The Answer Paper...

During school days…there were so many silly (atleast for me..) things that I just couldn’t agree to…One such aspect was EXAMS…and more than that the REPORT CARDS…a report card or a mark list was the most horrible thing I wished I never had to take home…especially if the numbers that was in it was not so biggggggg one…We used to have soo many subjects to learn like Mathematics, Science, English, Social Science etc etc…and this Stupid Card had a detailed list of the marks we scored in each subject…and if luck wasn’t with u, then the teachers would get the chance to decorate the Black and White Card with colours…that is, if you fail for one subject, they would draw a red line below that mark…Maybe this was the only place where I liked it Black & White...

My mom was a terror for me and brother during exams and days we get our report cards…I was considered the Intelligent Girl…for the same reason once my brother started the routine life of going to school and having exams and results, mom let me free…means, she didn’t have the time to spare to sit with me to teach me and prepare me for the exams…I HAD to do it myself…I WAS HAPPY….atleast, I was saved from the official thuds and pinches and slaps….(she had this peculiar habit of asking questions once she teach you something and I used to feel that she was POSSESSED by seeing the way she reacted when I couldn’t give the correct answer…) I thanked my brother at heart…bcoz of him I was saved from the pre-exam terror…So if I study well and do the exam well, I would be spared from the Post-exam terror too…I just needed to work hard and get good marks…or rather DECENT marks (and for her that meant above 90%...uhmmmm….)

But somebody else was cursing me then…that was my brother…leaving me on my own meant my mom had her complete time for my brother…so u can imagine the situation….to worsen things up…he was lazy and considered NOT SO STUDIOUS…where mom kept my Decent mark to be 90%, she just hoped my brother to get a 50% ATLEAST…so pre-exam days was the most horrible days for my bro and my mom too…she had to literally bang her own head on the walls trying to teach my bro and making him study them without forgetting them...atleast until he finished his exams…

My mom didn’t leave us free even after the exam…UNTIL, she sees our question papers and make sure that we have done our exams properly…once we reach home after exams, she would sit with the question paper and start asking us the answers…we had to recite the answers we have written…not to forget, she even asked us to write the answers on question paper…so that we didn’t have to recite them…she would read the questions and answers from the question paper and would have a rough idea of how much mark we would score…she didn’t care much about me, as she trusted me to score high…but with my bro, she prayed hard, that he doesn’t fail…. many a times, we had tried many plans to outdo atleast the post-exam terror, by telling, we lost the question paper...nothing ever worked…some how she used to manage to get a spare question paper…God knows how…

That year, I was in the 4th grade and my bro in the 2nd… that is, I was 9 and my bro 7 years old…we came after our Second term exams (exams before the Xmas holidays)…she saw my question paper and I had done the exam pretty well…she was happy…with shivering hands she started going thru my bro’s paper…he had English exam… there was not a single question which she hasn’t taught her… from the first question ‘The vowels of English alphabets are ____’ to the last question ‘Write five lines on - The Cow - ’…my brother was cool in answering every single question…My mom, for the first time in history had a breath of relief…She sighed, “Ha, this time, he wouldn’t fail…and he would be getting good marks too….even if there are spelling mistakes, still he would surely pass…”…for the first time, she was cool and didn’t wait for the results to come…she knew, this time, the result for the English paper is going to be great…

My mom was in for a shock when the results came…my brother had a red line below his English marks…where she expected to see a minimum of 20 out of 50; she saw a 5½. / 50…She was thunderstruck…she knew there was some mistake some where…Maybe the teacher didn’t correct the answer paper correctly…She was angry, bcoz she knew her son had done the exams so well…She rushed to the school, met the teacher and DEMANDED a JUSTIFICATION for the marks…She challenged that there was some terrible mistake…The teacher smiled…She gave mom my brother English Answer Paper…My mom couldn’t believe her eyes…(if you wanna see them urself, pls click on the below images for Page 1 and 2)....

The teacher just had the most easiest answer paper to evaluate...

What happened to my bro after this is History...

GOD BLESS HIM!!!