Experiments With Aspiration Expectation and…….Life

We live in a world full of insecurities, passion…etc etc…but most importantly aspirations and expectations. Well aspiration and expectation are at the giving and the receiving end. But whatever it is the person who faces them faces the blunt. 

Out of my personal monodrama I feel grasping for breathe during my 10th 11th and 12th class of my academic life. We were all groomed right from our early days to jump right into the rat race. We thus got caught in the vicious circle of aspirations and expectations. Everyone expected us to get into IIT the premiere engineering institutions of India. Well it was such a strong stereo-type that even we oriented ourselves to believing that we ought to get into IIT and we will for sure get in there. 

Fate beholds…..me and my circle did extremely brilliant in 10th and our scores there fortified our belief and we ensured ourselves that were cut out for the best. Post success we enrolled ourselves into various coaching classes. In the subsequent days reality slapped us…we wrote our school exams and the coaching classes progressed…we couldn’t digest the fact that IIT was not our cup of tea. Following which we in a false sense of pride and kept on making excuses and kept on assuring everyone in and around us that v would put a good show in the final.

The whole 11th passed on…..we enjoyed and enjoyed did we till the brim. But all was not bright sunshine; we practically had fun in every aspect our lives except academics. But we stuck to our excuses that 11th wasn’t important, all that counted was our 12th. 11th ended with below average results, but our pride stuck us to our IIT aspirations. It is in the early 12th session that we realized that IIT was dream too far for us. We Indians are known to be adaptive and compromising. Our “chaltha hai yaar” attitude has a legendary fame in the society.  We carried on the great India legacy and came down to AIEEE, which was the next best engineering franchise. Even in 12th school exams our performance was below par and as usual the procrastination infused attitude compelled us to think that we would perform in the final Boards.

The countdown for our Boards started and reality revisited us. We did sober down a bit and I guess it was a bit late but not too late. Last few days we put in mid-night toil and stuff and finally managed to scribble something in the Boards. Well after boards we thought we could get back to our fun and harmony days. But post exams it become very clear that we were in a lot of trouble. Our anticipated experiments with passion, aspiration, expectations and time had landed us in a peculiarly sticky situation. We finally came to terms with our fate and realized that it was now or never and we ought to make a final stand against fate.

We shunned away all our pride a false sense pride that is and thought AIEEE was not a sure shot but CET the next option was a practical option. Some of the people stuck to AIEEE and some like me who were tired of playing our lucks and of not much aspiration opted to coach ourselves for CET. Our parents who spent thousands on IIT coaching were a bit orthodox of us giving up on it but they too came to track with us and very willingly paid thousands more for our AIEEE and CET coaching. 

Often I’m troubled by the guilt of letting down people but at the end I’m and Indian and I’ll compromise and move ahead. The collect noun “we” I’ve used includes all the people like me but it definitely excludes the other breed of people who dreamt worked and I’m sure will achieve what they wanted. I envy and respect those people who did so. But I do also pat the people who dreamt worked but improvised a different path to success. My hearty best luck to all the people of all the breeds.