Examination Time

As a little girl, I still remember, there was a special charm whenever Exams knocked ‘round the corner. My mom always made it a point to buy me a new geometry box filled with long sharp pencils. Totally rid of the heavy bag pack, it felt good to be walking majestically with just a thin clipboard and the brand new geometry box to flaunt.
If you are thinking of the notes to be rote learned, well I was a sucker at that. I mean who studies at that age? If chased around by my parents, I would slip a comic in my textbook and go on reading as if exams were the best things in my life.
But today is different. I am on the other side of the fence. Overlooking a hall packed with grim looking students, I pace back and forth with a stern look that clearly should spell, I am serious about exams and have always been look. But the kid in me is still prancing about in my heart. I learn that little girl wanting to flip though the pages of the comic I always relished. Yet! The Teacher me yells out “ No! Not allowed!”
So, I get back to my walking with measured steps and roving eyes. A boy in the corner is busy scratching his head. I remember my Dzongkha exam times, how I would have scrapped off all dandruff if I had any during those days. One particular incident never goes amiss whenever I combine Dzongkha exam and the head scratching business. My Dzongkha was always bad and today I say this with my head lowered with embarrassment. But not to forget, in those days, people who excelled in English were kind of happening, not people who drooled out with Dzongkha. Whatever, coming back to the incident I was going to talk about. So, it was during the ICSE time. I was stuck with a question that was more Greek to me than all aliens put together. I was scratching my head looking at the picture of my mom and me and my sister. It was during a warm winter spent at my mom’s place. I stared at our chubby faces and grinned. Two months of mom’s special dishes plumped us up. Had we been pigs, all set to go to the slaughter house. But staring at my mom’s dimpled smile didn’t fetch me the response needed by that question which had me perplexed.
“Are you Ata Tandin’s daughter?” I looked up to see my invigilator staring at my mom’s familiar face on my geometry box. “Yes!” I almost jumped with joy. He was the same man who was supposed to be giving answers to help students in distress.
Following the instruction received as a gossip in the hostel sprang fresh in my agonized brain. Immediately I picked my left hand and placed it on my head to start away with the scratching ( that hideous act meant, ‘Help! I am doomed!’) And gently I placed my right index finger on the question sent with vengeance all the way from Pluto. Meekly, I turned up to face the benevolent messiah but to my utter dismay, by the time I had the whole act put in place, he was in the faraway aisle, walking with a distracted look.
“Tee- hee” before I could help it, a giggle evolved. The nearby students came out of their alien world and casted a glace of “what’s so funny?” look. I moved my eyes with an unsaid apology and turned back to my Hitler walk.