We are living in a country, where being employed is tough. Radhika always dreamt of getting selected for the best engineering college in the country.
It was not easy. She was competing with 10 million people to top in the best college. Each of them equally scared and thus determined. It is gateway to riches beyond. The ‘cream of the cream’ is supposed to make it. India’s one of the best colleges.
For two years she crammed for 14 hours a day. Everything else would follow later. Her mother prayed in temples for her success. Her father subscribed to expensive coaching classes. The whole house was geared up toward her success. If she faired badly in an exam, the atmosphere would be as though someone had died in the house! She was brought up in the middle class family lived in Mumbai.
When the results were expected, she could not sleep that night. It was only in the early hours of dawn that she started feeling drowsy. Finally that fine morning her father came running in with a newspaper and he woke her up with the news that she made it! She was still so sleepy. Yes, she had two months to join her college and each day was a celebration. The tough days were over. Or so she thought.
In her imagination the place would be like a nothing else she had ever experienced: unique, quiet, and encouraging. She imagined having talks with professors and friends after all the initial information from the institute, where they talked about individual attention, small class sizes and a friendly atmosphere. She wanted to have the best time of her life there.
Finally on an ordinary day, she arrived at the ‘temple of learning’. The ragging crushed her. Such inflated egos. It was a shallow world. And what a ratio it had of male to female students! There were 40 guys to one girl. Her seniors had just one goal, to get to know the first year girls and remove the stigma of not having a girlfriend. She was way too young to cope with it. She had no idea what was happening.
Classes went on at a dizzy pace. Professors were heavy weights, and if they merely glanced at an undergraduate student, they were supposed to feel obliged. More than anything else, it was lonely place. She was scared. But had no one to tell. Grades count for such a lot, and she was not doing very well.
Well, it should not have mattered. But with success came weight of expectations, from her parents, her friends who were not so ‘bright’, to make it. Most of all it came from within. She was not willing to consider that she might end up in the middle or even lower down, in the class and move on. She had to be at the top.
Pressures kept mounting. I knew her in the hostel; after all she lived in the same block. She used to say Hi with her sweet smile whenever I would pass in the corridor. I was many years her senior. It never stuck me as odd that she would say hello to me even if she saw me after two minutes. I was no different, very busy trying to be successful. Trying to be that ‘cream of the cream’.
One day I was running to get a cup of tea, may God bless the fellow who provides us with the tea on the seventh floor. There is a water tank above it. Something caught my eye on top of that tank. It is a famous stop for people on their way out to go there and click a few photographs. Thinking it was again one of those groups, I kept moving. But something didn’t seem right for me.
I realized someone was at the edge of the tank. That jolted me out. I could recognize her even from that distance. I could not think of anything to do. There were others like me standing motion less. Finally I saw a professor standing and chatting to someone, and called her for attention. She took over. There were security people in minutes but all standing helpless. What if she got distracted and jumped? Everyone cleared the corridors and waited.
No, she didn’t jump. One professor courageously called out to her from his window to get down. She heeded to that call, maybe even at that point she could not think of defying a professor. I wonder what all went through her mind? Who can tell?
Her parents refused to let her drop a semester. After all she was a success; she had no right to fail. She tried harder. Her mother stayed with her. Finally they took her back on semester drop. Her friends were happy that they were not weaklings like her. But this successful place has a remarkable capacity to block failures out. She is not missed. In fact people barely paused at the time of the incident from their busy routines, now it seems an era has passed from that time.
But she was still shaken. She didn’t want to end up there, no matter what, whether she was successful or not. She wanted to get out of that ‘successful’ place. It was so lonely, it had such little tolerance for people like her. She was feeling trapped in her success.
-Anitha Lewis; Mumbai.
Author: Anitha Lewis- India
