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