8th April 2012

This was the reply when by chance I had asked my old junior friend about his studies some days back . I surely wouldn’t have dared to even do that had I known  what was coming. As April 8th draws nearer and nearer, I know what it means  because I myself have passed through this phase a couple of years back as of this writing.

IITJEE 2012! That’s the golden dream that Science students passing their High-School Examinations this year have plunged into. But what shocked me was that reply I got. Even though I was a Science student in my High-School days, I’ve never put ONE Entrance Test above all those that he uttered – Damn it! I’ve always been firm on my philosophies, and I’ve followed what one of the greatest scientists had once said when he was a student –

I’ve always respected other’s thoughts, always valued them more than mine, but when you get to hear such things from a student of eighteen years of age, you got to go back and perhaps sit down with an ice-bag over your head. Just today did I receive a four-page advertisement from a coaching institute claiming to be the best in the business (no surprise, that’s absolutely normal and this is common with every such institute under the sun) – lo all this even before the examination was conducted!

I’ve heard my parents speak about their childhood memories about rejoicing to their heart’s content after their tenth boards for a couple of months before their high-school classes started. IITJEE was never a craze among them, and I find them absolutely fine without having to go through this cloud of books and hoards of knowledge – all only to crack the Joint Entrance Examination! People of my parents age have everything they need to make a decent living and spend happy time with their family without having to run to ten coaching classes for getting admission to the IIT’s in their childhood.

Getting admitted to the IIT’s is more of a craze nowadays. People MUST get their wards admitted to an IIT, whoever fails to run with the herd gets bobbed down and tagged as a “dull and unintelligent student.” This is what people do after getting admission to an IIT – they spend their days either running after girls, or remain drunk for half of the day-time, which clearly tells the story that all they wanted was to get a IIT Brand beside their name, and never to become a true good Engineer! Brand values have started to be valued more than true love for studies, subjects other than Science, or even Arts for that matter. Never is a writer given the respect of a IIT-pass-out Engineer, even though perhaps the former requires more mental labor than the later (if that’s the reason people value IITIANS as born-geniuses).  Interestingly, every year so many such born-geniuses happen to get a B-Tech/M-Tech Deg. from such valued institutions like the IIT’s, while only a few manage to get among the top ten scientists of the world.

There you are – Majority of the B-Tech’s end up pursuing management courses in the IIM’s, as if the B-Tech Deg. is not enough of a brand. You keep on wondering what has management got to do with Engineering, and if you ask those guys they would shy you off as someone who deals with “excuses for failure”, even though I’m yet to convince myself as to how exactly does a non-IITian or non-IIM student gets categorized so easily as a failure. Worse, those studying in the IIT’s start to develop some sort of a boastful character as if all those studying non-Engineering are failures (that includes those studying other subjects like Economics, History – which includes the likes of Amartya Sen, R.C. Mazumdar alike). I try to convince myself that maybe what they think are correct, but somehow I can’t justify myself in any way (maybe because I’m not an IITian).

Someone is however making hay while the sun shines – the coaching institutes! They are meant only for producing the “cream layer” of the student-community. Interestingly again, every year if you check the JEE ranks, almost eighty percent of the top fifty ranks are taken away by students belonging to these institutes. So these institutes start up and hype the necessary syllabus,  required preparations for this exam. Go by them, and you are sure (no guarantee though) that you would end up in one of the robotic shops of India. Also I wonder what type of examination is this IIT-thing that only those from these cramming-centers tend to be toppers? Those who either do not have the means, or the energy to cope up with the strangling pace and routines of the FIITJEE’s and the BANSAL’s are likely to be ending up getting ranks that actually do not “matter”, or worse, no ranks at all. Overtly this is supposed to be the examination which brings about the “raw talent” of students – in this way!! Those cracking the JEE would’ve done that even without their help and on their sheer merit and desire.

April 8th means nothing to me, just as April 11th, 2010 did not. Maybe some would keep on insisting that getting to study in the IIT’s guarantees glamour no-less than that of being a president or a prime minister, but what I do to keep those fools shut is put forward a simple question – “All these IITians and born-geniuses (as they call them) end up in getting jobs in multinational companies with salaries perhaps unimaginable, but the owners of these companies were never IITians… – they were better than them!” I had appeared in IITJEE but never gave it any more importance than I give to spam messages in my mailbox, I’ve always fostered the view and will always do so even if hell breaks loose – “Talent will always be rewarded even if you fail to succeed in one entrance examination, and perhaps, you might end up getting better things in life..” Surely there are more important things in life than qualifying or getting depressed after a Joint Entrance Exam – pay more heed to them. As Aamir Khan puts it – ‘Pursue excellence, success will then pursue you’. Of course there will be people who will put you away by saying these things happen only in films  just don’t bother to look back at them, they are no better than the cows straying in the backyard.