“Those were the worst days of my life”
it all started with the delay in admissions to professional colleges in kerala…all thanks to the Communist Government which just took over…
After my 12th standard board exams….al I wanted to do was join the Delhi Univ…n not just any coll in DU..but d very prestigious St Stephens College…n that too for literature….i had all my future plans etched out vividly in my mind…after my graduation…I wanted to do a course in eco……I have absolutely no idea from where I got the notion that every Indian citizen has to learn eco for the progress of this country…anyways…after eco…a course in fashion techno…followed by journalism…n den…when I was satisfied wit my educational qualification…work as ‘master’ economist cum ‘a sought after’ dress designer cum a ‘smart’ journalist……haah…ders no upper limit to dreams like u have in definite integrals…n if there was something I have stuck onto all my life without anybody’s prompting…it is ‘Count the chickens and give them all a name before they hatch’
My parents had an altogether different set of plans for me…n me being the ‘ obedient daughter’…I couldn’t even think about disagreeing with them….well…don’t think I gave in without putting up a fight….i fought like a cat allright…but as usual…they dismissed it …with a wave of their hands and….n that ‘what do you noe’ stare!!…ha….i had been through this countless times…n finally I conceded. I would do exactly what my parents wanted me to!….now you must understand that you are the 1 who is actually scoring when you let your parents decide your career for you…for one…you are not responsible for your grades…however shocking they might be…ur parents…they just gotta accept it..
Now tis is da scene at my place wen I have to justify my performance(..n remember…all this is caused due to the scrap of paper they call the ‘report card’ the bloody college insists on sending home )
…am heartbroken seeing the disappointment writ on dads face…am so used to seeing the same expression on moms face for the past 17 years …that I no longer give a damn …but again…one cant remain oblivious to one’s surroundings for long right…finally…the despair gets to me…n I make the opening dialogue-
’I knew I couldn’t do it…there is a lot of hope and pressure on me…and I cant handle this…u must understand…am no Einstein…neither do I wanna b one…but am stuck with squirrel brains…thanks to the people I got my genes from!’
ha…the ball is now in their court…they can see for themselves…cant they?….but then…they have to wait till I come up wit the same old explanation which has started sounding stupid to my ears too!hmmm….now that gives them solace….atleast temporary solace… next thing you need to do is….rush out from your home…make up all kinds of unpardonable excuses…’that sir there…he is not well’…or ‘that non existent friend…hes in an accident’…hehe…there are countless excuses nah!?
So part 1 over….now you have the countless jobless relatives who are even more anxious than your parents about your future…..well…I don’t have time for everyone…let them think I am the goose of the century….’i don’t care’…(js the way they say it in the ‘Fair n lovely’ commercial)…so part2 is also down…good show gurl!wot else can I say?..aah…way to go!:D
Anyways…engineering is what am doing now…and I cant say am disappointed…on the contrary..am on an alltime high…….
