Adrenaline pumping, high blood pressure, low self confidence, dry tongues, wet sweaty palms, burning fevers, cold feet, tickling floating ribs, scratchy scalps, falling hair, rising heart rates, emotional break downs, suicides, nagging parents, killing parents, tension, hypertension, apprehensions, misapprehensions, popping pills, nervous thrills, growing pale, and even fail- undoubtedly, the greatest bane of student life is examination. The fact that we have to prove our smartness/aptitude/merit/intelligence/cleverness to a pack of jealous geriatric vultures convinced unshakably in our complete and unchangeable dumbness/inability/demerit/stupidity/ineptness made things bad enough, but then the world declared all students to be sex-starved dope junkies, irresponsible testosterone (or estrogen/progesterone or whatever) pumped moon shooters, crazed car drivers, and anti establishment law breakers.
Studies show a strong correlation between the arithmetic rise in suicides, and geometric rise in unexplainable blackouts amongst students with impending examinations. Indeed, students seem to drop like flies during the exam season, under the greater expectations that they carry on their dumb/unable/merit-less/stupid/inept shoulders. So, to help us along on the path to heaven or hell, or the enlightened nirvana of adult maturity discovered by people long before we were born, where things like Hiroshima or Iraq or Godhra or Nandigram happen with well oiled precision, well meaning elderly academicians, with their grandparental concerns, through established organs of monitoring education, like the NAAC and UGC, proposed that all higher educational institutes conduct entrance examinations.
Local entrepreneurs applauded the decisions and quickly set up thousands of coaching camps having residential complexes with year long courses like universities. Every conceivable entrance examination today has its own “unique” competing coaching centers with their USPs of 100% placement blazoned on colorful logos and advertisements across media with varying intrusiveness ranging from unforgiving commercials to internet pop-ups- all with catchy jingles. Less capital intensive investments were made by lesser businessmen, who satisfied themselves with tea and cigarette/bidi stalls, and their youthful easily-led-astray customers with aphrodisiacs of varying degrees of toxicity, monthly sales directly proportionate to the number of examinations held.
Board examinations have gone out of fashion, with teachers no longer teaching classes in schools, but rather preparing students for their entrance tests. Like useless appendices, the board certificates are stuffed into old smelly shoe boxes to yellow in the dark corners of old almirahs while their bold marks fade to embarrassed grays of doubtful value. Even as the entrance tests take on a new importance, they divide and flourish like an uncontrollable epidemic. More institutes appear out of the blue demanding their own right to impose admission tests, to be the sole hallowed judge of merit. The value of the widely known public examinations shrinks to insignificance as avenues from shady corners greased by financial, religious, caste-based, political and even sexual motivations provide futures to students under pressure to perform by a society busy convincing them of their uselessness. Reeling under the sch i zo p hren ia that modernity imposes so devastatingly, the average student is made to appear for over two score examinations ranging the spectrum of available human and inhuman education in his career of more failures than successes. He can only wonder at the illusion of choice, institutionalized plurality offers until he becomes the Marcusian One Dimensional Man.
We wonder, how come most people get in only one entrance test, even though everyone sits for all of them? Is it that all people know things only one day, and forget everything on other days? Is getting through a matter of it being your day? Is it all merely lottery? Is sitting for an exam merely a dance on chance? And how come all these institutions teaching roughly the same things are so very different? Is it the professors? Is it the syllabus? And then to complicate matters even further, one is left wondering how exactly does one decide which is the better faculty/syllabus/institution/course? Is it that all institutions have a different definition of merit? After all what is merit? Who is to decide the parameters by which merit is to be decided? And who is to select those who are to judge the so called merit of students? Is it to be the Judiciary, or the Executive, or the Legislature? And if that is to be, should we run to our half-caring uncomprehending mothers, in futile quests for protection, love and affection to warm our cold worlds of questionable academic pursuit, asking like Roger Waters, “Mother should I trust the government?”, risking being branded mad even by those who are to nurture us?
