School begins in the second week of June. Being the first month, it is generally spared.
THE MARK OF A TRUE-BLOOD CRESCENTIAN
I have long believed that the mark of a true-blood Crescentian is the ability to sit for exams.
Just imagine a room full of people, gathered by a dictatorial regime for execution. All are afraid and nervous. A military general enters with a stack of papers and says, "We have decided to hold a test. Those who pass will be spared, and those who fail shall face the gallows."
And then, generously, the General says, "If you need any time to prepare, let us know. We will give it to you."
At that moment, if someone stands up, says "One minute", walks out of the room, leaves his belongings outside, returns with a pen in his hand and asks, "Where is the paper?", that is the mark of a true-blood Crescentian (one who has spent a good ten years of schooling at Crescent High School, Pune).
I might be exaggerating a little. But the point I want to drive home is that a true Crescentian is not afraid of exams. And that is because of the rigour of exams a Crescentian goes through in ten years at the academy.
THE SPRINTING EXAM SCHEDULE
Most other schools in Pune held four exams a year. A Crescentian faced six. The schedule was a sprint run at marathon length.
Party over. By the last week, the First Unit Test kicks in and runs into the first week of August. Before you have understood what the new academic year is about, you are under fire by paper.
In the second week you receive the scores, and the school is not merciful enough to kill you with a single whack. The strategy of choice is death by a thousand cuts. Every day of the week, the chained soldier is cut by the sharp edge of a pen: a red pen that likes drawing neat, symmetrical ovals over the soldier's blue ink. Ironically, the soldier is being taught at the same time that "the pen is mightier than the sword". Indeed, to young cadets, the red pen is far scarier than any sword.
In the third week, as if the opponent had not hurt the boxer enough, the referee is called in to inflict more pain. A Report Day is held. Parents report to the school in the morning and are handed a licence bearing the school's logo: a licence to whack their kid, all in the name of education.
In the fourth week, before the bruised soldier can even think of the infirmary, the call to the next battle is sounded. Exams are announced for the first week of September, i.e. in just seven days.
September is not at all sweet. The rest of the world is busy with Ganesh festival and Eid, but the condemned have to serve their sentence. A brutal second round of papers, scores and reports follows. It is called Unit Test II.
Some are knocked out in the second round itself. Still there is no relief. As the gladiators of Rome had no option but to fight to the death, the young Crescentian is thrust into the greater arena. It is Red October, and really red: more pages to fill, more blue ink to spill, more red ovals to bear. It is the TERMINAL. Like Tom Hanks, the young cadets of Crescent go nowhere; they are stateless citizens, stuck at the Terminal, an exam they cannot afford to miss and dread to sit. And yes, the brutal festivities go on for fourteen days.
The battered finally get some relief: a pause for Diwali. November begins on a promising note, a promise of happiness, hope and joy. But as life would teach others later, some promises are never kept, and a Crescentian learns this lesson early. At the end of November the suspense of the Terminal results ends. In the Unit Tests the enemy drew swords; now it switches gear and sends in the B-52 bombers. Shock and Awe. Within days of school reopening, carnage takes place. The lucky survive; most surrender meekly.
The world over, people are in a holiday mood, and Crescentians too are gifted a ten-day Christmas holiday. But it is like the prank your friends pull when they hand you a nice box wrapped in bright paper, and you open it to find it empty, or worse, full of stones. The Christmas holidays are as hollow as they could be. The rest of the world looks forward to the New Year; the Crescentian dreads Unit Test III in the first week of January, immediately after the holidays.
The party just before this holiday: Lessons from the Christmas Party.
On Republic Day the Tricolour is unfurled over Rajpath, and the Crescentian is handed back his white paper, unfurled, with lots of red crosses and ovals.
The mark of a true gladiator is to embrace death, so the Romans kept their gladiators away from other emotions: no love, no attachment to anything but the sword. Crescent adopted this Spartan thesis fully in spirit. To prevent any emotional attachment, Unit Test IV was timed to coincide with Valentine's Day. The rest of the world shops for bright spring roses; the Crescentian shops for dark pencils and erasers.
Then comes the month in which the battalion is supposed to be ready. After months of rigour and training, the soldiers are ready to march. Yet the battlefield is kept a secret: the syllabus is announced only two or three days before the FINAL exams. Fourteen days of grand battle follow. To inspire the troops, all the great heroes of the past are heralded (Mahavir Jayanti, Ambedkar Jayanti), and the soldiers launch their final assault with only one lakshya in mind: to reach the top at 105.
At the end of April the body count is made. Those who reach the summit are packed off to the next level. Those who do not are ceremoniously discarded. Some are given a reprieve by the grace of the angel of grace marks. A few perish, but they are not allowed to perish: they are thrown into the same fire again, to see if they can be moulded this time. Life is cruel; after all, we have embraced the Darwinian ethos of the survival of the fittest.
Only the month of May has no exam fever. For the rest of the year, a Crescentian is caught in the cycle:
- preparing for the exams,
- sitting the exams,
- receiving the marks of the exams,
- attending the report day of the exams,
- and immediately hearing the announcement of the next exams.
TWO WEEKS IN ONE EXAM
There is a saying, "kill two birds with one stone". Well, the managers at Crescent took this very seriously: they managed to kill two weeks with one exam.
Every other school prefers to start its exams at the start of the week, on a Monday. But for some reason, Crescent always chose A Wednesday to begin. (I should check whether the director of the Hindi film A Wednesday was a true-blood Crescentian. Otherwise, who notices a Wednesday? I have heard of TGIF, Saturday night parties, Monday morning blues and Sunday dhamaal, but I have never heard anyone mention a Wednesday.)
Anyway, what it meant was that an exam that began on Wednesday this week ended on Tuesday next week. Two weeks, gone.
Back-of-the-envelope calculation: six exams × two weeks each = roughly twelve of the year's fifty-two weeks spent purely on writing exams!!
EXAMS ARE NOT IMPORTANT
I have heard tales of people who avoid even reading the newspaper on an exam day, so that their thoughts are not diverted from the all-IMPORTANT EXAM.
But a true Crescentian believes all this is maya. Nothing is real, and nothing is important. That is why a true-blood Crescentian not only reads the newspaper, but goes to school, learns new chapters for five lectures, and then, after the lunch break, sits for the EXAM. He learns the art of dissociation. After all, in the morning you might be tackling a new theorem in Maths, and after lunch writing a paper in Hindi. (You only need to rotate an alpha by 90 degrees to get the Hindi numeral for "char", four.)
But all of this is really useful.
Because when an all-important exam is announced on an odd day, or the day after a festival; when an exam timetable gives you three or four days off before some easy, insignificant paper and only a few hours between two important ones; when there are mindless exams, and entrance exam after entrance exam; then remember, there will always be a true-blood Crescentian who just smiles, is not bothered in the least, and, holding a pen in his hand, says:
Where is the paper, yaar?
— Vinaay Patil
Annual Report
A true-blood Crescentian, after ten years
- Exams a year (other schools: 4)6
- Weeks a year spent writing exams12 / 52
- Day the exams beginWednesday
- Exam-free monthMay
- Fear of exams0
Days Under the Crescent Sun
Stories from school days and a 1990s Pune childhood: plans that were too clever, teachers who were never questioned, and the people who made it all bearable.
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