Tale of Kopy Kats!!

Again, I would like to go back to my school days, but this time location changes to Jawahar Higher Secondary School, Ashok Nagar, Chennai. First time in life I had the option of leaving out the subject "Hindi"(if you want to know why i gave up hindi read this Hindi$#@! ). In 11th standard, I chose Sanskrit to be my second language (a dreadful decision if you are a Hindi student :( . In Sanskrit the grammar part was crazy!! You can say word "ram" in so many different tones and at last you completely forget what the original pronunciation is!!! Yes you are right again, I never learnt how "ram" was supposed to pronounced or written in so many crazy ways! I copied!! A gentlemen named Mr. Wine (name changed to protect the identity of the person) who was behind me in exams helped me.

I didn't blindly give up Sanskrit grammar, I tried hard but I was tough job to mug up so many simple words pronounced so different and written crazily!!! On the day of exam I did study well, just before entering exam hall there is a ritual among friends to say this line: "Machan dei exam le helps pannu da"(Dude! Help me out in exam). I didn't skip the ritual that day; I turned to Mr. Wine and said the exact same line. He shook his head in agreement. I did the paper well till the grammar part, I was stuck half the way through! Time was ticking; almost entire class has finished the paper, seeing this invigilator sat down. This was it! I had to do something; I had no idea how I was going to write the entire grammar. I turned my head, my eyes met with Mr. Wine, I pointed to grammar section on my question paper. He nodded his head and started writing. I was like "ada cha! Waste fellow! vidu adutha exam le paathukalam" ( Damn it! okay, I'll try in next exam). Just then I felt a pinch on my shoulder. I saw Mr. Wine passing me his question paper; it had answers writing in it. I had an adrenaline rush. I grabbed his question paper and threw mine to him. Yes everything was done in fraction of seconds. I came out of exam hall with his question paper. He smiled at me. I saw my guardian angel in him. I couldn't stop thanking him!! We followed this classic old but trusted style of copying for many exams, only the swoosh of the question paper would be heard!!

I was not always the one who copied, I helped others too! I'll always remember my 11 standard, Quarterly Computer Science paper. I was good at Computer Science, always managed to score well. In Tamil Nadu state board syllabus, Computer Science was for 150 marks and in it you have 75 objective questions (one mark). People lost their mark on this, but not me ;) (I know you must be saying "look at him blowing his trumpet!" after all, these are few things I am damn good at. so no compromises). Exam started, I got the question paper and I started reading the first question. Mr. Wine poked me, what???!! So soon, the invigilator hasn’t even finished giving out question paper to all!!!!! I turned my head, Mr. Wine gestured me to move. Okay for understanding this you people have to know that I am left handed. So when I write my paper is positioned in different angle, and if I move my body a little the person behind me can see my paper clearly. Back to story, Wine had decided to copy my entire paper. I don't blame him! It is not that he didn't study but at times even though you know the answer you don't feel like straining your brain when answers are just a glance away. (I am saying this cause I have done this!!) But copying entire paper was difficult job. He has to keep up to my pace and copy it into his paper. But he did it! We walked out of the hall with big smiles as though we have accomplished an impossible mission! Mr. Wine “Machi! Full paper I copied da!” “dei how da you wrote that fast?” “athu ellam talent da”(that’s called talent) with a victory smile! I said “dei mattika motom le” (we won’t get caught right?) he said “athan paper koduthachu le” (we have submitted the paper man!) “ama da next two week vacation!! Dei raga team oda match sollitangala...?” (Yes! Two weeks’ vacation!! Have they told raga team about the match…?)

Vacation was good we were back to school sitting next to each other, paper was being distributed. My name was called, I got good marks. Mr. Wine name was called he went to get his paper. When he came back he had a strange look on his face, I asked what happened? “I got 2 marks less than you da. How is that possible? We copied entire paper right?” “I don’t know da, you think she reduced for handwriting?” he said “rightu vidu… who cares? ;) “. The class got over, before leaving the teacher called our names alone and asked us to come and meet her in staff room. We knew we were in trouble. Me: “dei we need a plan, if she asks why both papers look same we will say we studied together for exam. And never agree to her that we copied.” Mr. Wine “Oki da done!” she was in staff room talking with another teacher, she look at us and signaled us to wait on her table. My mind was racing, was she telling the other teacher about us? Oh! Man now every teacher will re-check our papers alone! Why is she doing this to us!! She came to the table and looked at me in the eyes

Teacher: “why did you let Mr. Wine copy from you?”

Me: “What? No madam! I never let him copy”

Teacher: “Mr. Wine, why did you copy from him?”

