What goes around comes around

It is a chilly winter evening, the hour is still in single digits but it is so dark out. The evenings seem longer than ever. Destiny has bought my friend in search of bread to this remote corner of the planet. The same situation that i was in about 6 years ago. Recollecting old days is definitely one of the cherished past times. We started talking about the 12th class examinations. He used to go to Tyndale Biscoe and i used to attend Jawahar Nagar Higher Secondary(JNHS). Even the name in the former case is fancier than the latter. Incidentally, we were in the same examination center (Amar Singh College) for our 12th boards. We were musing on the fact that when students of Biscoe broke all records of violating academic integrity during the additional mathematics examination. When this mass copying was reported in the center, ironically, our (JNHS) physics paper got cancelled instead of their Maths paper. My friend mentioned, ridiculous as it was, the only reason he had spent a fortune to get enrolled in Biscoe was the fact that their papers never got cancelled no matter what they did. He mentioned that his investment yielded immediate fruit when in this case our paper was cancelled instead of theirs.

This was year 1996 and the joint secretary of the Board of Secondary Education was in cahoots with Tyndale Biscoe for some vested interests unknown to us. Mass copying in the additional maths paper by Biscoe students was reported in Amar Singh College center. Jawahar Nagar Higher Secondary shared the center with them. Anyway, to cut the long story short, JNHS physics paper was cancelled but nothing happened to the students from Biscoe. The students of JNHS alongwith their parents went to the Board of Secondary Education where they were met with a horrendous response from the Joint Secretary. 'You guys dont know how to raise your children. They copy and now you come to support them. Students of Biscoe are from good families of the society.You guys are nothing compared to them'. These were the words used by a person who was sitting in a position of the Joint Secretary of the 'Education' system of Kashmir. Given that we were the underdogs and stakes were high, we asked him now what should we do. He asked every student to pay a fee of Rs. 400/- so that we would be able to take the exam again with the summer zone Jammu students. All of us immediately did that and were waiting for the announcements of exam dates. One fine day a notice in the local Urdu newspaper asked all students whose papers were cancelled to pay Rs. 200/- and they will have to reappear in new center locations within Kashmir. Things were such that even this was a good news. On reaching the State Board office, we were baffled when we asked about the 400 that we had already paid. 'What 400?' was the answer that we got from the Joint Secretary. 'If you want to take the exam pay the 200, its your choice'. Well, so much for a choice! We paid this money again and took the exams. A few months later, we took the Engineering Entrance Examination. The results were announced and 5 out of top 10 students were from JNHS - the same students who were accused of copying.

Destiny had it so, we joined the Regional Engineering College, we came to know that the daughter of the same Joint Secretary was studying there. It was a widely known fact that this girl had an affair with a faculty member from the Mechanical Engineering department and she used to copy in the exams on his behest.

Funny as it was, 'how to raise your children' and 'good families' were the words used by the father of the same girl. Allah could not have given this guy a better punishment. I have put this behind me, as i sit in a remote town in the planet, thousands of miles away from the place where all this is still in practice, the thought comes to me. The system in Kashmir might be so corrupt that he got away with all this, but justice was partially delivered by the Supreme Authority - the Authority that is Incorruptible, Just and True. What goes around has to come around!