When Examination Hall Turns Into Race Course

Have you ever felt like being a racehorse? Like your owner thinks about nothing else all day long but pushing your boundaries so that he/she looks good in front of the audience? Have you ever felt like the reins are rather tied tightly around your neck, and all you worry about is choking on it someday to death? And if you're a 90s kid, aren't you glad there were no social media to make matters worse?

Because that's exactly how children of competitive parents feel these days. Not only now, but in our times also such practices were rampant. The difference only was that our mark sheets were not shared on social media without our consent.

With the results pouring in for the past few days, parents are back in business. It's a dirty game but no one seems to care.

Newspapers are once again filled with the names of toppers telling how they want to take the world by storm someday. There are photos of parents and other family members dancing and posing as if this was the ultimate goal that the kids were supposed to reach and there is nothing else that lies ahead.

Social media is again full of such feel-good stories, the same headline "Girls Outshine Boys" repeating itself endlessly with the pouring in of every result, making you wonder when they'll finally decide to let it go for good.

Parents are again going crazy, sharing the mark sheets of their kids to despise others; the ones being despised take it out on their children for not trying hard enough. The same "Sharma ji ka beta" jokes are being forwarded to lighten up the mood. Meanwhile, no one gives a damn about the pressure building up in the minds of students who're made to feel like they are "not good enough".

When I was a child, I used to have friends whose parents would keep behaving as if our class was some kind of war zone and everyone was desperate to win. I was once accused of deliberately wasting a friend's time by calling her to ask for homework. There were students in my class who would literally start crying in the examination hall itself if they forgot the answer to even a single question.

The intelligent students would fight over marks like cats and dogs. Once a boy, who had two marks less than a girl overall, had asked her to show her mark sheet; and when she did, he'd found a mistake overlooked by the teacher. He'd got those marks deducted and that had led him to stand first in the class. The girl had cried so much that the parents had gotten involved. Finally, we were told that no one from then on was allowed to look into others' mark sheets.

Then there were friends who clearly went to tuition after school but were super secretive about it, fearing others would copy them and get ahead in life maybe. Such people later were known to hide the graduation courses they'd taken up too, changing their statements every now and then, even from their 'close' friends. Though the scenario was more like guilty conscience pricking one's own mind.

Also, forget about below-average students in class, even the average ones were not given much respect by almost every student and teacher. Nobody would trust them to solve a mathematics problem, for instance, better than the intelligent ones. Even if they did, they were looked at with suspicion. I myself was never taken seriously in class till I was in 7th standard when I'd accidentally stood second. The people who'd changed after that never really earned my respect though. In fact, I'd started valuing those teachers who had believed in my potential even when I'd been an average student.

But then I was not like most students anyway. My parents would hardly pay attention to what anyone else had got on their mark sheets. My mother would simply tell me to talk about myself, not about others. Eventually, I stopped mentioning others. I would happily stand 7th in class or 13th perhaps and my parents would get a box full of sweets at the end of every session in school anyway. That was enough encouragement for me to keep working hard and not worrying about being a star.

I always had good command over languages and my Hindi teacher adored me for some reasons still unknown to me. The rest of the class would get super jealous. But the fact is I'd never tried buttering as a tool to get into the good books of teachers. Perhaps some teachers liked that only.

When in 10th, there were students who'd try to compete with me, and would keep a log of my marks and of those in their competitive zone. I would rather have a hard time remembering my own marks. I never kept unnecessary information as that stored in my mind. Because I never felt there was a need for it.

But then again, there were all sorts of teachers in my school. Some would say time and again that no one was going to ask us how much we scored in exams in real life and that our behavior towards others mattered more. There were others who would tell us how important it was to get more marks to succeed in life. There were those too who would keep discouraging us, telling us how intelligent the other class was, then going to the other class and repeating the same stuff to them; just to keep the cold war on. One such teacher had said later that this technique helps keep the competition on. I don't think it ever worked though.

And as I'd already mentioned earlier, science and mathematics were always considered superior. A student good with languages was hardly ever considered cool. You had to have mathematics tables and periodic tables on tips to be taken seriously.

I've known parents all my life who never even realized how much potential their kids actually had, and tried with all their might for them to be like someone else's child. There was a person I knew of who had exceptional command over the Punjabi language and was known to create magic with words. But he was made to follow the herd and was forced to take a non-medical stream, then BTech (Bachelor of Technology) as a course. He graduated and turned into a mediocre engineer. This happened after movies like Three Idiots, and Tamasha had been released into the world. I still remember coming out of the theatre after watching 'Tamasha' and hearing people talk about their own experiences, of parents' constant pressure killing away their dreams.

Nothing changed.

But the competition is not only with the children of friends and neighbors. There are relatives too, and they play a major role in the restlessness of parents. I have a lot of relatives whose kids are more or less my age. So the first board class, 10th standard, was like a race with multiple laps. My progress report was a matter of national interest. There were people keeping score of my every move. But I succeeded in keeping my cool, thanks to my parents. My father had ensured there was no noise around my room, and major work had been postponed by him for my sake. He had been making all the study material available for me, even if it meant buying me a brand-new reference book a month or so before the final exams. Since our principal had retired that very year and half the teachers had left as soon as he did, my father had also ensured my studies didn't suffer. He would personally take me to tuition and then come back later to collect me. Even though I'd been a bit disappointed with my own result at the end of it, my father had been waiting for me with a Parker pen in hand, sweets already lying on the table. He'd been super proud of me. I remember nothing else that discreetly, twelve years later today. Everything else for me had been background noise.

The constant support of my parents helped me choose my field with zero pressure. After wasting my time on Physics in school, I decided to take up humanities in graduation. And I wasn't to be blamed for that. None of the physics teachers in school had any practical knowledge. And that had made me guess graduation in Physics was going to be nothing else but a constant pressure to cram lengthy theorems. I'd taken up a Bachelor of Arts (BA) with English and Mathematics as subjects but even though my parents believed in me and supported me, I'd heard a lot of criticism. After post-graduation, I'd started earning more than half the kids who'd taken up the standard courses; much to the annoyance of some. My idea had always been and still is simple. Run after passion, not money. The latter will follow eventually.

So it definitely makes me feel bad even now when people keep comparing their children with those of others, focusing less on their own potential and more on getting ahead of others. I feel bad when great minds lose their heads on a course just because they want to be like others, even without checking the scope of those fields. But what can you do really when parents and teachers tell them otherwise? I recently saw a friend of a friend having a social media account where she puts up pottery for sale. I really loved some of the pieces. She was obviously not from Punjab. Here if you tell your parents you want to make pottery for a living, you'll most likely be rebuked out of it triply by parents, teachers, and relatives. In terms of career options, we're still in no way moving ahead. But I have hope against hope that things will change someday. Till then, enjoy the derby.

Also read: How easy do you think is it to argue with elders in India?