(Mis)Fortunate
Finally, I found what I was searching for. The following post is about my (or should I say our) first semester results. ‘Our’ because it tied us together as students and even more as friends. This was written a long time back and was reserved to be one of my blog posts. Now it will see the light of the day. SNOOTs please forgive the grammar.
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February 8, 2005.Home 5:45am:Not until recent times I have made a habit of setting an alarm on my mobile phone. I don’t get up with a single alarm setting .For this reason I have to set multiple alarms and thank God, my mobile (Nokia N Gage) has the feature embedded. If i want to get up at 6:15am then I have to set the first alarm half an hour earlier and others at fifteen minutes apart till my target is reached. And that has been the practice that works for me.
But on this very day I didn’t need multiple buzzers, only single satisfied the purpose. It was rumored that the results of my first half year of (hard) work(engineering first year) are going to be declared or rather i should say, I am going to be aware in how many subjects I failed to score up to university's expectations.
6:15am:Eventually I made through to wash basin to do my daily chores, I am so stung by emotions that the choked throat and the coldness is not felt by my sensory organs. I take my brush, which had grown older than six months and I think it’s time for a change (‘thinking of a change’ drained three more months away), apply paste on it and be done with it. Not until then I realize that my choked throat is making it difficult for me to breath by nose and as my mouth is busy there is not alternative than suffocate. I realize that my hair have grown over my ears and needed a cut. And I don’t think it’s worth mentioning of overgrown beard. But i think, at least, this will show that there is something of which I am sad about.
6:30am:Dad makes a cup of tea and I am in the biggest room of the house. Sitting on a comfortable sofa, which today doesn’t provide any comfort. I wait till the tea reduces to my edible temperature (I don’t like hot and spicy things)I take Marie biscuits, two at a time, soak them in the tea and eat the soaked part to realize that I dipped them for longer time and they disappeared in the cup full of warm tea. How lost am I!!!!
6:40am:I get ready for my bath. About 10 minutes and I am done with it. I am, myself surprised how did I do it so quickly. But other questions were hovering on my mind like dark clouds and let me assure you with no silver lining.I jumped into my jeans and a cotton tee. Sprayed some perfume kept in my parent's bedroom (Long before I have quitted to waste money on perfume and hair gel and stuff like that).
7:10am:Latching the door I pressed the lift button of elevator. And obeying my command it levitates for me and reaches my destination, the ground floor. The only thing I find curious about the lift is the company who built it. EROS, it is named. I looked up for that word only to find it means ‘God of love’. Can’t imagine what was going through founder's mind while giving such kind of name to an elevator company. I dropped my hand in the right pocket where i usually keep keys of whatever and found the bike's in the right place. I kicked and there we go.
7:30am:Climbing the stairs of FOB(Foot Over Bridge) of Dadar station, I see many people hailing for their work spaces. Some are eager to get there. I can’t figure it out why. I reach platform no.3 where fast locals arrive on western railway line. Seven minutes on the "time left" column of the indicator of 7:32 Vasai Fast train. I usually land up on the very state of the indicator every day. The crowd, the noise all seems to be minimized today by my little system called brain as it is diverging its sources to one question. HOW MANY KTs?(KT is slang for ATKT which is abbreviated from Allowed To Keep Term).
8:45am:In the college on the second floor in the corridor, front of my class, standing with friends (only one managed to clear all subjects). Everybody is contributing to uplift the mood by cracking jokes and sharing each other’s sorrow, but one is quiet. No laugh is whole hearted, no smile is genuine. As the time passed it eased the pain within. Pain it cannot be called but the end result was it.
9:15am:The lecture was scheduled to be of engineering drawing. The professor turned up late. But that half an hour showed me what the whole day could not. Lecture went smooth and suddenly cell phone of my friend began ringing and he answered it to know that mark sheets were being distributed and my heart sank.
11:10am:Break time, it actually meant ‘break time’ and everyone was rushing.All crowded the personnel giving ‘death certificates’ to them and contrary to few. Keeping my cool I decided I will be one of the last ones to collect.
11:30am:Eventually the clock struck thirteen and the Satan’s scroll in my hand. I glanced at it and thought it was in Latin but soon I regained my senses and figured out that I cleared the majors and was swept out in CP-1(computer programming I.)
It didn’t Matter anymore because I passed in engineering mechanics(by whiskers though) and that mattered even more than INDIA winning over Pakistan in Cricket World Cup.
12:15pm:Back in canteen all the things settled, it went all normal. Except for two of my friends. One flunked in 4 and other in 2. Rest of us in one. To add to my solace, got a glimpse of F.C. (explain it later)and someone told me F.C. got 4 ATKTs that eventually that reduced to one, from a genuine source[i decided that i will never share a word with F.C. if i am in deeper shit]All went as it is after that.
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One Day before the Computer Programming I (CP I)Re-examination:To be honest I never have failed any academic exam in my whole life and I had never had experience to re study the whole subject again but here I was a day before re-examination not wanting to study a bit.
I had applied for re-calculation of marks and the result was same I had scored twenty six in Computer Programming I.
The next step was to apply for re-evaluation of your mark sheets. I had applied for re-evaluation as well. I was pretty confident that something was amiss.
I was waiting till a day before exam to hear from the examination board. I could not bear the wait and I decided to take a risk to go to University and find out myself what these people were up to. I called up a friend (for moral support) and we went to University.
Trust me this was the biggest risk I was taking as it would have sucked most of my time and I would not have had enough time to study for the examination the next day.
I reached university and asked for my re-evaluation result. And they told me that they had mailed it to my house (damn Indian Post). It took me some time to make the officer understand my plight and then he was willing to share with me the photo copy of the same letter which was supposedly mailed. I was too damn scared to open it. I asked my friend to open it.
Being a prankster himself he told me that I got fifty seven in the subject. I could not believe what I heard. I snatched my ‘release papers’ from him and it was indeed fifty seven marks. I breathed a sigh of relief. That was one of the most happiest moment in my life and I had proved myself to be worthy of Engineering and I had come out from this battle unscathed.
P.S.: This is an old excerpt and it may have lots of grammatical mistakes. I didn’t want to change it because I wanted to keep it the same as I wrote it back then.