I was waiting impatiently for my 10th board results, contemplation of it took over all other minor and major issues going on in life. After all my concerted effort in the final month before exams, I was not able to write as my parents would have liked, and imagination of their reaction on different grades, sometimes brought smiles on face and sometimes filled me with a mixed emotion of shame and fear. Ashamed for not understating the desires of them, who did everything for me, went through problems just for providing me quality education. Feared for the temper my father had.
Fear of my father's anger was able to even diminish the effect of a hungry roaring lion, if ever met in front. I remember once in a Sunday morning, the charming blow of air forced me to hear some soft songs to add the effect of that atmosphere. I plugged earphone in newly brought mobile of Spice Company, which was the first multimedia phone we owned. I loved songs of Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan. The beauty of those songs let me forget that I had crossed the time when my father would come home after his duty. I realised it when my father pushed the front gate to come inside. I hurried to keep the mobile as far as I could, but it was too late. While keeping his office bag on the stool placed in front of the front door, he had already seen those small boxes of earphone in my ears. My father had a habit of asking whether I had studied or not since morning, whenever he came back at 8:00 am from night duty on my holidays. He had not done this from a long time, so I was little relaxed.
Don't know why, that day he questioned this to my mother, and my mother who was in competition with Raja Harishchanrda, replied 'No, he had not even touched the book'. All of a sudden fear seized the whole of my body, I was motionless, even the eye balls didn't dare to move and got fixed at the calendar which had the photo of sun god riding on chariot pulled by seven pure white horses, in the space left after all the dates and space for some monthly calculations in that calendar.
The calendar was on name of Thakur Prasad, it had photo on middle of lowest column on every page relating the major festival in that month. The sun god indicated the chhath puja which is a major festival celebrated by people of UP, JHARKHAND and BIHAR all over the country.
I knew only he could save me, but god was also in mood of teaching me a lesson for not caring about books as I should. Once I was studying for my English test. I was going through one boring chapter; I felt the need of listening songs along with memorising the story to answer internal questions. My mom saw me studying like that and said, 'studying like that will never help you, at least respect goddess Saraswati and concentrate on book when it is open in front of you.' I replied without delaying a second, 'She is goddess of music too.' I won the debate with mom but in fact I had made a loss by arguing. Probably this logical but insincere answer annoyed my mother, whose reaction came out today as 'Not even touched.'
It was clearly visible that I am going to be prey of my father's anger. My father after hearing that, 'not even touched,' moved furiously towards me, took the hand fan kept beside me, and started beating me with it. Each time it came in contact on my body, I pleaded; it will not happen again, please forgive me. But he showed no mercy till ten times that hand fan took some skin out of my body.
My anger and fear were at peak in that instant. It used be always same emotion whenever I was beaten up. Anger exploded in my mind along with fear and then few instants later the words circulated in mine mind, 'parents are strict to you only for your betterment,' with that my anger would vanish. But the fear was not replaceable and I never listened the song again which I was listening while my father entered the home.
As I grew elder I concluded that most of the parents wait for any big mistake to scold their child. They never find such mistake and never get any chance of correcting their child. About major mistakes, one is sure about being taken in radar of punishment, so they make every effort for hiding that mistake. Parents waiting for such mistakes continue to provide full freedom, thinking them innocent, making way for even bigger mistakes. I was scolded badly for as minor mistake as falling of empty glass from hands, so there was no question of thinking for even those fun or work which my parents would never like.
I realised the importance of those scolding toward humanity when I felt how excessive freedom to their child is giving rise to a society, one will never want at least for themselves. Very few are bothered about taking account of their child, who are out from their homes for hours and do all the unnecessary works for showing heroism, from being habitual to smoking, drinking alcohol or the most shameless work of following and teasing any girl.
I think there is no need of any revolution for changing the society towards better direction, if parents would give preference to strictly sticking with the morals more than giving love to their child, society will change itself.
Let's come back to the results, to my already nervous state CBSE added fuel to it by delaying the result by one day due to some technical reason. In the morning of result day I tried to wake up as late I could, to reduce the state of anxiety to minimum time. That day I slept till 8:30 AM, still there were two and half hours left in the declaration of results. By the time I brushed my teeth and took shower, mother was ready with breakfast. As usual after bathing I joined my hands in-front of god's idol and worshiped them by chanting few mantras.