Mr. Wine: “Madam! God promise I didn’t copy!!!”

Teacher: “I can take both of your papers and pin point on stupid mistakes you did. Take you to principal after that!”

Me: “Madam! We studied together may be that is why we did same mistakes” I knew she was not going to believe us.

Teacher: “Mr. Wine has struck off the same words you have struck off in your paper”.

I felt “pochu da! Soothapitan” I kept silent! Mr. Wine also kept silent.

Teacher: “Copying is very bd. You are not in small sections to act like this. You’re in eleventh, act matured (I heard this on every class of mine so the dialogue didn’t have an impact). Shall I take you both to the principal?” Again silence from both of us. “Your English teacher was just now saying you both were very good students” (we knew that was a cold blooded lie). Again we reminded silent and kept looking at the table. “I didn’t tell your English teacher that you guys copied”

Me: “Madam we never copied” my friend gave me a glare which meant “shut up! Or else we are going to be in deep trouble”.

Again we both went back to silence. She kept looking at us and we never looked back. She must have gotten bored “Next time if you guys repeat this, I am going to take you both to principal and call your parents.” We surrendered, “Yes madam! We won’t repeat this.” Again we did a triumph walk out the staffroom! We knew that we lied to her. Highlight was that invigilator never found out we copied but the teacher who corrected the paper did.

But everything changed in my 12^th standard. When it came to academics I changed a lot in my 12^th. I had lots of tuitions in 12^th. Even during school exams tuitions were never cancelled. I had my physics tuitions on Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning 5 AM; chemistry tuitions on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday at 5 AM and my Math tuitions at 9 PM every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Though our monthly or any school exams were announced at least two weeks earlier my friends circle was not geek enough to study early. We studied only before the exam and we are proud of it! :P So it meant that we had to go to tuitions come back home and study. Also we had to write tuitions exams as well! Most of the guys were frustrated, some of them failed in exams. But I wanted to pass badly. One event which I had in past is enough for me. I started doing night outs. I would come back from tuitions at 10 PM, study till 3 AM. Sleep and wake up at 4.30 AM to attend tuitions and come back home at 6.30 AM. I slept again and went to school by 8 AM. My aim during night outs was to pass. I wanted only 50% anything more than that was just a gift. I always got lots of gifts. I dare say I never copied in my 12^th exams. When I say copying I mean I never took help of my fellow student or any paper. But I did continue the noble act of helping my fellow class students to get the answers right. It involved more serious acts of passing my answer sheets to my fellow student. Sometimes it just not single sheet, I even passed my main answer sheet (which has 12 pages) to my fellow student. I never regretted any of those. I am happy that I went through all this in life. If copying is done at right amount and at the right time then it is not going to affect you.

For all those who have never copied in life, you are missing something in life!! The adrenaline rush of blood, your sense starts working extra sharp; it even starts reading the movement of invigilator. Your sixth sense knows when the invigilator is going to turn and which way they are going to walk. You can calculate at what speed you can write and what speed you have to turn to snatch the paper from your friend. You start inventing sign languages. Your eyes start talking. Your eye brow becomes your mouth. You execute time management to perfection (which you might have never done in your life). You start seeing a person in new light which may lead to blossom of new friendship. You are doing a noble and helpful act by helping a person pass in exam, if you don’t he might be in sorrow and misery “Nallu peruku nallathuna eduvum thappu illa” (An act done to make 4 lives happy is never immoral). Above all you know how to look calm and composed when you’re looking down the barrel. So, have you copied?

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Hindi $#@!

Most people won’t start their first blog with a story of how they failed for the first time. But I am, because I feel that failure is the stepping stone for success :) . So here its goes.

I was in 7th standard, studying in St.Mary’s residential Central School, Ramankulankara , Quilon, Kerala. It was my Hindi period and exam papers were being distributed. My name was called. I went to get it… Horror!! In my school we had exam for 50 marks (except final exam) and you had to get 20 out of 50 to pass. And yes I got 19! Till then in my academic history I have never failed. My heart was wishing that there was a counting mistake. I counted, the total came to 20.5! I breathed sighs of relief. To recheck I asked guy near me to count again, he counted and said the total is correct. I felt an intense pain in my heart. The truth was sinking in... I FAILED!! I FAILED!! How will I face my parents at home?! Slowly my eyes became moist. I knew I was in a class full of people but I couldn’t stop it and slowly I felt a warm trickle of tear on my cheek. When you are in junior standards, there is this habit, when a student finds out something interesting about his/her fellow student, they scream like “Madam… This fellow didn’t do his homework…” or “Madam… This fellow is sleeping...” The same happened in my case too. I felt all eyes upon me; still the small boy couldn’t stop crying!! The devil who failed me spoke “You didn’t write anything on paper! That’s why you failed, no need to cry for this”. I had taken two additional sheets of paper for this exam, how can she say I have not written anything!!

