Bernard's Pick (More)
An examination is a strange and pointless thing, where one is expected to retch out answers to questions asked in a haphazard manner with a minimum of understanding. Which is why I haven’t had one in 1 1/2 years. 1 1/2 glorious years, spent fruitfully by concocting grand plans, almost all aimed at getting even with someone or something. You might ask how many of these plans succeeded, but that would be missing the point, which is that they were great plans, and which I wouldn’t have been able to think up if I wasn’t free from exams for so long. The most visible of these plans was of course the one involving me getting a hot chick to my school reunion. And what a plan it was.
But my no-exam phase ended abruptly today. And while I stand by my frequent statements that there’re no redeeming features about examinations in general, this particular exam, astonishingly, did have a few things worth taking away.
While some might think that I hit it off with the girl in front of me by supplying her answers to questions she didn’t know and am now going steady - assuming ‘going steady’ means my steady supply of free answers in return for a steady supply of forced acts of affection - well, those people are completely way off. For starters, the girl in front of me is actually a woman who is the mother of two, and didn’t need any help from me. Apart from the time she wrote that the opposite of ‘ram’ was ’sita’, that is - but even my help there was pointless. “It’s not ’sita’, it’s ‘ewe’,” I told her. “No,” she replied, “that’s the opposite of ‘me’. Idiot.”
Actually the silver lining about the experience had a lot to do with the centre that they gave me. Now a ‘centre’ is the place allotted to you for your exams - seemingly the point of this is to give you a place that will be most convenient. My past exam experience did nothing to give me this impression, however, as reaching that centre consisted of an hour’s journey by train, then an auto-rickshaw ride of 30 minutes.
But this year, they somehow got it right, as my centre was not only ten minutes from my home, but was also the college that I had been going to for a year until I never went back and then dramatically opted for the college-at-home thingamajig. Among the many reasons I had for doing this, there was the college’s practice of taking ‘donations’ which is just a glorified term for the prostitution of education. To spell things out: they, the college authorities, were the pimps, a seat in the classroom was the fetching prostitute, and we were the equivalent of middle-aged balding pot-bellied clients seeking one last thrill and willing to pay any price for it. In keeping with the analogy, the whole business was a seedy affair where the transaction would quickly take place in a dark room where the pimps would make you feel vaguely ashamed and then would smile a brown smile, wink and say ‘All yours!’ while pointing in the general direction of the classroom.
Now I’m absolutely sure that you get what I’m saying, because as we all know, the very mention of the word ‘prostitute’ has an effect similar to putting ice down one’s back, while one looks around with a guilty expression and makes a subtle effort to pay extra attention to what exactly is being said about prostitutes. (Hello, middle-aged balding pot-bellied person!) But enough of prostitutes. To get back on topic: I had to pay a donation. Nothing earth-shattering there. But the amount that I had to pay - that’s another matter altogether. You see, people paid donations depending on their performance in the previous exams - the better you did, the less you paid. I had done extremely well. So why was I paying the same amount reserved for those who teachers lovingly called ‘duffers’ and ’stupid idiot who will never amount to anything in life and because of whom I am suffering from piles, although what connection he has to my predicament isn’t clear, I’m sure there is one’?
Was I really a piles-causing duffer? Well, that blame, I’m relieved to note, goes to a language called Kannada, after the forced study of which for ten long years, I still don’t know the swear words of. It turned out that I had just barely managed to pass by around 10 marks. So thank God my examination centre for that exam was that awful school where supervisors are so batshit crazy that they actually want to help students in their dishonest endeavours. But it must be noted that I was very rarely dishonest at exams, and only in times of utter desperation. It fact, it can be said that I never had a moment of utter desperation until that Kannada exam which had me staring at my question paper trying as best as I could to calculate the marks of what I knew in such a way that I could be assured of passing. It was while staring at said paper that it was suddenly pulled away rudely from my cold trembling hands and replaced by one where a few answers were filled in. And even with that little ‘aid’ I wasn’t sure of passing. I ended up just scraping through, and this had the effect of bringing down my average score considerably.
So it was that I was immediately labelled ‘duffer!’ against my will, and this, more that any price that I had to pay, was what enraged me. And further, it wasn’t just the fact that they robbed me while somehow convincing me that it was the right and proper thing to do but that when we actually got into the college, they one day had a mass meeting with all the newly admitted students, and unveiled the plans to construct a massive structure within the premises. “This,” they said with more pride than they could handle, “will cost us 20 lakhs! If we’re lucky, it’ll be ready in three year’s time.”
Just what we wanted to hear. The money that they stole from us was being used to fund the construction of a building that would be ready only a year after we had left the college, apparently so that they could accommodate about double the amount of piles-causing duffers to enter into the college, thus allowing them to gather even greater amounts of donations to fund more buildings. Ah, just brilliant.
And so, me and my foolish pride left the college a year later.
But time passes, and time heals wounds and makes past adolescent emotions get all fuzzy and appear pointless. This was the case with me, too, as when I entered the premises of my examination centre, I kept questioning myself as to whether the whole walking out affair was worth it. See, I told myself, it’s not that bad. Look at all these hip young people standing around looking cool. And look at the girls! Where were they when I was at this blasted college? Perhaps had I stayed, I might have been in a position to have jealous fits about some girl who never agreed to go out with me in the first place, instead of merely appearing for an exam.
That’s the point when I saw it - a sight that sent such happy thoughts scrambling for their lives: the new big building, the one that cost them at least 20 lakhs, fully constructed and standing there magnificiently before my eyes, a building that was way better than any of the rundown sheds we were put in like big stupid woolly sheep. And true to my assessment, they were already at work at another big beautiful building, judging from all the bricks piled up against the wall right next to the new building.
That was when it hit me. A plan, a most glorious plan! My 1 1/2 years of concentrated plan making had sharpened my plan-making faculties to the point where I was constructing a plan without even being aware of it. And so, completely effortlessly, came my plan to make right all the wrongs that college did to me, to get back what was rightfully mine.
***
When I got home after my exam, dragging my bag behind me, my mother said, “What’ve you got in the bag - stones?”
“No Ma,” I said, “stones aren’t worth anything. What I got is bricks!”
“Bricks?” echoed my father.
“Yes! The bricks that my money - well, technically your money - paid for! You know, that donation they made me pay? Oh, but don’t worry - this isn’t all. I’ve got four more exams, and by my calculations, four more bags of bricks should cover it nicely!”
A moment of silence passed and my parents exchanged glances - glances that to a son could mean anything from tear-inducing pride to bright happiness. Lucky for me, they spelled out the meaning of the glances:
“Remind me again why we let him stop going to college?” one parent said to the other. “All he ever does now is come up with these crackpot schemes that never work!”
Evidently, they didn’t think much of it. But just wait. Four exams more, and I’ll have enough bricks to build a neat little construction of my own to live in, free from everyone and self-sufficient. Then we’ll see whose plans are crackpot.