*sigh*

Phew! I am done at last! It began sometime in the late Decembers....and it’s been going on since then.

After my bout of jaundice, I finally started studying for my boards in December. The boards exams came and went and soon trickled in the volley of law tests...umm, from what I remember, I sat for 6 of them, making through one, which I happily let go. Then of course, there were the colleges!

And boy, what an experience! My days were all about Xeroxing mark sheets, queuing up to get them attested, chatting up with the school receptionist and then haggling for the right school stamp. But soon the reality slapped me with a thud, and I realized it’s only the beginning.

Collecting forms was all done online and I collected so many that my computer auto saved my name, annual income, address and all that....

Then started the real thing...queuing up for colleges with a scrapped knee, with the guys in the colleges staring up you skirt...eugh!!! It almost became second nature to run through your battery of attestations everyday and sort them out according to the colleges’ demands...and man, what demands! Some wanted my father’s income certificate, some wanted my class VIII mark sheet and some my XI-XII mark sheets, which happen to be the best guarded secrets of my life.

The sun was at its hottest and the pseudo intellectuals studying in the colleges made it even worse with their smart ass presence around which couldn’t just stop bossing on little kids like us!

Delhi was a different story altogether...I dined out, I shopped, I played around with the kids and managed to take an exam somewhere in between! Ah yes, I also had a glass of apple martini and a sip of chocolate martini and realized that I am not made for alcohol...Gah! every sip seemed to be a gulp of fire which burnt my throat down!

If the forms were such ordeals, imagine what the tests were like...I, with almost all of the 18 year old population of the universe, sat through two hours writing pseudo essays, reading weird poetry, chewing our pens and then exalting at the end of the ordeal...

I waddled through knee deep water to get to one college only to be house arrested for three hours before we could take the test! And after the test I walked through stretches of dirty rain water with my trousers pulled up in an uncouth manner with the world’s trash hitting against my legs...I still cant bring myself to relate that walk down College Street without puking!

It finally ended yesterday...with some morbid poetry, preachy essays and deadly short notes!!...

And now is the time to wait for the judgments...whether you took your ordeals well, whether you will have to take the ordeals again and whether you have to keep writing sad stuff on your blog or write something which, for a change, will talk of a brand new beginning...and it is this wait, which is killing!