A Tribute To Competitive Exams

We, frends, were talking, or shall I say reminiscing, our high school days a few days back. Why do we do this as frequently as we do? Because it's absolutely funny. Or so we think. And one of the, now inexplicable, things we did in High school was taking competitive exams. O how competitive we were! If only competitive is defined as taking competitive exams whenever and wherever it's held.

Whether we had it in us to succeed in some of those exams was never an issue. Not because we were geniuses. But because we never cared about it. Maths olympiad preliminary round we took despite cognizance of the fact that Maths, and Maths of the type that's seen in olympiads, was not our forte. And we, i.e, me, him and him took the exam alongwith many others. And took it with an air of confidence that would have put to shame even the eventual national level winners. That we were far from being successful does not require mention.

Then there were talent search exams. Not just the popular NTSE. There were numerous searches of similar hue to find out talents that are hidden, or are lost, somewhere amidst the chaotic great Indian school system. The probability of finding one or all three of us writing these exams intended to search talent, whenever it was held in Bangalore, was 100%. (If we weren't there then it would have only meant that only the organisers and their kids were taking the exam.) Despite that, none of these searches found us. Oh yes, one of them, NTSE, did find Arjun. He, if my memory is correct, won a state level scholarship too. He, again, if my memory is correct, refused to take that scholarship as a mark of protest against the sheer injustice meted out to us in a majority of these talent search exams.

Well, if you thought only Maths and science interested us then that just shows how grossly you have misunderstood us. We, again the previously mentioned trio of me, Arjun and Arvind, took Ramayana and Mahabharatha exams as well. If you thought we took it just because the exam fee was low and we had money at our disposal to afford it, you are again wrong. We took it with all seriousness. We read the prescribed books 'Kishore Ramayana' and a similar one on Mahabharatha for the respective exams. I read both but wrote only one of the exams. Infact, much of the 'critical acclaim' that the Mahabharatha series on this blog received, can be attributed to a thorough understanding of the great epic which inturn was possible only because I studied for the aforementioned exam. Arvind wrote both the exams. It was widely reported in unknown media circles that he passed the examination in 'flying colours'. He, though, flatly denies such allegations.

During the same time, we came to know that ISKCON was conducting exams to ascertain the level of Krishna consciousness in high school students. I, though being a religious person, never had(and neither have now) much faith in ISKCON. But competitive spirit was the overriding factor which made me write the exam. So did the other two. ISKCON had published a book on the life on Krishna, targeted for high school children I believe. This was the prescribed textbook. It had the phrase 'transcendental nature of the supreme Lord' all over it. The exam had a multiple choice question paper. Questions had options which were as far away in context as society and chemicals. Here's a sample:
Krishna consciousness helps you
a. Get more marks in social studies
b. Donate money to ISKCON
c. Play ice hockey
d. Helps you have a healthy heterosexual life
We had quite a good laugh writing it. And thus was added another exam to an already lengthy list of exams we took.

Anyone who studied in Vijaya High School with Samskrutha as the first language would have invariably taken the exams 'Prathama', 'Dwitiya', 'Truthiya'. Atleast the first one. And some like me would have taken all the three and subsequent ones too. This being the case how could we be left behind. Our high school, which gave absurd importance to exams like these, had special coaching classes targeted to train students to achieve excellence in these exams. We attended those classes too. Wrote the exam. And added one more participation certificate to our academic profile. Nothing more.

One more exam for which our school conducted coaching classes was Vedic Maths. By now, I need not tell that the participants of this exams included me. Arvind too. Arvind shamelessly scored a 100. He got a plastic medal for that. He was awarded that medal in front of the school assembly. The embarrassment on his face was way too obvious. I cleverly avoided this embarrassment by getting 99 and thereby getting only, what was in abundance by then, the participation certificate. The reason for getting that one mark less was I answered wrongly the question which asked us to name the exam's organising organisation. This apparently was on the question paper itself. But it did not come to my notice.

This competitive streak and overestimation of our abilities also meant we took the IIT entrance exam a couple of years later. What happened there should be obvious to you by now dear reader. That's it for this post then.

A tale of two nations

Azerbaijan. If you ask questions like, "What is it? Which language is it?", I would really like to conclude that your IQ is less than that of an ant. Located in central Asia, Azerbaijan is among the top two in the list of "How good is the country name?" - an exclusively researched list prepared by GuruWrites. The capital of this Azerbaijani speaking nation is Baku. Also monikered Baki in Azerbaijani. Azerbaijan is democratic and more importantly secular. Economic growth - An astonishing 41.7% in Q1 of 2007. It's currency Manat - 1 Manat = 1.10 US$. Such impressive facts about this nation should have made it the talking point at meetings of world leaders, be it at G8 or G6 or G4 or G followed by whatever even or odd number. But that is not the case. So world leaders should not just be condemned for this, they should also resign. And more importantly UN should be dissolved as it has failed to prevent world leaders from ignoring Azerbaijan - a situation that can lead to a situation that can be very tension filled and warlike.

Burkina Faso. The other country in the top two in the list of "How good is the country name?" - an exclusively researched list prepared by GuruWrites. In contrast to Azerbaijan, this country is unimaginably poor according to this. The welfare of the people of this nation, who take pride in calling themselves "Burkinabe", has not at all crossed the minds of world leaders. These world leaders are busy preoccupied with absolutely trivial issues that see no resolution. So world leaders should not just be condemned for this, they should also resign. And more importantly UN should be dissolved as it has failed to prevent world leaders from ignoring Burkina Faso - a situation that can lead to a situation that can be very tension filled and warlike.