It would be usually ten minutes process but that day it took me longer in order to explain; how the good marks would lead to my success and ultimately how it would help the god's aim of stabilising the values of humanity, as people ponder only on ideas of those who are successful.
Before my explanation and requests were over, mother had already called me twice for the food. As I got up and started folding the mat for keeping it in corner of that worship room, I saw mother is outside the kitchen, to find out what I am doing after her two loud calls for having food remained unanswered. When I noticed her there was a satisfaction on her face, which was always there whenever she found me spending some time in religious works.
Being a very religious lady it was an obvious reaction from her side. She wanted us to have the knowledge of spiritual books as we had of our school syllabus.
Whatever may be the situation, but I never compromised with food. I would have sufficient amount of it and would think over the situation after eating. It was due to the taste which was contribution of my mother's dedication and the Everest mashala.
My mother made Rajma Chawal, and Pulaw of such kind that it was nearly impossible that any other type of it will ever satisfy the taste of my tongue. That day she had made jackfruit which was also one of my favourite. I went inside the kitchen, jackfruit was already served in plate, and I put three breads in it. I think I was too hungry that day as I asked her for more breads or it was just my method for keeping me busy to avoid the nervousness of the result.
After the breakfast I chose to read newspaper in process of keeping myself busy. The front page had the news headline stating, CBSE 10th result will be declared at 11:00 AM, as I had heard yesterday in evening news headlines. I turned over all the pages slowly finding some news that would touch my heart and will force me to read it completely and finally I settled down to sports page. I had habit of reading all the sports news in detail and that was the reason why even faking the news headlines in school assembly, sports news were always real.
It was 10:30 A.M, when I put on the one of my two jeans, had sleepers in my foot and in haste went downstairs to come out of the building compound on the road which would take me to the cyber cafe. In the way I passed by the house of one of my school mate, firstly I decided not to call him in case of maintaining the secrecy of a poor result and then crossed the road almost unconsciously for calling him.
He was kind of most innocent child in the school and one of the boys I was excepting to top the school with 10 CGPA mark. He appeared almost like harry potter's cousin dudely grown a bit older. Heavy weighted, wearing pants even over his belly button and had a catora cut hairstyle.
I liked him for his innocence but there was also a second reason, he too was a big fan of my ideal...'MSD'. My tears when I lost to have remote in hands for watching his batting was able to describe how many things were secondary to him in mine life. I loved hearing his praise on every news channel whenever he played a great knock or did something special in captaincy. This addiction of mine brought a habit of watching news channels which later helped me winning numerous quiz competitions.
Someone being also a fan of him as me was obviously a great partner. We both always sat together in bus while going and coming from school. We would discuss all the inning we remembered of MSD and the memorable match won by INDIA. We would discuss which player should Chennai super kings bring so that it can again win the IPL title, the playing eleven which will suit the most. We both liked equally when we see the big screen in Chepuk Stadium in chennai flashing 'THE DEN.' With so many thoughts having similarity, we had made a great friendship in previous two years even after belonging to different sections of the class.
I reached in front of his house and shouted, sidhhuu.....His actual name was Siddhant .
After five loud shouts he came out wearing a cream coloured half pant and blue T-shirt, instantaneously I enquired, 'Have you seen your result?' He replied, 'Not yet, I am unable in opening the result website in cell phone.' I requested, 'Let's go to cyber cafe. He agreed and we both walked together to the cyber cafe discussing, what could be the result of few among the toppers, and of those who had habit of failing by scoring marks in single digits, most of the time I was busy in telling him that how easily he would top the class.
We both reached a cyber cafe, and were not surprised to find one of my friends already present there. Rohit was about to check his result, but stopped when he saw us coming. He said me to fill my roll number, deleting the numbers of his roll no which he had half filled in the box given. It was a chance taken by him to make himself comfortable while seeing his result in case if I had a bad result. I had no such thoughts in mind till date so I didn't refused him from doing so. I easily typed the roll no without any help, as I had written it in several place on the walls of my house, in process of impatient wait for the result. After pressing the enter key, the technical wheel made two complete rounds and the result was in front of me. It read 8.6 CGPA, I was shocked with the result as it was greater than my expectation, but more than being shocked, I was happy. I had now something that I can tell my parents having eye contact with them.
