Dastaan-e-coaching! (Part 2) : My story of History

"History"

However calm I might seem on the outside after hearing this word, it
is not the same inside. My inside wants to take my outside and run
away with it as fast as it can.

I was never good at history. I never liked it. Both are the causes,
both are the effects. I do realise there is not any fault in the
subject itself. But I am not bad at learning either. Back then in
school, it was all about cramming up dates, about battles, about who
got killed by whom. Though I have a good memory, I remember birthdays
- everyone's birthdays! I could not remember all those dates. I just
could not.

I also encountered very amusing history teachers. But let me not get into that.

I neglected the subject. So on one hand where I was scoring really
well in other subjects, I was disappointed by history. Every time.
(Back then, it was also about scoring well. MARKS. You studied for
marks! What else could you study for? They are a tangible proof of
what you managed to stuff in your head, aren't they?)

School ended. I gave out a sigh of relief. I could bid goodbye to it,
I thought.

NO.

Although I was free not to choose history as my discipline subject in
college, it won't just leave me alone. It would creep in other
subjects from time to time, especially in political science. (My
experiences with political science is yet another story). I would
cringe, hold my breath and just hope that the history part ends soon
and no question is asked, and no question is asked from me!

Did History leave me after college?
HAHA! NO!

Because, civils ki coaching!

But, the teachers here were more bearable than those I encountered on
school. The modern Indian history class was more like a stand up
comedy show, replete with not so appropriate jokes. I laughed at some,
rolled my eyes at the others. In the end, I don't remember anything
from those classes!

Ancient and medieval India classes are a bit better. I've come to like
them. My mind makes the classes interesting for me. For example :

*One not so fine cold day, I was sitting in a corner of my room,
inside a shawl-fort I made for myself (like people in mature Harappan
age started fortifying their cities). But the cold weather (Aryans),
with the help of their divine force - the cold wind ( Purandar, a name
for Indra, translated as fort breaker ) managed to get past the fort!
(-_-)

* "Ye hain tere karam, kabhi khushi kabhi gham" summarises the Jain
philosophy pretty well.

* Dhananand was Sardar Khan, Chandragupt Maurya was Definite and
Kautilya was Definite's mother! #GangsOfWasseypur

* This new song from the movie Roy? "Sooraj dooba hai"... Charawak
philosophy meets bollywood!

(These are the most ridiculous ways to remember history, but are
effective and help me endure the history classes!)

Also, the more lectures I heard, the better I could see the nexus between
politics and religion & the latter being used as a tool to control the
subject, since time immemorial - the more my faith wore off.

But I could not sit for the world history classes. I just could not!
So I decided to put the time to better use. Hehe.

Hence, this subject that I dreaded, I learnt how to enjoy it and laugh
along ( and when to run away, when it was ok not to go through it and
act strong!)

Dastaan-e-coaching! (Part 1)

For many months after graduation, I was constantly bombarded with this question, by relatives, old friends, juniors -

"So, what are you doing after graduation?"

"Civils ki coaching." My standard answer.

I have a detailed answer to that question, if you have ears to hear.

Civils ki coaching. Because I could not clear any of the entrance exams I appeared for. So the option of doing post graduation gets eliminated.

Civils ki coaching. Because since I was in 6th standard I said that I wanted to be an IAS oficer, whenever people asked me - "Beta, bade ho ke kya banna chaahte ho?" ( What do you want to be when you grow up?). I had little idea of what an IAS officer is supposed to do, except that she or he looks after a whole district. (WHOA! that's a really lofty dream for a 6th grader, isn't it? It was.) As a kid, back then, my first priority was that I wanted to ensure cleanliness everywhere, especially the nearest bus stand - even if that meant I would have to stop all the transportation for a day! 

Yes, the thinking capacity of that 6th grader was very limited and she did not realise the consequences of the innocent dream she had, but her intentions were good. Still are. That answer, got her praises from everyone, made her parents happy and made her different from her classmates, which was enough to make her happy. She thought that being sincere, doing homework, assignments, projects at time and doing them well would surely take her closer to her goal. (What else could you need?) She believed that she would definitely become an IAS officer and couldn't wait to take the UPSC examination ( Take the exam? She could not wait to top it!).

This dream was sustained for a very long duration of her life. And it no longer belonged just to her. ( Though I wonder if it was her dream in the first place.) As time went by and more people came to know about it - teachers, colleagues of her parents, neighbourhood, almost everyone who knew her and her family - it became a shared dream. Dream na hua, Delhi metro ho gayi - it opens its gates and people hop up and share space! (Sorry for the bad simile)

Then college happened and then it ended.

And I was left dazed. Confused.

Is this really what I want to do? Really?

Can I have some time to think about it?

NO. Of course not!

My parents were, for all these years, fed with a steady diet of hopes, dreams and expectations. It would certainly be cruel to put them off that suddenly. Doing anything else, apart from joining civil services was not an option. ( Okay, I was "offered" that I could take an "easier" course and become a teacher. But that was also something I didn't want to do.) Doing anything else was nothing short of betrayal and I could definitely not do that. 

So I embraced that "shared dream" again and I am still trying to embrace it with honesty.

( Yes, this is what I wanted to do. Yes, this is what I will do. If not this, then what? I will do this!)

So this is how I landed up in Delhi again. For civils ki coaching! 

And I resorted to writing to lessen the burden of this existential crisis! ( Yes, this is the reason behind all the sappy posts! )

Coaching is very much like going back to school and revising everything. I have, at times, found myself wishing I studied more sincerely in college, it would have made this whole experience a bit easier and a lot more fruitful. Above all, it is a very lucrative business. Coaching institutes and PG accommodations - these won't go out of business as long as civil service aspirants are migrating to Delhi. (For the moment, I am at the receiving end of both these setups!)

5 months and I can say, even if I have not benefited a lot from it, I have benefited a lot because of it! I am the kind of person who does not enjoy going out very much and would have avoided taking the metro to the maximum extent possible.

Until, I absolutely had to.

I can say that I have stepped out of my comfort zone in these 5 months and I have read more than I did in college ( Not talking about NCERTs and Newspaper, PLEASE! )

Oh and I liked most of the classes. Revisiting science was fun, because of how my brain worked during the classes, like :

* Centripetal force, the force which acts towards the centre is the real force whereas centrifugal force, the one acting away from the centre is pseudo force.

( The force working towards the centre, the force that acts within is the real force! Wow! This teacher is a learned man! *awestruck* )

*Entropy - measure of disorder or randomness of a system. 

Teacher says : "Entropy is maximum in gases"

Me ( to myself) : ...and at Rajiv Chowk... and Kashmere Gate!

*Even cracked glass will shine brightly if there is total internal reflection, if the light falls at the right place.
(This is the most beautiful metaphor you can come across in a class like this!)

* The stages in the life of a star pose a perfect allegory for human life. The birth of a star is not a calm process at all. A lot of struggle goes inside the core - gases collapse, core contracts, temperature rises and then a star is born!

* Auf-bau principle : orbital with lowest energy will be filled first than orbitals of high energy.
( Sweet socialism! )

* Energy is neither created nor destroyed - How better the world would be if even a few people started spreading positive energy around!

....And I have related many movies and many songs to the history lessons too. This is how I go through classes.

All in all, it is a good learning experience. But, at times, it does become what I (over)heard a young lady saying ( in an accent) - "In the terms of mass communication, this is an overload of information."

In a month or so, I'll be done with this process of overloading my brain with information.

Here's hoping that I'll be able to figure things out or embrace this shared dream with all honesty.

and come up with a part 2 of this post! :D