This time again it started when a friend of mine shared a news link about the suicide of another engineering student due to mounting pressure of studies. Almost the whole nation saw a similar case, in brilliantly directed movie 3 idiots – which would have made many of us to feel lump in our throat. Unfortunately in our college as well, we saw a similar situation when in a single semester two of our immediate seniors crumbled to this pressure. Infact, one of them was ‘virtually present’ in the class during the same time of the day !! Such incidences do occur with such regularity that we slowly start feeling indifferent to them . And this post also, belongs mainly to some of my experiences rather than the cause and remedies of these suicide cases. In the recent case, the news was from the college NIT Hamirpur [which is the best engineering college in my home state], so I stopped at the news for more than a few minutes. And the news dragged me slowly into my pensieve of thoughts.
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I am a small kid sitting in the front seat in my classroom in ’2nd’ standard. My English teacher, is teaching us a new topic in the class. The name of the topic is ‘The Cow’. She is making us write ten sentences about the cow – ‘I have a cow. Its colour is Black. … … … I love my cow.’ The class is coming to an end and now ma’am is announcing about the written test of The ‘Idiot’ Cow in the next class.
This is evening time. My parents are busy with the construction work of our new house. I am sitting in my room. I am little worried about the tomorrow’s test. I am trying to fit those ten lines about The ‘Stupid’ Cow somewhere in my cerebral cortex, but my neurons are showing a clear deficiency of potassium ions. Suddenly Edison’s bulb has got lightened up in the north-west corner outside of my brain. I am taking out my rough notebook on which I know I’ll write tomorrow’s test and will show it to the ma’am. I am sharpening the lead pencil to make its tip needle-sharp. And now I am copying The ‘Moron’ Cow from my class notebook to my rough notebook but with a very light outline of the words – so as to make them pretty comfortable for the next day when I’ll over-write them again in the class !!!
Its the next day. I can see the stick in the my teacher’s hand. She is making us sit at a distance from each other. I am getting into a seat towards the corner of the class room. I can clearly see the light shades of words on my rough notebook. I am making them dark now. Ma’am has already started ‘handling’ those who are not able to write anything on their notebooks. I have completed writing my ten lines about The ‘Dumb’ Cow and now I am showing my notebook to ma’am. She has awarded me with ‘very good’ on my notebook. I am again back on my seat and can see some other students getting good ‘dose’ from ma’am. I am relieved I am not one of them. The day ends !
*
That was me when I first time cheated in any of my exams or tests. The classes went on and tests/exams kept on increasing BUT fortunately I never did cheating in exams ever again – well, provided you agree to me that asking the person sitting next to you in the exam hall is not called exactly cheating – thats just ‘doubt clarification’ 
.. isn’t it !!! The school got over and I was in college to find out that the rat race was still on ! I saw some of the really brilliant people around me using the most innovative techniques of ‘clearing’ exams – awesome use of technology which may still be missing in latest iPhone OS 4, the mind-blowing calligraphy techniques which probably can set a new records to write whole Ramayana into a small piece of paper, the strategic placement of friends and foes in exam halls which will leave even the pieces on chess board of Anand look boring, the heart wrenching melodramas with professors giving a strong competition to Ekta Kapoor’s talent and ofcourse not to forget the ‘symbiotic’ relationships among students which is after all natural phenomenon !