Now it was my second friend's chance to see the results, he was still hesitating in opening up result. The reason in my view was, the marks I had now, might be he had not expected for him that much. But he had no choice other than opening up his results, it read 7.6 and I was now sure for my reason of his hesitation.
Now our topper checked his result, as he saw the result his first reaction was, shit! This can't happen to me, teachers of school had taken their revenge for cross questioning them in classrooms. 'I can't believe how marks in science are so low? Even after scoring well all the year,' was his point of explanation. He had scored as much I had, '8.6 CGPA'. He was the most disappointed person in that cyber cafe, and for some reason I felt is grief meaningful, as I had expected him to top by scoring 10 CGPA.
To decrease his grief I suggested to enjoy the uncertain result of others too and phoned few of our friends, soon we knew that only one in all the sections of class had scored 10 CGPA, and his agony was little less now. Also laughing on some lower CGPA by expected one helped him.
We decided to move to our homes. Leaving from there, I was the happiest guy; suddenly my mind went to my pocket. I had fifty rupees, which my mother had given to me for paying in caber cafe. The rate was 10 rupees for surfing of thirty minutes. I had saved all of them and it was celebrate my inner victory.
I went to a sweet shop named chhappan(56) bhog and brought five piece rusgulla. In the way I thought what actually chhappan(56) bhog is? mention of which I had heard a lot while my father would complain about taste of food and my mother would reply, ' I can't help a person who wants chappan bhog everyday.' Later I came to know what it meant.
It was related to my beloved lord Krishna, who took incarnation in dwapar yug when evil in the society reached to maximum extent. Once during his childhood, all the people of his village were doing the arrangements for worshiping lord Indra, the god of thunder and rain. Lord Krishna asked his parent, 'Why do we worship Lord Indra?' His father replied, 'So that we can get timely rain to avoid drought and hardship, listening this Lord Krishna said to his parents and other elders of village, 'its duty of Lord Indra to give timely rain to the earthly people, what's the matter of worshiping in this.' Fearing the consequences of not worshiping Lord Indra people said, 'We cannot disrespect him; it will put all of us in great hardship.' Lord Krishna's aim was to demolish the ego of lord Indra, so he insisted them, 'Instead we should worship the gouvardhan parvat.' On his request all villagers agreed to worship gouvardhan parvat instead to lord Indra. As a result of which lord Indra flooded the earth with heavy rain; all the houses got destructed by heavy rain. In attempt of providing shelter to all his villagers lord Krishna uprooted the gouvardhan parvat and held it like roof over those people only by the help of his tiny finger.
Doing so he remained without eating any food for seven days till lord Indra realised that his power was not enough for harming any villager as lord Vishnu himself is protecting them. Mother yashoda used to feed lord Krishna 8 times in a day, so adding add up the times she would have fed lord Krishna equals 56, so when lord Krishna had food after seven days she made 56 types of dishes for lord Krishna and this way 'chappan bhog' became part of everyone's discussion.
I reached my home and looked for mom and father. Mom was putting clothes to dry on the terrace and father was busy in watching some old Bollywood movie. Father noticed me there and asked, 'How much you have scored?' In a cheerful voice I said, 'I have scored 8.6 CGPA.' My mother was back from the terrace and said, 'well, that's good enough, a little try would have taken you to 90%.' For her and everyone present in house defined CGPA as percent divided by ten. She was in a happy state and father too looked relieved, but as usual he had a statement, 'If you have reduced the time of using facebook, you could have easily crossed 9.0 CGPA. For a dedicated person even 10 CGPA is not a big thing.' Later I came to know one of mine father's friend had called him few minutes ago and, his daughter, who was one of mine childhood friend, had scored 10 CGPA. Probably, the freedom my father gave me, considering me sincere enough for handling my studies had affected my result by 1.0 CGPA.
Though I knew I haven't scored as per what my well wishers had expected, I was happy. Those marks gave me satisfaction and I think that's enough for any human to celebrate. I ate my piece of rusgulla and it tasted as sweet as it tasted earlier, no bitterness of unnecessary expectation was there, mine mind didn't allowed that.