He was aware of a slight flutter inside him. His heart was beating faster and louder than usual. Expected, he thought. He had been preparing for 2 years for this. The moment of truth, so to speak. He told himself to calm down. His body wasn't responding for some reason, he was still in a state of mild hyperventilation. CALM DOWN! BREATHE! He almost shouted to himself. He took some deep calming breaths and felt better. He had a glance at his wrist watch. Any time now...
The calmness all around him made his thoughts drift to earlier times. His mother on the phone. "Oh Mrs. Sharma, he's always been coming in the top three in the mock tests his coaching classes have taken, tomorrow's JEE should be a mere formality now." He remembered being mildly annoyed, actually quite annoyed with that statement. What people (READ: parents) don't realize is that there are a hundred different random factors at work whenever you have to write an exam, and many of them are at work before you even give it. Doing well in a preparatory test doesn't mean you'll ace the real thing. Screwing up over the most trivial things during an exam(especially an important one) is the easiest thing in the world. Hell, you don't even have to do anything for that to happen, it's like an avalanche, the small snowball slowly but surely becoming more and more gigantic, until it is outright impossible to turn back and undo what has happened. But most elders don't understand that. They need to realize that things are not so simple: just study regularly and you'll get the required marks, they think, as if the two have a direct linear proportionality between them without any other factors. If that were true, almost a quarter of the contenders should be passing, shouldn't they? No, there are other agents involved, more subtle ones that mess around with you in your head. Psychological stress, parental pressure, rat races: these terms make a lot of sense when you go through them. But they never understood, even when he tried to explain. No wonder he got so....*TRIIIIIIING!!!!!*
Oh shit! The bell! He snapped back to reality with a sudden shudder. It had begun. Focus, he told himself, focus! He grabbed the question paper the invigilators were handing out with trembling hands. He flipped it over, argus-eyed and alert.
He came across the first question in chemistry:
2.5 mL of 2/5 M weak monoacidic base (Kb = 1 × 10–12 at 25ºC) is titrated with 2/15 M HCl in water at 25ºC. The concentration of H+ at equivalence point is (Kw = 1 × 1014 at 25ºC)
(A) 3.7 × 10–13 M (B) 3.2 × 10–7 M
(C) 3.2 × 10–2 M (D) 2.7 × 10–2 M
I know this! I've come across this one of the many preparatory exams I've given before this. But then he stopped. Was he absolutely sure of the answer? The question seemed too easy, maybe it was a trick question. Maybe the paper setter wanted the students to think the question is easy and mark the wrong answer while it actually was a red herring. Maybe he was a sadistic bastard playing reverse psychology. But then, maybe he expected the students to think of all this and maybe the question was actually simple, he was hoping the students would think too much(they were budding IITians after all) and mark the wrong answer even though the question was simple...Suddenly he realized that he had taken too much time with this one objective question. He still hadn't marked anything. Tick, tock, tick, tock..... no, no have confidence in yourself! You've done this before! Mark the option you thought was right initially!
His pencil was shaking in his hand. Arrrrgh! I can't even hold the damn thing properly! He kept the pencil on the desk and tried relaxing his hand. He glanced down the question paper and realized that the first question was the only one from the chapter on equivalence. If he got it wrong, then all the time he spent understanding the principles of the whole chapter, doing all kinds of sums in it would be for nothing. He started feeling shaky again. He finally decided to leave it and come to it later. He saw the next one.
Among the following, the surfactant that will form micelles in aqueous solution at the lowest molar concentration at ambient conditions is -
(A) CH3(CH2)15N+(CH3)3Br– (B) CH3(CH2)11OSO−3 Na+
(C) CH3(CH2)6COO–Na+ (D) CH3(CH2)11N+(CH3)3Br–
He read and reread it. He was clueless. Shit! The first question was tricky and now I don't know this one. His confidence started oozing away. I don't know anything! What have I even prepared? Suddenly all the earlier exams didn't matter. Hell, they never mattered, did they? They were there so I do well in this test which I'm obviously not. I shouldn't have worked so hard for those exams, staying awake till three and sleeping for meager hours. I'm an idiot! In the pressure he didn't realize that others were probably finding it difficult as well. He thinking was far too irrational by now for that. Things were falling apart slowly. He found it increasingly difficult to focus.
Suddenly his brain started doing other calculations, at a surprisingly fast pace considering his situation: he had prepared for this exam for 2 years, assuming 2 hours of study a day(more than reasonable, pretty less actually) that comes out to be around 1,460 hours. And all his efforts were going to be judged in these 6 hours which meant that every minute here was worth around 4 hours of his study time in the past 2 years, and the minutes were slowly slipping by.....2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours.....NOOOOO! What am I doing? I am wasting all those hours! Concentrate! CONCENTRATE!
