Image via special arrangement/Improved with AI)There was no doctor in Alik Mandal’s village. That single, plain fact sat behind almost everything he did over the past two years. The farm work squeezed between chapters, the coaching he almost didn’t get to, and the hospital corridors he sat in while his father fought blood cancer. This year, on his second attempt, he scored 573 marks and an All India Rank of 21,801 in NEET — a sharp jump from the 410 marks and AIR 1,91,900 he had managed last year. He now hopes to join Medical College Kolkata, a choice driven less by prestige than by proximity: it will let him stay close to his family while his father continues treatment.Mandal hails from Shantipur, a village in West Bengal’s Nadia district. H