here I was when the board exam results came out….mourning 24*7 for I don’t noe wot!hmmm…that fateful day…I forget which day it was..(hmmm…I was never good at dates…except my birthdate which I manage to remember somehow) the board exam results were announced!there I was…hoping for a miracle n praying I would get marks which made every1 proud about me….there was the same ritual of endless praying before my 10th std results were announced…guess god heard me then…;)..i got okie marks…atleast people who had believed me to be a dum dum changed their opinion about me!…n I was on top of the world…well…I was waiting for a similar miracle in 12th std too…n this time around…god decided to desert me I guess…hmmm…yea…2 wins in a row is not exactly gonna do a world of good to a vain mortal like me…n god must have forseen that…anyways…the results were announced…nothing compared to what I had expected..!!I was heartbroken…both literally and figuratively…I decided life was not worth living…come on…for all those hours spent at jolly sirs,gp sirs n baby sirs…for all those hours of lost sleep…n infinite boredom…n then there were those classes in ‘T.I.M.E’ without rads n sumo….who would decide to bunk class for the thousandth time…I could have done far better… n its not like I was counting only on the tution…I knew stuff too…believe mi..i knew what aniline was…all those reactions with aniline…phenol…n hydrocarbons…I was passionate about doppler’s n young’s…diffraction and interference… n I loved differentiation and intergration…I loved what I learned at that point of time...but then I ended up getting the poorest marks I could imagine…hmmm what is over is over..!am not sure I wanna cry anymore over that…anyways…my dream was shattered…I was sure nobody in the right sense would want mi…not a single arts college in Delhi…let alone St Stephens…hehe…I don’t think I even had the qualification for the sweeper’s post …n to add to that…there were so many relatives…half of whom I dint even noe existed….they had to know the reason…”why hadn’t I done well??”….this kid there…he had 96% …there was 95.4% somewhere else…’nothing amazing’…I felt like screaming into the phone … wel some person or the other will get those kind of marks right!I just couldn’t understand what the hype was all about….n then…to add to my misery…they had all sorts of career advice too….hehe…there were people asking me what I would gain with a degree in arts…n here I was praying I would somehow or the other be eligible for some course…n then came another charge… my ‘some’ aunt came up with this…maybe I would elope with some Pakistani if I go to delhi!…As if I needed to go all the way to delhi to elope with this figment of her imagination…gosh…how ridiculous!…
there were sleepless nights…often…I would wake up dreaming that I had to roam around for admissions…n no college…let alone colleges in delhi…..I was scared to death if the arts colleges in kerala would take me……
wel…entrance results followed suit…atleast my rank was better than what I expected…not that I expected anything less than a 5 digit rank…there was the IIT results…which pronounced me ‘disqualified’…well…I had done nothing other than guessing for the exam…n if I get disqualified…u know the reason right...o yea…I attributed it to ‘being ms.unlucky’…hmmm…there was the AIEEE results after that….i was not really sad…I had somehow decided that I wasn’t cut out for engineering……after all the results came out I decided I wouldn’t write the BITS exam…I couldnt handle another failure….i was sure I would lose all touch with reality if I lost BITS…n anyways…for someone who dint get a decent rank in the kerala entrance I stood a ‘wonderful’ chance of clearing BITS…
hehe.…I thought that was the end of bad luck …things couldn’t get any worse…n I gladly turned over all my bad luck to my dad.it was kandakashani for him…poor thing…he ran up and down…trying to get me a seat in some respectable college in town…well…he managed to accomplish the difficult task…I got a seat in rajagiri….the most prestigious self financing college in town….i got geared to do what I had hated…studying engineering….in my opinion that’s what every1 did…come on…everybody did engineering…it was as though there were nothing but engineers in the world!even my granddad who wanted to see me an engineer said if u threw a stone…the person who was hit by the stone would be nothing but an engineer…well…to quote him verbatim he said ‘ella pattiyum oru engineerayirikkum’…well i wasn’t sure he wanted me to be another ‘patti’… So opposed to the idea I was…I wasn’t sure how I’d make myself study enginnering…anyways…1 by 1…all my friends started leaving town…they had all got admissions to colleges in different parts of the world would be exaggerating…bt…nonetheless…no 2 of us would be in the same place wherever it be in INDIA…classes started for them real soon…it was the time for tearful farewells…n goodbyes…n these were the people who were gonna realize my long cherished dreams…of going out of the state for higher education…while I was stuck under the watchful eye of my parents…again…bad luck!!I decided I would be a hostelite then…I couldnt stay home anymore…I was tired of seeing those 4 walls… they were the walls of a huge prison as far as I was concerned…..i waited a month…another month…another month….so many months for the college to start…6 months…ie half a year..i spent at home…looking forward to the occasional visits my friends paid when they came to town…I grew morose n tired…n with that came my hatred towards kerala politics…not that I was ever interested in it…but I hated the idea of politicians playing with lives of people like me who were stupid enough to join these colleges in the first place!anyways all that is over…I have left them behind me…college started a good 6 months later n now…I am 1 year down with engineering….n even though I am reluctant to admit this…I am happy deep down…n in my heart of hearts…I am PROUD to be doing what I am…well….my dad would probably die of laughter when he hears this….n I never really thought I could bring myself to accept the fact..but all the same…I LOVE engineering…muuuah engineering :)
