Thursday, February 19, 2009

One day prep

People keep on studying it the whole year; we took the B.Sc. English exam with a preparation of just one day, like we had done that with Pak-studies and Islamiat. Two days at the most. Twenty utterly boring stories (with a few exceptions) were not easy to swallow. I did not even read all. Luckily all four questions were from stories I had read. The examination center was this Ch. Rehmat Ali School, which reminded me of my own school. A little boy actually asked one of my friends, 'Bhai aap konsi class main hain?.' The grounds were much bigger than ours at KE. The school was much cleaner too. There weren't any open gutters or pigeons' shits or dogs, cats or donkeys.

Before the exam commenced we were out there in the ground chatting and laughing loudly while other candidates were busy, their heads buried in the books, trying to grasp some more at the eleventh hour. When we were at our seats, before the distribution of question papers, I saw a guy from AIMC reciting some verses, eyes tightly closed, eyebrows frowned. I thought, 'Man...he's serious'. After a little while, a man, must be in his late thirties, entered the room. We thought he must be an invigilator. But he came forward and occupied an empty seat. He was a candidate. My friend whispered, 'Inko ab yaad aya hai.' Our real invigilator was a fat old man, thick stubble on his face and looked fed up of his life. After distributing the papers, he sat on a chair, supported his head against the wall and closed his eyes. I can't tell if he actually went to sleep.

2 comments:

Awais Aftab said...

Our invigilator was a pain in the ass... logon ko utha utha kar, jaibon ki talaashi le raha tha.

Anonymous said...

lol! a friend of mine put it this way (and I agree pretty much): "The purpose of B.A in Pakistan is not to educate people but to graduate them and increase the literacy rate".