ME & MY WORLD

As per the wise elderly advises, the ultimate aim of 10th standard is to score some freakishly high percentage, high enough to get a seat in a big school/coaching center holding the magic door to IIT. As I entered the big school, I realized all that hype was pure Bullshit. Nothing much had changed. The focus just shifted from percentage to percentile and from marks to all India rank. Entrance exams were portrayed as the most important phase of evolution, life decider. We were made to believe that with admit to IIT or NIT, comes free is a 20 LPA job or a doorway to the great American/European dream. Again bullshit and this time the big time bullshit.

Time @ NIT Trichy has periodically managed to open several holes at different parts of my brain sustaining a continuous outflow of hope. Final review cum grand viva drilled the bottom most. After writing down the thickest thesis in college, I entered the viva hall in order to enlighten our so called external examiner who instead exposed me to the eternal darkness. For a minute I doubted my own multiplication skills. I was either trying to teach computational mathematics to a chimpanzee or I was lost in a parallel universe where the laws of our world physics were no more valid. Otherwise my struggle to explain natural aspiration pressure could have been saved (how hard is it to understand that ambient pressure is approximately 1 Bar)!! All my attempts failed until I got the benefit of the panel’s pity over my plea in the name of mother earth. Any way, the torture got over as our esteemed examiner’s tiny brain was satisfied with our frustration. I came out of the room with a million dollar advice: “DO NOT DREAM so much” and as I was coming back, standing insulted was the front wall of Octa which has been daring us to dream all four years.

But that was it. My trial was over. I was a free bird. The barren lands of Trichy were as disgusting as ever and so was every thought of all those useless theory classes. But something had changed though I couldn’t figure out what it was. May be I was addicted to some inmate(s). The good buy hug to a friend who left right after exam was very strange. Even the most chat and ever blabbering guy was silent on the last day. I was not sad, neither was I happy. It was something very different, something unexplained, something unique. Solitude prevailed as my thoughts were uudecoded. Stood unaltered was absolute cluelessness.

If I look back to the simple days of school, I wonder what were those wise asses thinking before raining down with their lifetime advices? 12th standard was a just gust of wind as compared to this hurricane. The only thing that looks certain is ambiguity and I am not talking about professional life alone. I wish Heisenberg were alive to explain this uncertainty.