The Examorcist

I finished with another set of exams on Monday, the 18^th of June, 2012. With “finished”, I mean finished for the time being. I might pass. I might fail. The two month long wait before the result is scary. It’s like a toupe-wearing 34 year old Rakesh Roshan waiting outside the Operation Theatre, worrying over his lover’s condition inside the red bulb room. The doctor walks out and says: “Inhe dawaaon ki nahi, duaaon ki zaroorat hai.” It’s too late for dawaa anyway. I can’t go back and study that one chapter that I chose not to prepare for the exam. And Dua better go help himself, first. He hasn’t done pretty well in these papers either, of what he told me. The wait is not just scary; it’s ghastly. Well, pretty much everything about exams is ghastly.

I had about a month to sit at home for my preparation this time. Preparing not just for the scary exams, but also for the difficult task of buttoning my trousers above the crotch after a thirty days’ break. The usual “Eat.Poop.Text.” ritual was religiously followed throughout the study break. And, then came the dreaded four days of continuous exams, which considering the amount of pseudo-diarrhea they put me through, literally made me lose my shit.

Considering the amount of chills the last one week sent down my spine, I have a few characters and elements that RGV must bring to life on screen so that there’s a small hint of horror in the horror movies that he makes.

The Maharani Rohini Ki Haveli

My Admit Card arrived in mail and spelt out the venue for the scarefest better than my name. It was again a dilapidated building in a corner of Rohini. There’s some sadistic pleasure that most exam organizing bodies get in making their students search for the exam centre for at least an hour and a half before the bell rings to halal and kaccha jhatka us all. It always has to be a creepy sounding name in some distant corner of the city. A building complex with a name like “Tiny Tots Public School” never lives up to the kind of expectations it builds up in the minds of the aspiring examinees. There is no girl “tota” enough to look at, and those expecting a flash of a replacement of “o” with an “i” in “Tots” are in for a big disappointment. But, why would they even expect such a thing out of “Tiny Tots Public School”? Serves them right, Bloody Tharkis.

The Wannabe-esque Daanav

On reaching the exam centre, the thing that catches one’s attention much before the “CBSE Affiliated” letters painted below the school’s name is a pair of Dholchi&Ghabrana branded sunglasses covering half the face of a Nikhil Dwivedi look-alike. Thinking about all the body fluids that he must’ve used to keep his hair spiked up and sport a forehead bang at the same time, makes you wonder if you’re at the venue for the much dreaded exam that you wished to appear for or a Dadagiri Audition on Bindass. He chews on some gum and showers synonyms of “********” between his chuckles. The checked shirt, skin fit jeans and a belt buckle as big as Amitabh Bacchan’s face is enough to scare the Puma chappals off your feet.

The Desk of the Monjolika

With fear, and some hope of being able to -settle down- after getting that professional degree, one goes into the exam room. The exam fat yukt bottom lowers itself down to rest on the wooden chair, and the dream of settling down in peace shatters into pieces. How dare one put one’s butt to Monjolika’s face! Now she vows to dance during the exam, torturing the examinee by tap dancing and shifting weight from a fore leg to the short and diagonally opposite hind leg. If one tries to write fast during the exam time, it wobbles in wrath, embarrassing the poor victim in a classroom full of tense fellow-examinees who make hissing sounds like toy pressure cookers to show their disappointment.

And just in case one thinks he’s lucky to be riding a Monjolika with even legs, the evil one places a hole right under the circle to be darkened on an OMR sheet. She’ll make you pay for her rape by a stained compass in the hands of an angry kid.

The Pseudo-Nerdosaurus

As soon as the invigilator starts reciting words ordering people to keep their bags outside, the Pseudo-Nerdosaurus roars never before seen questions at everyone around him. His words that sound like the Accounting equivalent of “Bhai, Einstein ke pubes ka mass calculate karne ka formula kya hai?” freak everyone out and they flip pages of their tutor’s notes, saying things like: “Yaar iska answer kahan hai? Shit yaar, bohot fatt rahi hai!”

This frig of a Pseudo-Nerd Monster screws with everyone’s mental peace just a few seconds before the exam, making them fear the occurrence of that particular question in the paper. While everyone rummages through their spiral bound notes for the answer, he gives a poker troll face to the world.

The Bhoot Bhagaau Pundit Ji

A laal-tika wale pundit ji enters the room twenty minutes before the scheduled exam time and prepares himself for the bhoot bhagaau puja. Oh, I’m sorry. The puja starts ten minutes before he enters the exam hall. After reciting “maata-pita charan chhooatayami swaha” a hundred and eight times, he is fed some dahi, cheeni, charanamrit and tulsi. His walk from the school gate to the numbered seat on the first floor of the school is accompanied by the Hanuman Chalisa playing in his head. He religiously makes margins on the right side of the sheets with his pencil and ruler, and fights the urge to write the gayatri mantra on every page. He wants to print at least an “Om Sai Ram” on the first page, but the strict instructions forbidding one from making religious symbols flashes in front of his eyes like the full moon for a werewolf.

The What’sTheTime-Aasur

A close cousin of the Wannabe-isque Daanav, this monster recognizes himself as the nemesis of Mahabharat’s –Main Samay Hoon-. With nothing more than his roll number to write on the answer sheet, he repeatedly shrieks “Ma’am, how much time left?” at intervals of every seven and a half minutes. The Pundit Ji becomes an easy victim of his repeated growls and feels his blood pressure rising, which may also be half credited to the enormous amount of parshad he consumed before the exam. The Daanav partners with the Asur and never fails to reply to his queries about the time remaining. Smiles are exchanged between them, and the invigilator gets just as pissed off as the fellow examinees.

The Haaye Tota

Going by the standards of the above mentioned monsters, the “Tota” is usually a Sardarni with a long pig tail, jeans with sequined flowers and skin as soft as the kadha parshad. She is looked at by the examinees with an excuse to stare in a random direction and think. But, the “Haaye Tota” is a rare occurrence. She walks into the exam hall, typing messages on her white BlackBerry, which rests in the soft cushion of a pink silicon cover. Her look is enough evidence for the experienced to know that she is capable of “Aww”-ing at some of the questions while underlining key words in her answers with colored Staedtler pens. A Carmen Electra equivalent of the Scary Movie of an exam, she leaves the dead behind and passes the exam with distinction. Blame a DPS RKP or a BVN education here.

The exams get over and the characters merge into the buses, the Metro and the Hyundai Santros. They fail, they pass and they forge ahead. And then, they meet the ghosts of the corporate. It’s true how they say ghosts never die. It’s also true when I say they don’t.

Image Source: examcoll.blogspot.com