Through Lemons & Peaches

by Shivangi Ruperee

  Days became months and months became years. Normally the society perceived that the peer pressure and competition at this stage, causes distress but for me, it was inspirational to see such great minds fighting with themselves to be their own best versions. It was a fair game and a healthy match where we collectively clapped for the one who ended up being the most sought-after number one! Hence, burning the midnight oil became the only constant.

  2

  It was a pleasant afternoon of March, 2011 and it marked the end of my 12th Board Examinations. Discipline, hourly schedules, & respect for time were the only things I was living by since a long time now. I guess I did manage to make my parents proud like I had vowed 4 years back at least until now, as every morning at 7 am when I rushed to make it to the examination center on time with my father, I saw my parents stare at the most recently framed picture in our living room - *Young Pearls of Rajasthan - 10th Board Examination State Toppers, 2009* and amongst a group of twelve shimmering kids, was me in the center. But I had hardly celebrated it for a day that time as I had stepped into the world of whole new challenges - managing high expectations, having self-worth tied to my academic performance & aiming tirelessly each day to make it to one of the top engineering colleges. Vikas sir by now had become a tough coach but I was the lucky one as he had an unmeasurable dedication, we studied for 3 hours each day, solving M.Sc. mathematics questions. At times when there was a power cut, he would just ask for two candles and taught me in the Rajasthan summer. I wanted to justify the years of efforts he had put in me and I owed it to him.

  Will the hard work and preparation be enough to get me to my next phase? What will I do if I fail? These thoughts were going on in my head in a loop while my father was driving me back home from the examination center. I was mentally preparing myself to take my leap of faith in an unexplored territory with just a year of solving mock papers of these challenging engineering exams. I had been trying really conscientiously and it was all I could do to balance my board examinations with the new entrance examination formats. Lakhs of students in the princely state of Rajasthan itself are well known for pursuing focused studies for national engineering entrance examinations since a really young age. One can only imagine the combined number of such well-prepared candidates I was to compete with, from all the states across India!

  Since the past 6 months, my father had been working day & night on mission Jupiter - Getting me into an Engineering College. He would come with a stack of forms randomly to my room and without telling me which college they were for, would just ask me to sign on them to get it done with. Most of the time I was in the middle of solving a paper and wanted to do it in a hurry, but he always used to make me practice my signature on a blank paper 10 times, verify the similarity of my signatures closely, adjusting the distance between his eyes and the paper multiple times before finally allowing me to do it on the real form. Knowing him well, I had an idea that he would have spent hours filling the original after which he was left with no patience to risk it. The same happened with the thumbprints, 10: 1!

  But now I was feeling the heat of anxiety and I decided to ask my father a question through which I could gauge his expectations, “Dad, I think I made a few mistakes”. “You mean you think you’ll get a supplementary in some of the exams like our neighbor’s son?”. “No! I meant I might have made a few errors which could lose me some marks “. My father looked at me blankly and said, “Look tell me if you are failing in something, I want to be mentally prepared”, and I cracked up in laughter. “No!! just that I am not sure if I’ll make a 100, neither I know if I will make the cut for a good college, although I have tried”. There was silence for a while and then he pulled over our car, took out a bar of chocolate that my mother had packed and forcefully made me eat it. “Don’t take so much of tension, I’ll be happy if you just pass gracefully in the board examinations and get a seat in any decent college “. I felt empowered.

  As soon as we reached home, my father pinned his giant blueprint with examination dates encircled and the names of the targeted colleges written in bold which covered an entire wall of my room. That was the first time I saw the exams he had enrolled me into. The one alien which stood out from all was an exam for Space Research Fellowship which was clashing with the entrance examination of one of my favorite colleges - CVIT University, Chennai. “Dad there’s only an hour’s gap between these two exams and the centers are quite far. Can we please skip this space test in the morning as you know I have no idea regarding it and just go for the afternoon CVIT exam which is really important? “. “Don’t talk like a fool! Just sit for the exam and play poker! Who knows you might become a rocket scientist if by god’s plan all your guesses work that day? Anyways what’s the guarantee that if you won’t take the test for the space research fellowship, you will make it to CVIT? Nothing right! So, it’s important to shoot arrows in the darkness in all directions so that in the end we have at least something to take home”, and to this, I had no convincing comeback.

  Ten days later, the drill started. The first exam was for the most prestigious government engineering institution in India, IET’s! There were five major ones and my father was a graduate from one of them - IET Kharagpur. This exam is considered to be one of the toughest in the world & I can vouch for it because after taking it when I came out to meet my father waiting for me with a lunch box in the garden, my hair looked like bristles and he immediately started to laugh loudly. “So? How did you like it?”, “Till now you must have thought your father is a chump. What do you want to say now?”, he went on chuckling the entire day.

