This test was the bane of my existence for those few weeks. Ah well! Who am I kidding? That’s probably saying too much, but I did spend an inappropriately arduous amount of time with the English vocabulary those days. This test was perhaps one of the only things I was really passionate about in a long while. My reasons for taking the test were ‘inchoate’ (See! How it makes you!) and fuzzy, even to me to an extent, but my resolve was strong. I was concentrating on beating the **** out of the test but did not really mull over what would be the aftermath of it.
Although it is just an English exam it usually mandates weeks and weeks of resolute preparations. From the moment I made up my mind, all my spare time, spared from ‘lazing around’ that is, was spent in studying ‘The Bible’ of the test. Though I am not the perfect example of the agony it elicits from most people, I still surpassed my own standards, which have slowly drooped over the past years. I even sacrificed an invaluable vacation on its account. And with all the other usual occupations of that stressful placement semester, it was an albatross around the neck.
In the preceding week, the red letter day was approaching fast, hence the study no longer avoidable on the account of a crappy logic of how I always do things on the 11th hour, 59th minute and they work out just fine. Not a particularly pleasantly week that was. On that momentous October morning, I woke up with an apprehensive tingle in my stomach. A couple of calls and texts wishing me good luck boosted my dwindling morale. I assured myself that I would sail through this ordeal with grace. I took a hot steaming shower to ease my nerves, picked up my papers and left for the exam. A friend was kind enough to drop me to the barely discernible recess in a shabby part of town they called the test center and load me with enough food supplies to last for an entire day. I slung my bag over my shoulder, double checked the admit card, called out a hasty goodbye and entered with a nervous smile, mixed with tiny scoops of anxiety and confidence. As I walked past the reception, I felt a sudden urge to call up my mother. Talking to her always calms me and if anytime, I needed it now. She told me to keep a cool head and concentrate and assured me that ‘I could do it’. Best advice ever. I snaked through the narrow corridors to the check in area and fidgeted around till they called out my name. The small talk with the instructor was mildly irritating, but I shut that out as I quickly signed the sheets before they escorted me to my terminal.
There I was, in the small room, facing the fateful screen surrounded by the heavy silence of the cheap pair of headphones, with just a pencil and an empty piece of paper to my aid. I needed to summon all my reserves of patience though just to sit through another exam after having suffered through a gazillion of those in IIT. Somewhere deep down I believed I was destined to do well out there despite my nervousness. I believed this was the key to my future and just a few hours of perseverance would set the path for what I had only dreamt was forthcoming. And besides, I had never failed at this before.
But destiny works in the strangest ways. I came out feeling like my whole world had turned upside down. My only facet I had confidence in anymore had failed me. I had looked at the screen for minutes, blinked my eyes till I could not deny that it was for real. The butterflies in my stomach had metamorphosed into little baby dinosaurs devouring my insides. There I was, in Gurgaon, alone, I could not bear to talk to anyone and thus I turned off my phone after leaving a message at my parents’ that I was fine and they need not worry. I ambled on the autumn sidewalk treading over scattered leaves wondering what went wrong. After a while, people (so to say the street vendors, the shop owners and such) began to notice my continual stray presence. Thus, to not seem a lunatic, I meandered through hordes of happy people in shopping stores and pretended to look around. I tried to cheer myself up by convincing my watchful self to loosen the purse strings for this one day. But the devils couldn’t be appeased by this tiny offering, they roared for a sacrifice.
Eventually, after having spent the afternoon in auto-critique, I was beginning to realize there was nothing I could do and the mental and physical exhaustion wore me down. Also, it wasn’t the safest place in the world and it had grown dark outside while I was enjoying the luxury of my parents’ hard earned electronic money to keep my mind off my incompetence, so I decided to head back home. I hurriedly got out of the Levis store I had been procrastinating in, found my way to the highway and looked around for an auto to take me to the metro station. I stood on the crumbling footpath at the edge of the road for about half an hour and all I could see were cars and the overstuffed tempo-vans with people jutting out of every opening, which by the way distinctly reminded me of the Fevicol advertisements I loved as a kid. I was wondering what was wrong, why were there no autos, or even buses. Was there a strike today? Or maybe some road construction thing where they just block the traffic off without any prior warnings or notices (Sometimes Delhi is a mess!), but no of course, the cars were all streaming through, so it had to be something else.
And after mulling over the possibilities in my head, I finally remembered one of the reasons why people hated living in Gurgaon. Because there was no decent public transport system in the every-where-you-look-you-can-see-a-fucking-skyscraper city! The metro saved the grace for commute to and fro Gurgaon, but the rest was gaga. The alternative was a taxi. Although I was not one of those ‘born with a silver spoon in their mouths’ kids, this qualified as an exceptional situation which warranted the use of a cab service. So I pulled out my phone with confidence to dial one of those numbers I always saw on the back of radio cabs but rarely dialed. I switched it on and quickly tapped in the number and as I was about to hit Call, guess what? My phone died! How cliche! So, I was on square one again with nowhere to go to and now with no way to contact anyone who could help me. All the terrible stories I had heard or read in the newspapers replayed in my head at the speed of light. Time was running out and I had to find my way to the station real soon however that might be.
