It is often said that a human-being shows his true colors before he is going to die. The same is true for students in the time around exams especially just before the exam. I had the fortune of witnessing this interesting phenomenon last month during which I was part of the pilgrimage of the student community. The exam was being conducted in only one city of the state and not in the beautiful capital city but a small district headquarter 30 km off the highway.
The exam was in the afternoon so most people including me were traveling to the city on D-day only. The atmosphere in the bus was the usual anarchy under the conductor’s rule. After fighting with several Iron ladies over whether their half-ticket children deserved a seat the conductor was visibly exhausted. So when an old man came on board he started asking for his certificate of age to prove he was a senior citizen. I thought the fact that he could not hear the conductor asking where he wanted to go but him continuing quoting the scripture for how the times have changed was a big clue..
Some passengers especially the younger ones had a distinct anxiousness about them. After about half an hour most of them forgot about playing cool and dug into the books and notes. Most of them did not make it till the bus-stand and upon entering the city got off at the Gurudwara to pay the final installment of bribes to the gods. The praying thing continued even inside the exam hall. The most interesting were the prayers before opening the answer sheet. Some of the students even touched the boundary between exam hall and classroom before entering as if asking the permission from the ghosts of the room to enter their electromagnetic interference zone.
People praying before the English paper language were a real spectacle. Praying for help in a language exam when the gods of their religion didn’t even know the language.I guess the prayer will go on something like this “oh almighty god, can you please request the god of English people to help me in the exam?? Oh wait!! The god of English was a jew, he spoke Hebrew and his apostles wrote in Latin. Oh god now I am even more confused, holy father, mother, brother, sister, love you, miss you, birthday, anniversary, valentine, Christmas, diwali, holi, swaaha…
Another feature of the examination behavior was the panic when the answer sheet had some missing pages or had their page numbers jumbled up or if it had a smudge all hell would break loose. The urgency to get that sheet replaced was more than Salman Khan’s after he drove you know over you know who. The invigilators and their supervisors appeared more nervous than the students. They were like bride’s parents at an Indian wedding pleading to groom’s party to please take their daughter away for this amount of dowry please. The variety of invigilators coming to our nine days of showing our colors was also quite large. We had an invigilator lady who was bigger than Adnan Sami before he lost the 150 kg’s of his charming second chin and one lady Jhansi was so admant on following the rules that I think if I had asked her out for coffee she would have refused by saying I don’t drink coffee when it doesn’t rain. That’s a rule to keep me fresh..
The auto-rickshaw drive back to the hotel or to the bus stand was the scene for all the frustrations or joy of the exam came out. People who had had a good day were full of joy and the ones who had a bad day were not always quite either. They were discussing that there was lot of corruption in these type of recruitments. According to them no one can pay Rs. 40 lacs for these posts as they cannot be recovered ever. They even proposed a rate of 4-5 lacs. So they were frustrated because of corruption but were not against it if the price is right.
The papers themselves were more like a talk show on any of our news channels than any serious knowledge exploiting dictatorial writs. My central nervous system was playing the role of a moderator and left wing and right wing of my brain giving me suggestions. Mostly drawing conclusions was so difficult that my brain wandered to the interview with Chitragupta. All answers were eventually written by my CNS’S prejudice.
And now I am headed to the country’s capital New Delhi to prepare for further tests and tribulations’ of my life. Lets see what adventures await me there….
conimpressions 