Monday mornings

For two blessed months, May and June, the regular traffic heaves a sigh of relief. No dropping off children at school, no impromtu traffic jams and no double and triple parking. Then the schools reopen. And a sweltering mass of school kids make their way to school bent under their backpacks. Its as if learning is an uphill climb and each class is a long wait at base camp before climbing up to the next one. Then they get to the twelfth standard and the expression 'no room at the top' takes on a whole new meaning. The first rankers are separated by fractions of marks like formula racers at the finish line. Lose more than three or four marks and you blow your chances of getting into engineering or medical college. The report card reads like something out of Nadia Comaneci's gymnastic routine. 100,100, 99.5 Anything less and you can bid your future goodbye.
Or that is what the children are told. So, striken by terror, they study, take additional tutions and learn to deprive themselves of sleep by the time they are barely thirteen. I wonder who benefits from this tragic treadmill. Not the kids. Not their parents who are terrified that apart from not 'making it' they will have to shell out large sums of money if they have it to enable their children to get in through a backdoor of the colleges. And what a big backdoor it is. It's as if degrees have been kidnapped and held to ransom. They can only be released by parting with vast sums of money.