As we continue to languish in lockdown mode, here's a flashback to the days when it first took entry into our lives, disrupting exams and generating uncertainty.

It’s like a no-looking-back journey through a tunnel- long, gloomy and enervating. But its’ not without hope; rather that is precisely what perennially spurs you on. You cannot miss it-the blinding light at the opening, injecting that much-needed zest which pushes you forward when merely trudging forward seems like an insurmountable job. Thus, you move on, trying to ease all difficulties by reminding yourself that emergence out of the tunnel, and into the light, would not only elicit a sense of fulfillment emanating from completion of a much-awaited task, but also embrace you with a sense of relief whose enormity cannot quite be measured. But what if you are stopped right at the opening. You can clearly see (and feel ) the light, in fact you’ve already put the seal of finality on your existence in that impending realm, but you cannot go any further, neither can you go back.

Students taking board exams and on the cusp of passing out of their schools are caught up in such an uncannily similar scenario. They have all envisaged it for long- writing the last paper, feeling that surge of relief after submitting it, congregating outside with an ecstasy conveniently unmindful of how well the exam might have gone, returning home, setting down the bag and throwing oneself into the sofa as if there’s no tomorrow. For that specific moment, the ‘results’ do not prick your mind; what matters is the singular fact that after all the toil and anxiety, your mind can finally wallow in tranquility. The yearning for this intensifies after the first exam- finishing off every exam entails throwing aside the obstacles one after the other. However, right towards the end, everything is brought to a standstill. You can see the last remaining hurdles, itching to cross them, but you just can’t. Imagine this- on a hot, sultry day, you are given a chance to plunge into a swimming pool. You put on the costume, take the shower, walk up to the edge, dip a foot to test the waters and suddenly, you are told that you can’t take the final splash. Worse still, there’s no saying when you eventually can. For those planning to take entrance exams with understandably greater importance than the boards, it’s like after coming all the way down to the pool, you are stopped outside the gate-even catching a glimpse of the water is not permitted.

Initially, you struggle to grasp the decision in its entirety. You constantly hope that the postponement would be annulled, the decision would be rolled back, or by some miraculous means ‘Ctrl+Z’ would be applied across the country. Slowly, and inevitably, you come to terms with it. Ensconced in your home, you weigh all the options. In your mind, you had lined up books to be devoured, movies to be savoured, but you hesitate. You decide to restart the academic engine with a renewed vigour and all the regrets you had felt on not getting that one extra hour on the night before the exam serendipitously transform into a fresh vista of opportunity where time is a non-existent factor. As you try to concentrate, the occasional frissons of distractions pique your mind. You flick them aside, but your mind perpetually wavers off from your studies like a bird which has realized that its cage is open. With time, the truth dawns on you- you need a definite schedule in front of you, an end in sight. It’s almost like the metaphorical ‘carrot and stick’ – without the target looming in front of you, you simply can’t muster up that elusive gusto. Thus, you try to engage yourself in books or movies, or call up friends, but there again you sense that your mind is not free in a full-fledged fashion- whenever it tries to be so, the fact that exams are not yet over barges into your room of consciousness. It’s as if you are a pendulum unwillingly oscillating but unable to cut the string. In other words, you are trapped in a limbo..

Victor Hugo once said-‘Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.’ As of now, you can just optimistically stare at the horizon.