The Devil read my mind and decided to put me in a more embarrassing situation. My sister also studied in the same school, she was in 10th standard. And to worsen the situation even more, she was damn good at Hindi! The devil said to one of the student “Call Kripa from X ‘A’ section, say I want to meet her now”. To give you a heads up, my sister is a very sweet girl. When devil asked her to be summoned, I knew that telling my sister will not be a big impact, because I knew she was always sweet to me. My sister came to my class. As she entered the entire class was watching her, and my poor and shocked sister was searching for me in the midst of so many students. I couldn’t see her face out of shame!! My sister always thought I was a little genius! How can I face her in such a situation?!

The devil spoke “Your brother has failed in his exam”. My sister looked at me. I couldn’t read what she meant by that look. The Devil said: “He keeps talking in class and never listens in class, that’s why he has failed”. So that’s the reason!! She failed me purposely because I kept talking in her class, so my brain is intact and I have my abilities with me! The devil is bad, I scolded her very badly in my mind (Malayalam bad words ;)), I glared at her with rage, but my tear gland was working super hard to make my eyes watery and hence my glare was overshadowed. She kept telling so many things about me, my poor sister didn’t have a response for this; she said he will do well in next exam and left the class. My mind was running scenes of my parents chasing me at home with a stick! How am I going to face them!

I decided to go through my paper again, hoping that there might be some answers which she has failed to correct. I opened the paper, there were so many red marks my blue ink was hardly visible! She has almost marked every spelling I have written with a circle! To be frank, I was never good at spellings. So I couldn’t argue on that. So naturally she had reduced marks on every question. If you are a Hindi student then you must know that we had to spilt a big word into two words and the vice versa, i.e. sandhi, ling parivarthan. Again, I never understood the logic behind it! I spilt and joined the word as per my wish! I kept browsing through my paper of red inks, when the guy sitting next to me said “You know you copied in class test that’s why you failed in exam”. I felt like giving him a tight slap on face. The devil had wasted a full red ink pen on my paper and failed me because I was a chatterbox! Why is this dumb fellow talking nonsense?

I admit that I copied in class tests. We had a test on every Friday and we had to bring our “test note” for it. I hated it. So I devised a plan to copy. I kept my bag under the bench, between my legs. I opened my bag zip wide open, but well within my legs. I opened the Hindi class work note and kept it inside the bag, so that I could see what was written and copy it into my test note. When teacher comes close, all I had to do was move my legs closer so that the note and bag both closed and all would look normal. So on every class test, I would get decent marks, and I never copied the whole thing from note. I wrote my own lines in between. (I guess every one must know this trick. Hee hee :) ). But in my 12 standard I totally stopped copying (hmm... might be worth writing my next blog). Coming back to the story, my tear gland must have dried out and tears where no longer there. Just then, devil made her last move. She wanted everyone to get the paper signed by parents! She looked at me I knew this meant only to me!! Evil teacher!!!! I realized there were two ways out of this without getting thrashed by parents:

• I can put my father’s sign and give her paper( I never did this in my life, I was just very good boy to do such stuff)
• I have to hold back all my tears now and cry like hell at home! (I have noticed that when parents are angry they never have the heart to hit a crying child, at least my parents didn’t)

So I decided to follow the second plan. I had to change 3 buses to reach my home which was 18 km from my school. I tried to maintain a sulking look all the way to home. My sister was with me while travelling back; she said “its okay da… you can do well next time”, she patted my shoulder and gave me a soft pleasing smile. When she consoled me, my spirits lifted a little. I reached home. It was 4:30 PM. I knew if I switch on the TV, I would be as good as dead. It was Power zone time on cartoon network. At 4:30 PM it was “SWAT KATS”, and at 5:00 PM it was Scooby-doo. At 5:30 it was ed, edd and eddy which I didn’t care much, but at 6:30 there was Johnny Quest! I loved the show, and then at 8:30 there was Popeye show, 9:00 PM Scooby-doo again. Because of the devil I had to miss all these shows! I cursed her even more.

