All in the game

Flash back to REC days again...... those happy-go-lucky times, that was mostly one long holiday - with the occassional formality from time to time of having to give exams.... I was mostly a decent student when it came to academics...... but one paper which still gives me the chills when I think of it, was "Structural Engineering"..... that hieroglyphic maze of bending moment and shear force diagrams...urgh.....one paper that refused to be mastered with one night of night-out and cramming......and so, the inevitable happened - I actually failed the paper and had to redo it again.....in engineering college jargon, it was called - getting a suppli ..... something generally pretty dreadful.....but the most serious of situations sometimes also affords us a laugh, like it happened to me..... read on......

Life is a roller coaster - at times carrying us to those blissful peaks of ecastacy, but at times, plunging us to the abysmal depths of depression and dejection - with its all enveloping darkness and gloom. A realm where grey often appears black and a smirk often seems a sneer.

But yet, as the prophets of yesterday would often tell us - that old worn out cliche - "If you can smile at life, life will smile back at you". The minute we see the humour in our often lugubrious predicament, the dark clouds of gloom suddenly seem to lift, ushering in the rays of hope and taking the impossible into the realms of possibility.

Failing in a subject in exams may not exactly be most peoples' idea of humour. It wasn't mine either - not until I had an experience of what it really felt like.

The next day after the fateful news broke, I got up as usual. Sleep for me was the ultimate narcotic, blurring the immediate future, wiping clean the past. The first half an hour of each day hence sees me more as a mechanical zombie going through the motions, rather than as a thinking, feeling person.

It was in this state that I made to proceed towards the students mess, my eyelids yet to cover half the distance up, when one of my friends came up behind me.

He placed a hand on my shoulder, drew near, with a voice laced with emotion, bordering on grief, he whispered, "Arun, I'm sorry". My sleepy mind raced to attention. One part of it had already raced ahead, "There hasn't been an earthquake, back home in Bangalore, has there ?" I thought. "Why, what happened ?" I gasped, almost impatiently.

He gave me a look usually reserved for the kith and kin of the deceased and then almost mournfully said, "I heard about your suppli, yaar".

I couldn't help but console him. I took his hands in mine and said, "Its okay, it'll soon be over". "But why you ?", he asked. "It happens", I said, and then almost as a justification, "What else do you expect if a person takes Structures with a nights preparation ?", "Anyways, forget it, yaar". But he persisted, "And of all the professors, it had to be this person only ?" "He does not pass guys easily".

By then, I had started feeling genuine pity for him. With all the re-assuarance I could muster, I told him once again, "Look, its okay. So what if its him ? If I perform well, hes got to pass me, right ?"

He still didn't look too convinced. He was still giving me the "sacrificial goat" look, and if I had probably tried hard, I might have probably spotted the beginnings of a tear too. Anyhow, he gave me two quick raps on the shoulder, said "All the best", and a trifle sadly, walked on. "Don't worry", I shouted back to him as I walked on.

It was soon after, that the humour of this peculiar role reversal struck me, and I burst out laughing in the mess. "What happened ?" my friends around me asked.

"Nothing" I said, "I got a suppli" !!