  After two rigorous months, finally the examination season was over for me! In the past four years, I had never felt this kind of freedom! I had a gap of 15 days, after which the results would start pouring in starting with the Board Examination and hence I thought it was time to make a social media account like rest of my classmates. After I added a display picture of myself looking weirdly in the web camera, I decided to add a few friends & the first one I searched for was Harman Bandhral, my first best friend from Kashmir who I never got a chance to say bye. I had hoped like other teenagers he must have made a profile by now but after spending an hour on it, I couldn’t find him anywhere and ended up adding my classmates from St. Stephens with the most active being the happy go lucky Shashwat Rathore! Who had later went on to become the Head Boy and the only one ever to purposefully faint during Sports Day trails to escape tough customary practice sessions. Most of the girls in our batch had a crush on him and I had one on Rajat Chauhan! The teen heartthrob all over the television & newspapers at that time. I spent the rest of my holidays feasting my eyes on his movies, rewinding a few scenes multiple times, watching all his interviews, following all his weird fan threads to get to know more about his personal life not known by the tabloids & of course collecting his cutouts for my secret mystery box.

  Although, one morning I woke up to notice that the first set of results were just three days away. I turned on the radio to distract myself and moments later I received a text. The Board Exam results were out early! I logged in to see my scores on the desktop PC we had at home hastily without telling my mom who was in the other room. I was rendered speechless. I had made it to the state merit list! My mom also got an update that the results were out and she came to me only to find me frozen on my seat, she read the results herself and screamed with joy, called up my father who instantly got up from his seat at the office and went out on a sweet purchasing spree. I was happy but not content as my future was still not clear, the school was done… but what was next? I didn’t want to be just a Board Exam wonder. But before worrying about other results, I had to thank Vikas sir.

  I and my parents started for his house with a box of Indian sweets. We reached his house in a few minutes and were taken by surprise as we saw a hoarding! he had planned to start his own coaching institute at his house in a few days… we were elated and our happiness grew manifold! I knocked on the door and he was shocked to
see us, he knew it was about my results! We all thanked him together and for the very first time, I saw content in his eyes. As he was speaking to my parents, I was contemplating just one thing! That it was the last time I was seeing him. The conversation ended and now it was time to bid adieu. “I know you would do very well in life, Shivangi! I have seen you grow from a 45 to a 100 and now you are ready to face any mathematical problem life throws at you as your foundations are crystal clear!”. “I owe it all to you sir and will always do”, I said while leaving with my parents. With a heavy heart and moist eyes, we both knew it was time for me to tackle the future on my own. We drove past his house but I kept looking back until the sight faded away in the urban jungle.

  A week passed by and it was the day the results for CVIT University were about to be released. All of us were awake the whole night refreshing their website in every 15 minutes, tired, I & my mom went to the other room to rest a bit. “Oh! It’s here”, my father screamed, we rushed back, “What’s your roll number?”, he asked me in a very tensed tone, with one of his hands on his heart and the other on the mouse. I just handed him my admit card and ran away as I couldn’t gather the courage to see the score, my years of toil was on the line & it was about the college I had my heart on. I stood at the door, while watching my father log into the results portal, and I could only keep my eyes open till I saw the final webpage loading. I screamed, “What is it?”, covering my face with my hands and there was silence. My pulses were pounding. “You have got an invite to attend the counselling in Chennai, I think you made it “. I opened my eyes and ran near the screen to see that I ranked 8000 among the 7 lakh students who took the test but I got invited to the 4th Day of counselling which could have meant anything. I might or might not get a seat depending on how many before me turn up as there were only 1200 seats in that college for aspiring engineers. I was dejected but my mom refused to draw conclusions, “We’ll see what will happen, but we will go, if we get in or not… at least we won’t spend our lives thinking what if we went that day “. My father left the house without saying much and I was dispirited. Later that day he returned back all excited and optimistic.

  “Where were you? Your phone wasn’t reachable!”, My mother yelled. “I had gone to the Jaipur International Airport, the signal must be weak “. “What? Why the Airport? “. “I bought us three tickets to Chennai, for next Friday, May 20th, we’ll stay there over the weekend, travel around the city and attend the counselling on Monday“. I and My mom looked at each other with doubt, “I have a feeling that she will make it and if not we’ll figure out something else as five more results are yet to release but at least we won’t be leaving it on destiny, she has got a call and when I asked my other colleagues, their children’s ranking is not even close to hers despite attending two years of dedicated coaching for it. She has worked hard and we have to go”, he added. A tear rolled down my cheek and seeing me, even my mother couldn’t contain her emotions. We hugged each other and after a while were prancing with excitement to board our first ever flight.