The addiction level of nicotine just rose by another notch while you were reading this… probably alcohol as well, but don’t judge hastily. The fault is of those people who created this system, turning human children into meat to be battered into shapes of conformation, forcing the use of stimulants and suppressants to shape mentalities to turn hands into ploughs, ploughs into swords, swords into guns, and guns into cash- the dough to shape all other things into dough. The pressure builds up inside until aspirins are no longer enough, and must be supplemented by sorbitrates, and other more interesting chemicals of doubtful reputation.
And so seemingly calm, we, the students quietly submit.
And we go for examinations in dingy, dirty, dark, urban centers, in the hot or cold, the sexy, sultry, polluted air causing an ethereal breathlessness unabated by the brightening fire at the tip of filtered (or unfiltered) sticks. We go out to places far from our homes and home towns, to reach venues through bandhs called over inevitable price hikes, through rain and floods which leave the most conscious of our curves exposed through translucent clothing to lusty eyes behind half opened windows. We wait, beside unopened gates and against the cold comfort of the damp walls while the rusty rain from rustier sheds overhead crucifies our feet to immovable patches of semi-dryness. We wait, for officials rolling in their lazy warm beds of idle pleasure enjoying hot cups of tea in the rainy morning, to turn up. And when they do, we walk like somnambulists through changing schedules and venues, trooping in like dripping dogs, and arranging ourselves on dead logs. We prove ourselves again and again for scores of merit-judges, and then some more again, reduced to being a statistic on their many charts. Like color coded lambs being led for slaughter bleat their pleas, our black or blue ink scribbling beg “choose me!” to unseen and unknown correctors. Finally, in the tired completion of the tests we attain a frightening emptiness inside, an emptiness which eats us up as we wait for some place to accept us with the same fervor with which we think we accept those places.
Fortunately, the emptiness, the mezzanine, the limbo of inaction in our cyclic life of eat, sleep and study lasts only a short while until the next examination heads down our way like a light at the end of the dark tunnel of non-existence. The lights, you realize now, are really those of an oncoming train, rushing down upon us with unstoppable momentum.
So we do the only thing we can do in a world heedless to our pains.
We wait...
The adrenaline pumping, the high blood pressure, the low self confidence, the dry tongues, the wet sweaty palms, the burning fevers, the cold feet, the tickling floating ribs, the scratchy scalps, the falling hair, the rising heart rates, all the emotional break downs, the suicides, nagging parents, Killing parents, tension, hypertension, apprehensions, misapprehensions, popping pills, nervous thrills, growing pale, and almost always fail...
Studies show a strong correlation between the arithmetic rise in suicides, and geometric rise in unexplainable blackouts amongst students with impending examinations. Indeed, students seem to drop like flies during the exam season, under the greater expectations that they carry on their dumb/unable/merit-less/stupid/inept shoulders. So, to help us along on the path to heaven or hell, or the enlightened nirvana of adult maturity discovered by people long before we were born, where things like Hiroshima or Iraq or Godhra or Nandigram happen with well oiled precision, well meaning elderly academicians, with their grandparental concerns, through established organs of monitoring education, like the NAAC and UGC, proposed that all higher educational institutes conduct entrance examinations.
Local entrepreneurs applauded the decisions and quickly set up thousands of coaching camps having residential complexes with year long courses like universities. Every conceivable entrance examination today has its own “unique” competing coaching centers with their USPs of 100% placement blazoned on colorful logos and advertisements across media with varying intrusiveness ranging from unforgiving commercials to internet pop-ups- all with catchy jingles. Less capital intensive investments were made by lesser businessmen, who satisfied themselves with tea and cigarette/bidi stalls, and their youthful easily-led-astray customers with aphrodisiacs of varying degrees of toxicity, monthly sales directly proportionate to the number of examinations held.
