Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The exotic feline just passed away

Life is difficult. You have to bear with the everyday abuses that your bosses make, do the work to see the credit go to someone else, stand in the bus because you have to offer that solitary empty seat to a lady and the fly just committed suicide (overwhelmed with its own difficult life) by drowning in your morning cup of tea.
Difficulties have a way of coming at you and pounding you but in the process it makes you stronger. There was one such difficulty which consumed many an intellectual personas this week. Some fought to live another day, some conquered the difficulty and some simply gave in to the sheer pressure and nervous wreckage that it caused. Never was this feline specie so daunting and so coveted in the history of human kind. This 16th November was a very important date for some of the people.
CAT commands a fear and respect just like the Yuvraj Singh’s centuries against England, but more than that it has the power to change the lives for some which is beyond their imagination. I was one such candidate who was subjected to this treatment on last Sunday when I sat to write down the entrance exam to the most coveted institutes in India. Oblivious to the fact that I am competing against some 0.3 million aspirants I was attempting the paper at my own peril. Vying for that elusive seat at the acme of the institutes which teach management, I was quite amused at the proceedings of that consequential day.
Frowned brows were the expression of the day accompanied with faces of sheer concentration, sly smiles of overconfident aspirants and happy faces of those who had lost all hopes. God must have had a busy day with plenty of suddenly turned spiritual beings thronging the centre. I was bowing to the spirit and the never ending quest of knowledge of a middle aged lady who had come to write the exam. I was thinking that when I am of her age I would never have the courage to battle out a CAT paper when she promptly destroyed my inferiority complex by giving some words of encouragement to her daughter whom she had accompanied to the centre. There was a huge crowd of students blocking the entrance of the test centre but there was another small group of extremely desperate people who had gathered at another door which got me curious. My curiosity was swiftly answered when that crowd broke into jubilations on the opening of the door which I realized was named “Toilets”. They were literally under pressure before the test for quite some time.
In between the frenzy, the gates of the centre finally opened and all of us rushed into it like we were some hungry earthquake victims vying for food aid. As I sat on my desk with the weapons of my choice – two wooden pencils, eraser and sharpener, I could not help but notice a pretty girl sitting next to me quite anxiously. Regaining my concentration back I focused on the formalities and waited tensely for the paper to arrive. The exotic feline arrive just as I had imagined, neatly covered in a plastic wrapper like a freshly wed bride adorned in wedding dress waiting for someone to open the hood of its sari, and there it was lying before me like some angel with a halo around it. The test started at the stipulated time and my requests to god for an all India earthquake strong enough to just postpone the test to some other time were evidently ignored.
Silence……Pin drop silence prevailed and you could hear the smallest of shuffling and coughing. I feverishly started marking answers hoping that they were right. Nervousness and tension were on the top of my mind when grappling with a particularly tricky question. Such a question which you think you can do and want to take advantage of it, but still you are not able to arrive at any answer. The limited edition of my brain with some pretty tired neurons was working at its full capacity and the world seemed suspended in all the dimensions when suddenly the ice was broken when the guy sitting ahead of me farted. The sonic boom reverberated through the classroom attracting some giggles and calming the nerves though our olfactory organs were not that amused.
The stipulated time got over and I was relieved. The exotic feline had just passed away with promises to come next year bringing with itself hope, fear, excitement and testing the audacity of aspirants like me. Difficulties in life can be quite amusing some times.

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