It was the month of March, and a strange tension floated through the house. The reason was Rahul’s board exams. On normal days, Rahul was a calm and composed soul. But the moment exams were mentioned, it was as if he was possessed.
When the alarm rang at five in the morning, he sprang out of bed as though the nation’s economy depended on his result. His mother handed him a cup of tea, and he anxiously asked, “Mom, if I skip three chapters, should I just become a monk?” His father replied dryly, “First take the exam. You can renounce the world afterward.”
Rahul created such an intense study timetable that even he felt intimidated by it. Every hour was assigned a different subject, and each subject had a pen of a different color. On the wall, he had written in bold letters: Now or Never! Yet within five minutes, his hand would automatically drift toward his phone. Then he would scold himself, muttering, “This is worldly distraction!”
The day before the exam was even more dramatic. He suddenly felt he had forgotten everything he had studied. He asked his younger sister, “Do you remember the Pythagorean theorem?” She replied casually, “I don’t even remember my own homework.” Rahul’s confidence wobbled further.
That night, he checked his bag five times—admit card, pens, pencils, ruler. Even while trying to sleep, he would suddenly sit up and ask, “Mom, the admit card hasn’t flown away, right?”
On exam day, when he reached school, he noticed his friends laughing and chatting. None of them looked possessed. When he received the question paper, he realized that half the questions were from topics he had thoroughly prepared. Slowly, the fear began to fade.
Three hours later, he walked out smiling. “It wasn’t that difficult!” he declared. His father laughed and asked, “Has the ghost left?” Rahul grinned, “Yes—but now the ghost of the result is on its way.”
The moment he returned home, he announced, “One week of rest!” But by evening, after glancing at the syllabus for the next exam, the same haunted look returned. Once again, Rahul was under the spell—haunted by exams all over again.
RAJEEV VERMA 