Harrowed and tired, just as I was about to hit panic, I spotted a lone rickshaw in a dark alley just off the main road. I crossed the road at a cheetah’s pace and nudged the ‘rickshaw-wala’ who was napping on the backseat. He sprang down from the rickshaw and enquired politely, “Madam, kahan jaana hai aapko?” I needed to assess whether this man could turn out to be some crazy serial killer or a member of a kidnappers’ ring or, in short, off his rocker, if I wanted to take the ride at this hour. He was probably in his forties, though his hard sallow face added a decade and a half to his appearance. I flashed back on the Marasmus pictures we saw in biology textbooks on seeing his scrawny frame with his ribs jutting out where most people I knew sported a healthy belly. His brows were beaded with sweat in the pleasant, one could even call it a mildly cold evening; probably remnants of his last gig. The tobacco stained teeth visible inside his cracked lips did not help his case but his eyes gleamed with the content of a man about to go home after a day’s worth of hard work. He wore a ragged white short kurta, with a muddy almost yellow dhoti and Hawaii chappals; a farmer’s garb very common of rickshaw-walas. He did not reek of alcohol or cigarettes, he was polite and I could probably discount the tobacco bearing in mind that I was desperate; it was not like there were tens of rickshaws standing around.
So I answered, “Iffco Chowk, Metro station, chaloge?” He nodded imperceptibly and as per the norm, quoted the price. And the tutelage I had been privileged to, for all those years, like every other commuter, took over me. I had spent the last few hours taking an insanely expensive exam and shopping in over the top exorbitant stores, and yet I haggled with the man for a sum of money five times of which I could probably drop out of my pocket and never even notice. Welcome to the land of clear conscience!
When I had finally negotiated to my heart’s content, I climbed up and the rickshaw wala begun cycling it towards my destination. It was a long way. Although I was still brooding over my misfortune and silently contemplating my next step, I could not help noticing the route we took. We crossed traffic jammed highways and bustling malls shining with a thousand lights and deserted streets, and it all seemed unreal somehow. I just felt so small against the backdrop of the whole world. There I was, losing my head over not getting a perfect score when I could see people struggling to find the most comfortable place to sleep on on the footpaths from where they might not be kicked out in the middle of the night by policemen who were just doing their jobs. And I saw roadside vendors trying to make enough money to buy their families dinner for the night. And two young filthy boys happily playing with a makeshift cloth ball on the side of the road while my little brother cribbed for the newest Playstation. And a scantily covered malnourished old lady barely even capable of getting up from the sidewalk where she was seated, begging for alms. And rickshaw walas, quite like mine, who were pulling the burden of rich ungrateful kids like me across the streets just to make their daily wages. And for the first time in the day, I felt lucky. I felt like there was more to life than some stupid exam. I could just pick something and be worried or unhappy or more worried about it, but I would be losing that time of my life to things that don’t even matter in the bigger picture. I was lucky to be so privileged and for that few minutes I remembered that, something I should be doing more often.
Though don’t mistake me for a do-gooder saint, who had a moment of enlightenment and relinquished all her material comfort to serve the less-privileged and then left to reside in the Himalayas for the rest of life, or for that matter Somalia helping the poor kids. But I did have a moment of humanity, which each one of each probably has from time to time. But unlike most of those times, I intended to do something about it. Albeit something very very tiny in the face of the whole setting I just described, but well ‘Boond boond se sagar banta hai’ (I love Hindi idioms, they do express the feelings perfectly sometimes!). I had spent some ten minutes earlier bargaining with the poor fellow and I felt extremely guilty and heartless. I could probably just not have one dinner in the plush South Delhi restaurants and it would be enough to compensate for all the times I had been the “Bharat ki jagrut yuva”. So, on my way there I racked my brains over how I could get the cat back in the bag.
We had reached the metro station. I extracted a hundred rupee note from my pocket and handed it to the rickshaw wala. He held out his hand, but seeing the note he said, “Khulle de do Madam” and simultaneously searched through his pockets to see if he had enough change as it was more than double the agreed-upon fare. I chirped, “Rehne do bhaiya, khulle nahi chahiye”. It pleased me immensely just to say those words. I was jumping with joy inside and was hoping to see a smile on his face or some kind of positive acknowledgement, but to my disappointment he did not even raise his head. He was still busy with his tattered purse and pretended to take no notice. Slightly crestfallen, I turned around and walked towards the stairs to the metro. I knew I had done it for my own conscience, but it wouldn’t have hurt to see the man be a bit appreciative.
As I boarded the escalators, I stole a last glance towards the rickshaw wala. I expected him to have gone, or to be involved with another passenger like me, haggling over a couple of bucks. To my surprise, he was looking up towards me, and an incredulous smile adorned his tired face. I smiled back at him involuntarily, and he raised his hand to his head, in the manner of respect I remember doing while going home after school when army vehicles passed by our school bus (Boy! Do I have random baggage back from my school days!), as a gesture of grateful thankfulness. And that gesture which my trivial deed had invoked made me happier than I would have been had I smashed the test to smithereens. This realization dawned on me just when I lost sight of the road seconds later, though my upbeat mood stuck with me for the rest of the journey. So this is what it felt like when people donated huge amounts of money for good causes, maybe this multiplied by those ‘huge amounts’. Not that it was a big deal, but I felt good about myself, like I was a better person than what I thought I was a few minutes back. I managed to squeeze the exam tragedy to some obscure corner of my brain to be fretted about later. In fact I even decided to call up the people I had been avoiding all day. But oh! My phone was not off by choice now, so that had to wait till the next new morning.
Days later, I forgot about this little incident but my test score did not really fade out of my brain as I had incessantly hoped it would. I must say bad memories stick way longer in the head than good ones. But, whenever I think back to this incident, it reminds me of a scene in FRIENDS (my favorite TV show by far!). Its Joey and Ross and maybe once in their million years, Joey is the one showering the wisdom, lol. He says, ‘Who cares what the picture looks like! Maybe it’s not what you thought, but its a brand new baby and a brand new picture!’ Just reminds me that things may not fall into place as you want them, but being happy with what you do have is what matters.
This trivial incident, the faint shadow of congeniality, the warmth of someone’s happy smile, helps me bring things back into perspective.
