SLICE OF LIFE

I never thought I’d ever like to put this horrible experience into words but then I thought Why Not. I might just succeed in overcoming the shudders I feel everytime I recall it, I might just break into a smile or it might just suddenly make others feel good about themselves because as they say…One man’s tragedy is another man’s comedy….o how I just love romantic comedies but lets just stick to the topic.
I had always been a good student, but then again how can a story be complete unless there’s a hitch, a villain and a tragic hero. In this story, the hitch was class Tenth, villain was Math and well tragedy struck Me. Till ninth grade I was considered as someone who could give the best student in class a run for his money (in this case a run for marks). But deep inside, I knew that I was just camouflaging my shortcomings well. I knew where the problem lay, my Achilles heel was and will forever be Mathematics… O yeah I can spell it right but I cant do it right. Mathematics which was Aryabhatta’s forte, a subject loved by the greater brains around the world, a subject which even fetched Matt Damon an Oscar on his very first outing in Good Will Hunting. My basics were never clear and I never even tried. Everytime I thought I couldn’t get a problem right, my sister (who by the way was super good) would bail me out. And when even she couldn’t rescue me, I would cram it up… yes I would literally cram a theory, a formula, a figure and puke it out on the exam sheet and would pat myself later as if to say…See that wasn’t so difficult Amol!
But in Tenth grade, everything that could go wrong did. I started off the year on a wrong footing. My sister, my savior got married and moved away. Suddenly the wind beneath my wings was gone, and such a big deal was made of this “Board Exam” thing that the fall became inevitable. There was something about TENTH that wasn’t quite right… raging hormones, sinking confidence, the ominous dark classroom, the best of brains hovering around, and when your own best friend is a mathematical genius, it doesn’t help much… Does It? From the very word “Go”, I was Go Went Gone. To make matters the superlative of bad, my mom was my class teacher and suddenly The Challenger could pretend no more. I’m sure no one else noticed the change but I knew my days of glory were over. Each day was a struggle and every morning I would literally have cramps in my legs and knots in my stomach, my grades were falling and the temperature was rising, so much so that even the simplest of things taught in class made my head spin. A Candid Confession – I Was In Deep Shit.
Joining a coaching class wasn’t the usual standard canon in our family because both my sisters were code crackers and my father… well lets just say that he is Aryabhatta’s little brother, so taking tuitions was never really an option and the misery continued… The only two shining stars in my life were my mom and my bench partner in midterms and pre-boards – a non-med student 2 years my senior who always completed his paper before time just so he could help me out with mine. I still remember how he used to patiently speak word by word making sure that I didn’t make a mistake. I know for the world it’s cheating or copying but, for someone like me, the guy was God-sent because had I flunked the pre-boards, I would never have had the will to sit in the Boards. The guy was my saving grace. Gracias I say!!!
1
Just a month before “The Finals”, my folks suddenly realized the seriousness of the situation because they could see I was drifting away. They knew if I dint clear the Maths paper, it would be the end of the road for me because I had already turned into a zombie, a pill popper and an escapist. My father finally decided to get help. I started going to house around the corner to study for one odd hour… these one hour sessions gave me a new lifeline as I understood what my task really was… my task was not to get 100/100, but to make sure that I got good enough marks to take up Humanities because that was my true calling.
P.S. Not everybody in the world is cut out to be a doctor, an engineer, an economist, a granth lover etc. etc. There are a few die-hard-romantics like me who would much rather enjoy Eric Segal’s Love Story and Beatles’ P.S. I Love You, someone who would much rather read about the likes of Adam Gilchrist, AB Devilliers, Novak Djokovic than about the ups and downs of the share market, someone who would always be game for a movie like You’ve Got Mail, Andaz Apna Apna or Home Alone than being interested about the dirty world of business and politics. Let me tell you a little secret – I scored 55 in my mathematics board exam and you should have seen the little jig I did after that and the smile on my parents face because maybe they realized that this 55 was better than any other 90 or 95 I had scored before and primarily because it was not the end of the world… it was just a new beginning.