But it was of no use. The desperation grew exponentially, feeding upon itself like some sort of mutated virus. He almost broke down from the dysphoria. His entire body was shaking now, the beats of his heart thudding inside his head. He was suddenly overcome by a bout of claustrophobia. The walls were closing in on him from all directions, about to crush him. Every little sound he could hear around him: the scribbling of pen on paper, the gentle steps of the supervisors on the concrete floor, the whirling fan, the slow rhythmic tick-tocks of the wall-clock, the occasional fluttering of a bird's wings outside the window as it flew, the mild honking of cars far away, all of them started sharply pricking his ears, like the screeching of nails on a blackboard. His breathing was obstructed as well for some reason, as if someone was choking him. He frantically started looking left and right, all the other students were calmly answering their paper.....3.2 lakh competitors were racing ahead of him every second. NO! He needed to get out of this room, get out of it right NOW!
"Miss! I need to use the toilet!" he almost shouted out in a frantic voice. The teacher walking next to him looked mildly amused by the tension in his voice. "Sure thing beta, it's up ahead and to your left." He practically ran out of the class, not stopping till he was alone and isolated inside one of the toilet cubicles.
He started hearing the familiar voices again. "My son has always been coming first in school just like his brother, putting him in IIT classes was but the obvious thing to do. He didn't even protest much when I told him he had to take science." He wondered why he didn't. True, he used to get good marks in science and maths earlier, but so do quite a few people in every single school. That doesn't really imply that he would find college science interesting, it was nothing like what they were taught in school, he had already seen that in the last 2 years. The truth was, he never had time to think, or rather he never took out time to think after the results came out. What he was "supposed" to do after his tenth was already decided by the other members of his family. Did he regret not thinking about himself now? Or was it too late for that already?
More voices. "I'm sure you'll do well, your father and elder brother are also IITians, it runs in the family." He was so appalled by the absurdity of the statement even now that he almost laughed out loud. Runs in the fucking family, what a laugh. Did that mean he wouldn't have to study his ass off, that he would just make it because it is written in his bloodline? I don't think so. But obviously, if he doesn't make it, he will be labelled the black sheep of the family faster than you can say "IIT". But if he does make it, it really wouldn't be a big deal, he was merely continuing the legacy, he wasn't really doing anything even remotely groundbreaking or momentous, it was all done and achieved before him. Sometimes, he felt like cursing the very family he was born into.
No, no, no, NO!!! There is no point reminiscing about that now. Every second I'm wasting now is worth so much! I have to give it my best shot. I need to have something to show for everything I've done in the past. Come on, I can do it! With some new found optimism totally incongruous considering his situation, generated from hopelessness more than logical thinking, he quickly walked to the basin. He doused his face with cold water, wiped it quickly and almost ran back to his class.
In the end, he ended up leaving chemistry in the middle, moving on to maths now. But the loss of time had taken a toll on him. His sanguinity didn't last long, soon he started becoming increasingly edgy and nervous again, aware that all the while the clock was ticking away.....16 hours, 20 hours, 24 hours.....but he hung on this time. As more minutes elapsed and he got more questions under his belt, he felt better. But the lack of time hurt him badly in the end. He didn't even reach the second half of the chemistry paper.....
The bell rang. The sound gave him a sudden start, as if waking up from a trance. He realized that he was still edgy, his heart rate still off the charts. He wasn't exactly aware of what transpired in the last three hours. One of the teachers collected his sheet from his desk.
Slowly everything slid into focus. He had screwed up. His paper was an unmitigated disaster. There was no way to change it now. There was no hope. It was over. All the things that he had missed over the last 2 years, staying at home studying while friends outside were having fun, getting cut off from his social circle, all the computer games and movies and outings and concerts missed were for nothing.
He slowly got up and walked over and picked up his bag. Time seemed to have slowed down or sped up, he couldn't even decide which one. He dragged himself out of the class and down the stairs outside the college. Everywhere around him were voices, only this time they didn't have their origins inside his head.
"Dude that wasn't so bad at all!"
"Chem ka last part was too easy, wahan score ho jayega."
"IT'S FINALLY OVER!!! THAT BITCH OF AN EXAM IS DONE!!!"
"Man, maths screwed me up badly!"
"Phy was fine, math was fucking hard but chem made it up for me."
His feet suddenly froze. His parents were standing at the gate, their smiling faces radiating more confidence than hope. He looked down at his feet and took a deep breath.
He walked on.
