Confession of a Blame-Shifter

It was all calm a minute, maybe a little jack in my heartbeat from the anxiety, all except for it was completely stable and lingering…. but a rush in an-other minute. A rush to reach the school. A rush to pick out everything that I would need from everything that I had put in my bag only this morning as everything that I wanted there. A rush to look back at the gate to find a glimpse of my father and then being amazed at actually seeing him there(a rush of seeing the unexpected). A rush to reach the correct examination hall. A rush to thank everyone in my path, a rush to collect all the good points. A rush to look uninterested and hasty in a room full of students who had bitched about me the whole time, a room full of students I had despised. A rush to fill the details that I had no clue about. A rush to cut a sorry figure at arriving late. A rush to make use of reading time,which I hardly got, as sir had directed, a rush to connect with the paper and stay disconnected all the same. A rush to sketch out lines where unnecessary(and forgetting where necessary). A rush at remembering the faces of the people who expect something of me, pray the best for me. A rush of erratic breathing that I completely forgot to function. A rush to bring everything, that I had learned in 14 years of schooling,in between the lines of the sheets. A rush to get inside the examiner ‘s mind to judge whatever I wrote while I was actually writing, a rush of being somewhere I was not and not being somewhere I was. A rush of stealing those quick moments. A rush of the urge to pick on my eyes, a rush to put that urge aside. A rush of trying to get inside the generous invigilator’s mind, a rush when she announced 1 hour and my half paper was left, a rush of ecstasy when she announced 45 minutes and 1/4th of my paper was left. A rush when someone in the backside almost fended for my 1 mark by asking something really dumb. A rush when she announced 2 minutes and 10 marks of my paper were just there mocking me, a rush to grab at least 2 marks of format in those 2 minutes,a rush to beg 1 minute more by any chance. A rush to get out of the suddenly filthy room. A rush to tell someone the blunder that I had committed, a rush to know if it was in any way mutual. A rush of the remnant of the day-before-yesterday ‘s-dream coming back to me at seeing Sukhneet and finally realising what it meant and what I had to learn from her. A rush of getting away from the building as if it may collapse any moment(maybe I would have slowed down if it actually was going to). A rush to shuffle in the crowd and never be found. A rush at seeing Papa wave for me to come that side, a rush at realizing that he ‘s counting on the fact that i did well. A rush to swell my cheeks and act like I‘m supposed to because I‘m supposed to be upset. A rush to reach the car, a rush to get hit by a car. A rush to get rid of the things i had kept clutched in my hands for so long. A rush to touch my phone but not doing it because it was inappropriate at the time. A rush to explain my inefficiency woven in lies, a rush to put off the blame, a rush to escape with an excuse, a rush to understand what went wrong, a rush of urge to go back and do it right, a rush of doing it the other way. A rush to give hope to Ritu ma’am as well as myself. A rush to test the taste of random Gujarati food but not being able to do so… and somewhere between the explaining and the steps up the home, the rush came to an end … it became regret more than ever, and not before that had the realization struck me, the realization that my life had partially depended on this, that I had relied on scoring 100 for so long that I had not imagined any of this. That this was the first of boards and last of school, that this had already brought me down from my fantasy of becoming the topper, that this was an attack on 2% of my total score, that there was no chance that I‘m getting it back, that I have no other option but to get a 100 in every other. That I had lost something that I had loved, that I don’t deserve to love a language when I cant score for it. That I will have to act far too much to escape everyone. That something done so much in rush can affect my life all so much, that its not something that I gave much thought to that affects but something done so much in a moment would have an affect so long …now i understand that lesson of deep water when he said that there ‘s no panic just a plan at the very first, but then YOU hit the bottom very very slow and all your plans come crashing down that is when you see that tinge of yellow, that is when you shout out into the void only to be surrounded with water when you want to pop to the surface but everything ‘s holding u down, legs paralyzed, head throbbing, I understand it now, how a mistake of 5 minutes eats up your whole day like Naveen sir had exclaimed, then there is that third attempt and then all your efforts ceases to be, and you pass into nothingness. And then I guess the blooper in my exam was all to thunderize me to connect with my lessons which I had failed to a day before, that I now understand how a thing of beauty is powerful enough to resurrect you from the oblivion, that it was beauty that I found in my parent’s apology and their expectations and that there is no beauty in projecting always the vulnerable-me, that there will be beauty when I will be cocksure about everything that I would do, more like Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers and less like Aunt Jennifer herself, that this realization was only possible because of the quiet introspection Pablo Neruda speaks of….

( — March 2, 2015)