Board examinations have gone out of fashion, with teachers no longer teaching classes in schools, but rather preparing students for their entrance tests. Like useless appendices, the board certificates are stuffed into old smelly shoe boxes to yellow in the dark corners of old almirahs while their bold marks fade to embarrassed grays of doubtful value. Even as the entrance tests take on a new importance, they divide and flourish like an uncontrollable epidemic. More institutes appear out of the blue demanding their own right to impose admission tests, to be the sole hallowed judge of merit. The value of the widely known public examinations shrinks to insignificance as avenues from shady corners greased by financial, religious, caste-based, political and even sexual motivations provide futures to students under pressure to perform by a society busy convincing them of their uselessness. Reeling under the sch i zo p hren ia that modernity imposes so devastatingly, the average student is made to appear for over two score examinations ranging the spectrum of available human and inhuman education in his career of more failures than successes. He can only wonder at the illusion of choice, institutionalized plurality offers until he becomes the Marcusian One Dimensional Man.
We wonder, how come most people get in only one entrance test, even though everyone sits for all of them? Is it that all people know things only one day, and forget everything on other days? Is getting through a matter of it being your day? Is it all merely lottery? Is sitting for an exam merely a dance on chance? And how come all these institutions teaching roughly the same things are so very different? Is it the professors? Is it the syllabus? And then to complicate matters even further, one is left wondering how exactly does one decide which is the better faculty/syllabus/institution/course? Is it that all institutions have a different definition of merit? After all what is merit? Who is to decide the parameters by which merit is to be decided? And who is to select those who are to judge the so called merit of students? Is it to be the Judiciary, or the Executive, or the Legislature? And if that is to be, should we run to our half-caring uncomprehending mothers, in futile quests for protection, love and affection to warm our cold worlds of questionable academic pursuit, asking like Roger Waters, “Mother should I trust the government?”, risking being branded mad even by those who are to nurture us?
The addiction level of nicotine just rose by another notch while you were reading this… probably alcohol as well, but don’t judge hastily. The fault is of those people who created this system, turning human children into meat to be battered into shapes of conformation, forcing the use of stimulants and suppressants to shape mentalities to turn hands into ploughs, ploughs into swords, swords into guns, and guns into cash- the dough to shape all other things into dough. The pressure builds up inside until aspirins are no longer enough, and must be supplemented by sorbitrates, and other more interesting chemicals of doubtful reputation.
And so seemingly calm, we, the students quietly submit.
And we go for examinations in dingy, dirty, dark, urban centers, in the hot or cold, the sexy, sultry, polluted air causing an ethereal breathlessness unabated by the brightening fire at the tip of filtered (or unfiltered) sticks. We go out to places far from our homes and home towns, to reach venues through bandhs called over inevitable price hikes, through rain and floods which leave the most conscious of our curves exposed through translucent clothing to lusty eyes behind half opened windows. We wait, beside unopened gates and against the cold comfort of the damp walls while the rusty rain from rustier sheds overhead crucifies our feet to immovable patches of semi-dryness. We wait, for officials rolling in their lazy warm beds of idle pleasure enjoying hot cups of tea in the rainy morning, to turn up. And when they do, we walk like somnambulists through changing schedules and venues, trooping in like dripping dogs, and arranging ourselves on dead logs. We prove ourselves again and again for scores of merit-judges, and then some more again, reduced to being a statistic on their many charts. Like color coded lambs being led for slaughter bleat their pleas, our black or blue ink scribbling beg “choose me!” to unseen and unknown correctors. Finally, in the tired completion of the tests we attain a frightening emptiness inside, an emptiness which eats us up as we wait for some place to accept us with the same fervor with which we think we accept those places.
Fortunately, the emptiness, the mezzanine, the limbo of inaction in our cyclic life of eat, sleep and study lasts only a short while until the next examination heads down our way like a light at the end of the dark tunnel of non-existence. The lights, you realize now, are really those of an oncoming train, rushing down upon us with unstoppable momentum.
So we do the only thing we can do in a world heedless to our pains.
We wait...
The adrenaline pumping, the high blood pressure, the low self confidence, the dry tongues, the wet sweaty palms, the burning fevers, the cold feet, the tickling floating ribs, the scratchy scalps, the falling hair, the rising heart rates, all the emotional break downs, the suicides, nagging parents, Killing parents, tension, hypertension, apprehensions, misapprehensions, popping pills, nervous thrills, growing pale, and almost always fail...
