Life is all about experiences. It would be a whirlwind of an experience for any student, especially if you wake up exactly half an hour before the examination starts and the exam hall is located 12 km away from your residence. It happened like this. It was the first year of my PG in Mass Communications at the Central College. I had put in a lot of effort and burnt the midnight oil to study for the exams.
It was past 5.30 am and I dozed off on my bed and my innocent father, having seen me toil day and night, had let me sleep. When I woke up, it was 9 am and the clock had stopped. With an eerie shriek, I shouted at my dad for not waking me up and within minutes, I was on the road carrying my hall ticket and paraphernalia. There was no scope for catching the BTS bus as it would not serve my purpose. I sprang to my feet to catch an auto.
I ran for two kilometres towards my destination and finally, got one auto on Sankey Road. I soon arrived at my destination and ran upstairs to the heritage block of the Central College and blindly ran into my HoD, Prof BA Sridhara. The professor took me aside and made me sit and asked me to relax. It dawned on me that I was 50 minutes late and my friend next to me had already finished one full bundle of answer sheets. Prof Sridhara came near me and whispered some words in my ears and left the hall.
Losing no time, I hopped on to the bandwagon and started my T-20 exam, with the whole lot of my batch mates gaping at me. It was an experience I will never forget. Speed, thought flow, resoluteness and visualising them into words were being done in a trance. Time and again the professor was behind me, encouraging me. By the end of the third hour, I was an emancipated man and felt life had come a full circle. I had gone through an unforgettable experience. I learnt from this incident that life should be taken with a pinch of salt.
By the way, I stood first in the examinations and was awarded first rank in the university and Masti Venkatesh Iyengar gold medal. When I received the medal, the magical words of my professor kept ringing in my ears, ‘Lakshman, journalism is literature in a hurry’. Reminiscing my father’s love, which made me late for the exams, and the professor’s words, I would not be where I am today.
The writer is a Senior Liaison Officer, National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC)
