The Cut-Off

As the result tab of the CBSE website unveiled the output of the 365 dreadful days of making slow love with my five girlfriends: Physics, Chemistry, Maths, English and Engineering Drawing, I gingerly lifted my lazy ass of the chair to calculate the digits which would stay in my paltry memory all my life, the LCD showed: 92.5.
After not being able to get even close of fulfilling my IIT dreams and floundering my AIEEE exam, this was my last resort to show my parents and my relatives and my relatives’ relatives that I was not a gross loser.
I called my best friend Amit to seek some solace about the doldrums my career was falling into or wait, had already fallen into.

“kitne aaye”, he asked.
“92.5″, I muttered.
“Why do you sound so dejected, itne to mere 10th or 12th me mila kar bhi ni aaye”
“Shut the f#@k up, you just made it to NLU, you nerdy douche”, I chortled.
“Don’t worry bro, you will make it, cheer up”.

Make it.What on the earth did that mean.Is getting into the college of your dreams making it.Will a god damn three hour exam decide my fate.The way those 180 minutes were spent, either way, would have an indelible imprint on my life.Unfortunately, if you are an Indian where you’re living in a country with 1.25 billion brains, the answer is a definite affirmative.YES, I was screwed.It was official.

“Its not enough to make it to SRCC, Stephens, Hindu”, I replied, exasperated.

After hanging up, just out of curiosity I decided to wiki to find out the countries whose population was less than a million. It was somewhat baffling to see as many as 1.2 million students registering for the AIEEE. Wiki came up with some 50 odd countries, mostly African and mostly unpronounceable.I pondered over the gruesome injustice bestowed upon the miserable Indian student by the wily law makers. I wished that if I was born in some tribal or a jungle nomad family, I would have accomplished my dream of becoming an engineer or atleast get into a college which would make my parents proud and more importantly, make my friends envious.
Yesterday morning, I was anxiously waiting for the morning paper, to see the overall performance in the exams by nerds and goo-for-nothing-bookworms in various regions of India. I was baffled to read an interview of a student, touted to be All India CBSE topper, disappointed on missing a two marker in Economics.
99.6, read his scorecard. “Asshole”, muttered my vocal cords.
Over dinner my parents kept me asking the question that I hated the most. ” When are the University cut-offs coming”, my mom said caressing my hair. “We’re so proud beta, you can definitely get your dream college”. Though I wanted to say a blatant ‘no’, but seeing the expectation on her face, I reframed it to, ” I don’t know mom”.

Over the next few days, the newspapers filled with fingernails of toppers from various entrance exams from various coaching instituted hogged the limelight. Those with all India ranks were looked upon as mini- celebrities with postcards sized picks covering the 50 % space on the page. The remaining 50% was covered by the smiles they had on their faces. All this made me nauseated. I felt like inviting all these toppers into a gas chamber and slowly suffocate them to death.

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Tags: High College Cut Offs