Tryst With Death

Let’s call this person - Mr Charlie. The board exams were supposed to be starting on the 8th of March - the first being the Social Science, which Charlie wasn’t much interested. This was the 1st of March, there weren't schools going on as it was study holidays. Charlie, being in the top 5 students of the class, had brought about a lot of hope and expectations, both from the academics side and the family side.

Many people close to Charlie said that he was not fit to be studying in the school which tests one's intelligence/ capability through the concept of examination. At the same time, he had no other choice - but to survive/ at least face the competition. As a matter of fact, he was well known for his non-conventional thinking - no doubt Mathematics was his best bet.

It was this fateful day of the 1st of March - that lighted all the tube lights and/or bulbs and/or neon bulbs within Charlie’s brain. At around 5: 30 pm, his aunt called him up to wish him the best for his exams, and mentions that they have many expectations from him in this exam. Adding insult to the injury was the fact that he was the first to take on the board exams, amongst his generation from the paternal side, and was considered to be the most intelligent amongst the maternal side. After approx. 20 min, he got another call from his grandma, indicating almost the same thing which his aunt had stated. The next 30 min to 1 hr was almost dedicated to attending calls.

Having stared at the same page in his history text book for more than an hour, Charlie had realised that he does not have anything much in his memory, apart from the calls and the expectations from him, which off course doesn’t fetch any marks.

It was around 7 pm - when all the glands present in his body started secreting the creative juices, but made sure that the brain used it to create deadly images, which showed that Charlie had not performed well and could not show his face to his family. The creativity even went to such an extent that it showed pictures of a failed Charlie. Well, having said the fact that he was an unconventional thinker, the creative juices are supposed to be secreted in excess, in any case.

By 8:30 pm Charlie's heart had convinced his brain that he is going to fail and he cannot face his relatives/ friends. He silently took his grandfather's prescription of sleeping tablets - went to the medical shop (where he generally goes for his grandpa's medicines), purchased 20 tablets and came home. By 9pm, he already had swallowed 10 pills. In his trance state, he called his 2 close friends to say goodbye, which they thought was a joke and disconnected. He again called one of them to share his final feelings, during which he realised that something was seriously wrong. By that time Charlie had popped in 5 more. Incidentally, Charlie's parents realised that something was wrong and started to persuade him, after which they found that Charlie had created a disaster.

They rushed him to the hospital, post which a team of docs cleansed his stomach to clear all the tablets and he was out of danger the next day. None of his family members talked about this, further on - this showed the level of maturity they had.

Well there weren’t any further complications, Charlie calmly wrote the exams and he turned out to be 3rd in the class, even overtaking the some of the previous toppers.

After this tryst with death - the way Charlie looked at the world was totally different. He was a lot more matured, learnt to control the flow of his creative juices the right way. This was more of a new beginning for him, than an end to this story.

In the view of cancellation of the board exams, which was announced recently, the above abstract would truly enlighten us about the way, how our education system doesn't test the required qualities.