Prerana Marasini

Once again, I am sitting in front of my table staring blankly, trying to figure out where to start from. It is yet another exam time and as usual I am scrambling for notes and textbooks on the eleventh hour. But you must be very wise to understand that even during the exam time, I am busy thinking about worldly and wild things, except of course, studies. That has been one of the main reasons why I have borrowed the time-tested ditty and slightly modified it, “old habits die hard.” So very true. But I say, “It is even harder to adapt to new ones.” The workload I need to bear during times like these makes me swear with each approaching exam that I need to change my habit and study right from day one. Try as I might, my old habit once again holds me against my new impulse. “Why worry now,” I say to myself and relegate the books to the shelf, happily convinced that a few days of rote learning at the last minute would easily bail me out. No big deal, I say, and slip into my wonderland.

For me, concentrating is one thing that is next to impossible. That so many guys stay

focussed in the classroom has been my constant source of inquisition. I can’t remember a single day when I am not carried away with my thoughts. There has been hardly a day without me traipsing the world through imagination despite the best teacher doing all he can to hook everyone’s concentration in the class. If teachers failed to pull me out of my personal world, meditation has turned me off even before I have tried my hand at it. Don’t they feel tired sitting in the lotus position for hours on end? Ludicrous though this perspective of mine is, I, however, do not for a second doubt the powers of meditation. However, it is yet to fascinate me.

All said and done, the exams are here anyway. And I’ve got to face them. Though an internal exam, my performance in it will count at the end of the day. Hence, there is no turning my back on it. Yet I do not fail to ponder, and imagine. I ask myself, “Is it necessary to get a university degree?” Is it worth spending a quarter of your life chasing books and notes? But knowledge is important, and there is no short cut to it. Will I do any justice to the time, energy and money my parents spend on my studies if I do not do well in the exams? That is what keeps me going, against my will. I can clearly hear my inner calling: study. I reach out for my exam schedule. Organisational behaviour, it says. But well, there is always tomorrow!