Remembering the ‘March Finals’

Sometimes, life comes at you fast. I thought so as I rushed to pick up my books before my afternoon session of classes. I spied on my brother’s calendar for no particular reason and observed that it was already the 17th of March. It didn’t mean anything significant, other than the fact that it was already over a year since I wrote my PU boards. Here I was now, a year later: absorbed, confident, and inching towards the uncertain boundaries of the future. It was as if timelessness had enveloped my life, as if I had forgotten myself in it.

As the realization stuck me, I felt like that person who had seen a ghost for the first time. Life had moved on at such a terrific pace that I actually struggled to realize that it was already the march of 2009. I wouldn’t have disagreed if someone had asserted that it was still last year. Things had certainly changed since then, and it made me catch my breath in surprise.

The exams had been so slow back then. All had been different in the season of the ‘March finals’. There had been that tingling sensation in my nerves as the boards loomed closer and closer. I can clearly recall staring out of my window, escaping to the most fantastic dreamlands when studying felt too draining. I remember I had even religiously given up on reading the paper and answering the telephone because advises had made me even more nervous. In the ‘March Finals’ season, everything had felt important. My entire world had felt like it depended on this one experience: The exams were my life, and March seemed synonymous with only that. The days had stretched on endlessly, and the nights had been too short for revision. There had been pencil marks at the back of the textbook to tick off the end of every exam. I had cursed time for being so sluggish, as if everything on was its fault.

This March is so different. I write many exams, but I don’t panic. I don’t feverishly recite a million formulas in my head before entering the exam hall. I don’t wrestle with a teacher to complete lengthy passages anymore. Sometimes, I wish I could. For one thing, I don't hear the wisper of "All the Best," anymore. But March still stands for the same old things for all those students who are writing their exams this year. I caught myself asking these standard questions to my cousin who’s writing the boards this year. “How have you done? How much do you expect?...” almost slipped out of my tongue. It amused me how I was now not that timid cow nodding her head to all the advises. I was actually the one spewing them out. “Don’t refer to Deepa Publications for Chemistry, it’s a horrible book…” "Refer to MES for Physics if you have time, it's so conceptual..." She then listened to me with rapt attention, like I was that enlightened one with all the answers. But I certainly didn’t feel any wiser! True, it seems like time is trying to change me too...But here’s wishing my cousin Renu, along with dearest friends Medini, Shravya and Monisha who are writing the boards this year all the very best. May luck stay with all you, along with the unwavering confidence that is always yours! Let’s hope that time is as kind to all of you as it is to me! And yes, I shall repeat that same old phrase without which no board exam is complete: "All the very best! Slay ‘em gals!" :-)