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.

Comments

Anonymous said…
No one will forget your roll no after reading your post. Engrossingly written.
8:43 AM
Kamesh said…
Keep these stories coming! can't wait to read the next one!
1:48 PM
Anonymous said…
This blog series is fit for a Pan India movie script Sri! There is comedy, family drama, thriller, adventure - great stuff - engaging..
5:33 PM
Sri said…
Thank you P R Babu -- Romance is missing :)
7:37 AM
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