The miraculous day

I shouted nothing. I eagerly took part in their discussion about dum aloo. I proposed adding half a tea spoon full of salt against my sister's view of one fourth a tea spoon. There were distinct reasons why I did not accede to my sister's stance on this contentious issue, the conclusion of which, it appeared, from the intensity of the expressions of the females faces, had international ramifications. The two distinct reasons were nerve wrangling tension and tooth grinding anticipation. I downloaded the list from the website of the captor. Now the amazing race began. The search for my name started. In the background the dum aloo debate raged on incessantly.

The list was a pdf file which was embedded in an HTML page. This meant that the search option (Ctrl+F) wouldn't work. Even if it did, I wouldn't have used it for the gut wrenching feeling which pervades all through your body when the dialog box appears on the screen saying, " The search string does not exist ", is truly something hard to swallow. All dreams dreamt laboriously over the last two years would come crashing down in an instant. So, I preferred to go the long way, search for my name manually.

I started from the top, Divyadarshini was her name, I could already imagine the front page of the newspapers next day, 40 font, bold, underlined, with her happydent white picture below somewhere, with the caption, "girls do it again". I went lower. There were names, funny ones, unique ones, masculine ones, but none was mine. The top ten was done. My heart sank a bit. The rosiest of my dreams were gone, for ever. I would not be bragging live to NDTV or CNN the next day about my absolutely immaculate strategy to top the examination. I knew I could settle for less. I let go off a few edges of my ego and I went further down.

Top 50 done. My throat went dry. The dum aloo discussion continued in the background. My fingers wouldn't stop shivering. Back in some convoluted corner of the brain, I wished I could redo the top 50. But I was convinced otherwise, I seldom missed my name in lists. Latecomers list, absentee lists, traveling-without-bus pass lists, caught-copying-in-exam lists and some other worthless ones. So I decided to go further lower. I felt like a scuba diver going below 130 feet with no information about his gas mixture. I dived.

Top 200 out.