A Fallen Star - Episode 1

The clock struck 1:00 am. The room was dark. A pale, white light illuminated the heaps of books stacked up besides the opposite wall. Some of their spines read –

Arihant IIT Maths

JEE Phyics by HC Vema

Organic Chemistry NCERT

Past 20 years JEE solved question papers

….and a dozen more highly technical books, the sizes of whom summon up the scariest of your nightmares. A group of people sat huddled in front of a computer screen, their eyes bulging out to such an extent their was a formidable risk of the eyeballs falling off. An eerie silence hung in the room, the air heavy with anxiety and anticipation.

I guess my heart was racing in a quest to win an Olympic gold. My parents stood beside me, their bodies going through the same ‘hyper-excited’ mode as mine. The moment had finally arrived. This was the climax of my four years of rigorous preparation. JEE, the toughest exam on earth, the exam for which I became a nerd, the exam for which I burnt the midnight oil every night. And today, I would finally get my results.

I nervously looked towards the monitor. It stood their as a mighty despot, pleased to decide my fate that evening. Wait, you zero-iq desperado! I’ll smash you into bits if I don’t get selected. I finally gathered all my courage and began entering my roll number. 1..2..5..0..9..0…2…0…. A thick bead of sweat trickled down my forehead. There was a difference of only the ‘enter’ key between me and IIT. Strange repulsive forces started instigating between my finger and the key. I realized that I had started shivering. My mother reassuringly looked towards me, gesturing towards the ‘key of despair’. I shoved my finger towards the key, until it finally sent the binary signal to the computer. The screen went blank……

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I was perspiring buckets full of sweat. Damn my internet speed! Doesn’t realize that three persons are on the brink of drying up their sweat glands! My heart skipped a beat. Sprawled on the white screen, were words which I dreaded seeing the most –

IIT-JEE 2009 Results

Name – Arpit Manocha

Result – Not Selected