Continued from part 1
He pulled out an old frayed copy from his shelves and showed me photographs. The photographs weren’t too detailed except they showed a gate and an old frail building behind it . I tried to peer more closely but couldn’t make out much behind those gates. However none of it was anything bathed in splendor to arouse my educational instincts no treasure chests and the building at places had paint peeling off. It felt like those Jihadi Heavens promised to terrorists in lieu of suicide bombing a crowded market and probably my face gave away my lack of drive and the director sensing it pulled out another trick from the book.
The process of selecting the chosen one’s who go there. Set tough papers, constantly bombard everyone with the ‘Toughest exam in the world’ thought, keep on adding to the hype and the world starts to take you seriously. In contrast someone without any entrance criteria is assumed to be some nincompoop only wanting to fill seats for nobody is interested in his program and also having no idea about the ways of the world.
I slowly stumbled out of the room however a thought had entrenched in my mind ‘Maybe this place doesn’t exist, the grownups just need something to make us study for the next two years and this could just be the biggest fake propaganda being carried out the world over ‘.
For the next two years the belief would only get stronger as the super human bird now progressed to making circular revolutions over trains which now for some strange reasons ran at speeds in logarithms.
The myth theory of mine got only stronger as the rumors around this place made you dumbfounded from how people have to forsake all kinds of hygiene including shaving, brushing teeth to stay focused or how at certain places people would walk on burning pyres to drive themselves to ulterior levels of motivation and how in a clandestine underground facility near the deserts of Rajasthan would be trained few chosen one’s to crack their entrance akin to area 51 in Roswell where alien races are being dissected and researched.
The coursework and its subsequent problems frequently married laws of physics with scalding chemistry and bore illegitimate progenies of mathematical conundrum. The only way to survive this ordeal seemed to create more fantasy utilities regarding the degree about how it was a social pinnacle like a trophy wife which would also help you get a trophy wife.
The two years that went into preparation for these exams , four for some not for their sense of determination to get there but sheer foolishness brimmed with a new theory establishing the mythical aura around these places from the boys to girls ratio bordering on numbers long found in mystical kingdoms where an evil king decided to order a genocide against females for reasons as stupid as losing a game of ludo or a girl hanging up his call and the economy of dowry in marriages being dependent on the admissions at these places and how internet speeds at these places exceeded that of light this when everyone was wondering over the true purpose of the internet while grappling with dial up speeds.
Thus went on the two years where some people gave up some went on to pursue lesser alternatives as architecture some failed their higher secondary thus putting everything in jeopardy and some gave exams where you only had to appear to get an admission.
The final nail in the coffin was hit while I looked around my surroundings after two years at the local engineering college named after someone I was too embarrassed to name and I could spot familiar faces. The bespectacled boy sitting in the corner scribbling notes or the one who had made indexed sheets with formulae or the one who would try reactions between inorganic and organic chemistry to gain greater insight into workings of IIT and so on and the only conclusion I could arrive at was either none of us made it or the place never existed in the first place.
Meanwhile the last I heard our super genetic bird was trying to a curve a parabolic path between two trains thus making the now inferior feeling trains to want to match up in complexity and bring a factor of pie into their speeds