40 Years of Employment -- Gratitude Series Part 4 -- Side Story
Well , you have to wait for the next post to find out how my
career took off …😊
Part 3 of this series raised a question – “ why was I not as
confident of clearing my final exams “ ? There is a situational
story which created that doubt.
After intense preparations , I landed up at the examination center and was extremely nervous on the first day of the Seven day Agni Parikshai ( Test of fire ) .. And you would want to do the first exam really well , so that you carry that momentum to the rest of the six papers. My Roll number was 4225 . I was all set at my desk , 15 minutes prior to the start. As I was waiting for the answer sheets and the question paper to be given , I noticed the person who was a topper in the Intermediate exams walk in. And that person sat in two desks ahead of me . I was now perturbed. I was hoping roll no 4224 would show up and sit in between and made a silent prayer that the person should show up !
The reasoning was that if your answer paper goes for
correction after the answer sheet of the topper is corrected , the chances of your paper being
evaluated against that person's answer to each question may happen and that would mean
lower marks for me ! Panic bells rang…Roll number 4224 never showed up
and I felt badly exposed. But once I got the answer sheets , I had no
time to think of this and wrote the paper well. I nearly forgot the presence of
this Topper sitting in front , till I finished the exam and as I was leaving ,
one of the good friends ( Nanbanda ) asked me – “Did you recognise who was in
front of you ? … What a nice way to remind ?
I finished the first four papers of Group 1 and hoped that
Roll no 4224 would surface for Group 2 and that may increase my changes
of clearing Group 2 at least —No Roll no 4224 did not turn for group 2 either.
So all the seven papers were written with some amount of “ Butterflies in the
stomach” situation. As is the case , I forgot about this till the day of
the result. I remembered this on the day of the result and as time flew
during the day till I saw the result late evening , I thought I lost it .
But Almighty was kind enough … Rest is history..
The story does not end here.. This happened in May
1987.. I kept track of this All India topper who again was a topper in the
Final exam as well. It so happened , that this very person in 2023 was a
Speaker ( Virtual meeting ) at a Rotary event. I had joined in early for the
meeting and so did this speaker. I introduced myself and then talked about this
incident and called out this person s roll number … the person was
absolutely stunned that I remembered that person's roll number etc…. Both of us
laughed off about the exam ….
Extremely stunning coincidence it was.
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