  Time flew sooner than we had thought, one afternoon a white private taxi that we had booked from a local travel service, loaded with our bags was waiting at our front yard while my parents checked all the locks by pulling them thrice. *Click* - I heard a loud noise of a camera’s flash, I turned around and saw that my father was “secretly” clicking a picture of our driver. I went to him and whispered in his ear, “Dad! What are you doing? I think he saw you “. “It’s important, we are leaving our house and he knows it! What if a robbery happens behind our back? At least I will be able to show this picture to the police “. Sigh! Better not to argue with my father when he panics. Eventually, we reached the Jaipur International Airport, cleared the security checks, onboarding procedures and I took the window seat, all three of us curious as a child. With our seatbelts on we were ready to experience our first ever take off! and it was a horror! The plane took off wobbly and we were shaken! We looked at each other with fright but none of us reacted aloud because we had no other experience to compare this one with, hence we didn’t know for sure if this was a regular thing, or what? After two hours of having our hearts in our throat, the touchdown was on the same lines. We were just glad we were on land.

  Chennai! The capital city of Tamil Nadu was famous to be one of the oldest cities of India with an intense heritage and gorgeous landmarks. It definitely hits with a huge cultural shock to those who have been born & raised in North India as it’s not just miles apart in distance but also in ethos. But we three were travelers who had made their way across the country, inquisitive explorers and as we stepped outside to book a ride to our hotel, we saw an array of taxis and behind them auto-rickshaws with all their drivers coming onto us at the same time, asking us to pick them, somehow it made us even more pepped up. We ended up taking our all-time favorite ride! – The auto- rickshaw. Our driver, Mr. Vishnu understood a little English and as he took us through the city showing us magnificent evening views, he asked us if we were tourists. We told him our entire plan and he agreed to be our ride for the entire trip. We reached our hotel and somehow Chennai’s carefree air made me feel that all will end up well, that night I slept without waking up in the middle of the night which had become usual lately.

  The next two days, Mr. Vishnu took us to all the major landmarks & eateries in Chennai. On this expedition, I saw a beach for the first time in my life! Marina. Luckily, we went there at around 6 am with almost no one around, I ran and played on the shore for an hour before I got tired! We clicked a lot of pictures. All this while, Dad entertained us with his real time Dumb Charades with the localities as Tamil was not even close to something we had ever heard. We laughed, enjoyed the incredible delicacies and as we ended our tour, I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so unchained. To me Chennai meant freedom, it meant meeting my own self again & I forgot all my worries in a mere 48 hours. But the real purpose of our visit was something else and it was scheduled for tomorrow at 2 pm for my rank. Despite the timing, Dad, as usual, wanted to take all the precautions and hence we decided to leave our hotel at 7 am. I went to my room and ironed my white shirt which I considered to bring luck and that night I decided to sleep with my parents.

  Hours later, it was the ultimate dawn. We were way ahead of time and so was Mr. Vishnu as even he was anxious to see if this colorful family of three finally achieve their dream. We wrapped up our stay in the hotel, adjusted our cabin bags in the auto- rickshaw as we had our return flights later that night and started for CVIT University which was a two-and-a-half-hour drive passing through the outskirts of Chennai and the rural area of Kelambakkam. We felt really close to nature, as we drove on a two- lane newly built road surrounded by open lands and dense trees on either side when suddenly we saw a set of tall buildings dispersed around each other showcasing advanced architecture in the middle of a village and we knew we had arrived.

  There was a long queue to enter the campus as hundreds of students had reached with their families for the process which just added to our worry. Mr. Vishnu said that he would wait for us outside till we complete and dropped us at the gate. As we entered the huge campus, we were given directions to the auditorium where all the families were waiting. It was a 300-seating hall, with a large projector screen placed in front which showed the real time allocation of seats in each stream of engineering. Students were being called in batches according to their ranks and after document verification were being given a briefing about the streams. After a 10 mins break which was nothing but a window to discuss their choice with their families, they were being asked to form a queue in order of their rank again to choose the suited specialization. There were 240 seats originally in each of the five fields - Mechanical, Computer Science, Electronics & Communication, Electrical & Electronics and Civil. But as it was the 4th day of counselling, out of the total 1200 seats, only 500 were left. Which meant we were cutting close. We had no other choice but to patiently wait for hours and pray that we get a chance an
d it doesn’t get all taken before us, as we saw the seats getting filled on the screen more rapidly with each passing hour. We kept our fingers crossed, praying to the all mighty and three hours later we realized that we would get an opportunity to pick as my name got called! But now the tussle became different. Will we get a stream worth making such a huge investment on? As I was heading towards the briefing session, my parents called up their friends, and minutes later my father came behind me hastily, “Pick Computer Science if you can!”, I nodded. We were all in a trance.