Me too was tempted to take advantage of some social bondings in exam to add a few extra points to 2nd place of decimal of my CGPA. In 3rd sem of mine during the mid terms I patched up with some friends of mine and yahooo got a few more correct answer in my sheet than what I actually knew ! But I believe I am a bit lucky that God has his own ways to make me teach lessons. In same semester my SGPA gone down from 8 point someone to 7 point someone. And some misplaced sense of self-righteousness creeped inside me, adrenaline rushed in – to avoid such measures again. Many times I happened to offend my friends because I was not able to help them in exams, many times I felt helpless when I couldn’t move my pen further in the exam while everyone around me was doing the ‘things’ comfortably, people used my own 3 MP mobile camera for their exams but I couldn’t use it except for looking at the remaining time in the exam. I made it a point to my ego that I won’t take any such help further. But to be true I tried to restrict these things mainly not due to my ego but it was more due to the fear of getting caught doing these things in exam. [In the lonely corridors of our department you can still clearly listen to the horror tales of our professors.] Because had I been really honest, I would have shown these traits while doing those assignments, those practicals and those projects as well. And yes there were also many people around me who were far more honest than my own standards.Well mighty Joker guy proved right again here “You are only as good as the world allows you to be.”
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This is the first time I have ever shared the dark secret of that 6-year-old kid in 2nd standard to anyone. Though as I said I wrote this post mainly for sharing my experience but still I’ll correlate my thought process a little with what I started with. There is a contrasting similarity between the mentality of 6-year-old kid and these suicide cases. Think about it – when only ten line about an idiot-stupid-moron-dumb cow can make a 6-year-old kid learn how to cheat for the first time, definitely those ten subjects in a single semester can make some 20-year-old guy take those drastic steps ! When I did this in 2nd standard my fear of getting caught while cheating was minimal in comparison to the fear of getting a big zero in my test. When I was in college the fear of getting caught was more prominent than getting ‘poor marks’. But had it been the case of fear of ‘failing’ in the exam, surely even the horror tales of my profs wouldn’t have stopped me taking such helps. These students restore to the the drastic steps like suicide because our education system seems to have created such haunting atmosphere where even fear of ending one’s own life seems nothing in comparison !!!
P S : To all my college friends, I have no intentions to define anything right or wrong about these exam clearing techniques! And yes I may have taken help at few other occasions as well, other than what I have mentioned above …. but no more than ‘doubt clarifications’
P P S : Maa, in case you are reading this … please … I am sorry 
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Very sweet post
Even I feel that God has his own ways to make me teach lessons, whenever I do something wrong I get punished in some way n I dont take much time to catch the tiny signal from Him saying me whatever u did was wrong mind it the nxt time
Nice post dude..
Just thought of sharing some further info regarding the boy in case (NIT Hamirpur), he was declared mentally ill by the college authorities so as to wash there hands off the crime,,,
Very true sir…..but I think the darker side is of Education system..Is n’t it?? hum to nirdosh nadaan bachche hain
Nice explanation.I still remember my childhood days when i used to do cheating to get some marks (above 65%).But some of my life experience taught me that if u have talent to understand and to implement your thinking you can do and got any thing in life…..Don’t get depressed with your marks they are just illusion ,the real thing is what you think……………
Yaar this doesnt stop in colleges. It aggravates in jobs as well. But then again, God has His own ways to teach us his lessons. 2 times I have tried same type of manipulation to increase my scores that indirectly my performance, but both times it went against me in some or the other way. Not that anybody knows about it, but it happened to affect other things that I didnt even think of. After that, I swore not to engaged in such activities again. But, there are people who do regularly and eventually get benefit out of it. And these people are large in number in companies.
you know Twarit … you are one of those to whom I referred when I wrote – “And yes there were also many people around me who were far more honest than my own standards.” – so stay the same way
You have referred me and some DuDeS in lines copied below
“I saw some of the really brilliant people around me using the most innovative techniques of ‘clearing’ exams – awesome use of technology which may still be missing in latest iPhone OS 4, the mind-blowing calligraphy techniques which probably can set a new records to write whole Ramayana into a small piece of paper…” and
“people used my own 3 MP mobile camera for their exams but I couldn’t use it except for looking at the remaining time in the exam”
btw i m really thankful to you for your cybershot phone
well I didn’t target anyone but yes I derived these lines from the people around me
and again I am not saying that this was wrong or right … these small things hardly does matter in the long run 
**** the education system.