Mom greeted us with a warm smile, but I had put an Oscar winning sad and dejected looking face, hoped that tear gland would start functioning extra hard, and it did. Again I felt tears trickling down my cheeks. Mom was worried; Ah yes, these were good signs. She asked if I had fallen down. I simply shook my head. Sister replied; she said “he didn’t clear his Hindi paper”. Mom was angry; I could see her face reaction changing, I knew I was in big fix! I was waiting… As I mentioned earlier when I cried, my parents tends to loosen up. It worked! Mom did not thrash me but I was not let alone, I was in the firing line. She scolded that I played a lot and “cartoons!!! Eppa pathalum cartoon! Booka thoranthu patha thane theriyum enna irukunu. Examku munnadi etho konjam padicha epidi thaan mark varum”(Cartoons!! Always cartoons! You have to open the book to know what’s in them. If you study for few hours before exam this is how you will score). I was simply standing with my head down and eyes moist. But mom’s are mom’s, they can never be angry for long J but they have the ultimate weapon of terror “Wait till your dad gets here”. OMG!! I knew I could even escape mom with some tears and acting, but dad?!!

I had to be very careful for the rest of the day. Any mistake on my part would lead to extra scoldings. After little refreshment from mom, without switching on the TV, I went and opened my books. Yes I know this is too much but I had no other way L My mom must have had a good laugh!!!! Dad comes home by 7.30, and yes I was acting as if I was studying the whole time till dad got home. He came home. On normal days I would be sitting and watching TV. When he realized I was not watching TV, he knew something was wrong. He refreshed himself, took his seat and switched on the TV. I heard mom’s voice “unga pulla Hindi le enna mark vangi irukannu kettela” (ask your son how much he scored in Hindi). My dad spoke in his cool and composed voice: “vikram inga va” (vikram come here). Hearing that voice my heart skipped a beat. I went with my Hindi paper. He asked “evalo mark?”(What’s your mark?). My voice didn’t come out when asked for mark; I just showed him my paper. Again my tear gland started working. He went through the entire paper, “so you failed by one mark?” I nodded. I couldn’t stop my tears. I had to give him a reason. I slowly said “the teacher purposely failed me because I spoke in class, she did it on purpose. You can ask Kripa, teacher even told her the same.” My sister glared at me. I knew the glare meant “don’t you dare pull me into this”. My father asked me to sit; I looked into face. I didn’t see anger or rage. He was cool and composed. I sighed in relief, “dad this is the first time I have failed”. But I was wrong. It was the calm before the storm. He asked me “I need to know why you failed.” I was stunned. This was not what I expected!! I was expecting him to blast me. I didn’t know what to say. I mumbled to him “next time I’ll make sure to get good marks”. He looked at me “Since first standard you’re giving me this reason ‘next time’, I don’t know when this ‘next time’ is going to come.” I was caught; I knew a day will come when this question was asked to me!! I knew this lame reason was not going to get me out!! “What is stopping you from studying? That’s the only duty you have to do. You wanted TV, you have TV, you wanted cable connection, and you have it, you wanted cricket bat and you have it. Tell me why you are not able to pass in this?” Those words were atom bombs. My tear gland broke; I started crying very very badly. And I made a statement “I am not going to school from tomorrow” (I never knew this was the life saving statement), my poor father was moved by my sincere crying effort and his tone completely changed. “Vikram, crying is not going to help you. Failure is not end of life. I have failed many times in exams. In fact I even bunked schools. I never used to study the entire portions for exam; I studied only what I could but I made sure that before next exam I had completed portion of previous exam. So, by finals I had done almost every portion. So, next time prepare well.” It was hit by thunder twice! I realized people who are well settled in life had also failed in school. I just looked at my dad in awe. I was confident now. I knew I could crack the next exam. He patted me on back and I also stopped crying. He gave me the paper back. Then I remembered devils voice, “You have to get the paper signed by your parents”. I scolded her, evil mastermind she was, just when I thought everything was over, cha! I said “Dad, teacher needs parents sign on paper”. He looked at me “I’ll sign but I’ll write comment that my son will try hard and pass the next exam. You can give him any kind of home work to improve his performance.” I was horrified, more homework?!! No no, this is not fair. She failed me purposefully. But I had no choice. I nodded my head. So my dad signed the paper with the comment. I was relieved. And I went to room and opened the book with smile on my face. Mission accomplished.

Next day I took the paper to class and showed it to teacher. She read the comment and just smiled. An Evil smile. Fortunately she didn’t give me any extra work. A week after I received my report card. My class teacher gives report card based on rank. My name came; she held the report card and said a red mark for first time. I had a smile on my face, I knew this was not the end, I could prove myself next time. I didn’t have to give my tear glands any work to get report card signed since the situation was already known at home. Dad has signed the report card; next exam is more than a month away! Things were back to normal. I returned to normal routine of cartoons and games! And for the record, I did pass the next Hindi exam. And the guy who sits next to me asked “so you have stopped copying in class test?” I gave him a smile. Read more!