Chapter 1

Many things went on at my old college, and, regrettably, teaching had to be one of them. The faculty had long ago confronted this fact and had perfected various devices for avoiding it. But this was perfectly all right because, to be fair, so had the students. According to the lore of the prof’s, tenure was automatic or, more accurately, non-existent. You found an empty room, turned up for meetings as usual, and generally no one noticed, although if you were unfortunate you might attract students. The Principal, herself, as a general rule avoided getting to know the students, since she felt they were a tedious interruption to the proper running of college life.

The students had a different take on it; education was a sexual disease, it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you have the urge to pass it on. The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance and sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

And therefore education at the Law College mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of pubs and bars for exactly the same reason.

What most students failed to remember was that the senior members of the faculty had also been students once, and also like them were quite adept at almost all possible scams and scenes and still participants of most of them. This naturally led to a certain amount of embarrassment and diplomacy on early hung over Monday mornings.

The problem came when both parties to the contract, that is the students and the faculty had to submit to exams annually. It was like being presented the bill after a truly great party and it was around this time that the whole college collectively suffered Exam Fever. It’s a bit like a really bad hangover, if you could mix it up with a few nasty viruses and a solid dose of paranoia and schizophrenic insanity.

Law College had no mercy on the ham-fisted and mutton brained. Some clumsy students were lucky enough to walk out, others were removed in bottles. Students tended to pick up practical law as you went along, and sometimes scraped it off the walls as well. The graffiti was amazingly erudite. In any case, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.

It was my first year in Law School, not a good year to be in as all the dirty jobs are given to us, on the basis that if we got things wrong there wouldn't be too much education wasted. And at the time of the final exams, there was a huge stand – off between the student body and the faculty over autonomy issues and there was a general decision to go on strike against the final exams as a protest. Now, if no one gave their papers, the university could not take action against the whole college and so it was decided to boycott the whole process. In any case, the Law College prof’s were a mad lot, and if they were weapons, then international treaties would ban most of the faculty. But the students were always the underdogs, and an underdog can always find somewhere soft to bite. According to some crazy named Chinese philosopher, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized. And so it proved.

It was in those tumultuous days that some great wag and joker decided to get even with the whole system itself and proposed to the whole student body to make a farce of the whole exam by being present and yet jamming things up, without any violence or sloganeering. Since the exam was in the university premises, it was proposed that we let our imaginations run wild. Suffice it to say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then this great man would be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are b********s.' Well, Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up. The motion was seconded, ratified and carried unanimously.

D-day arrived and I was inside the huge exam hall with all the other students.

"Goooooooooooooooooood mooooooooooooooooooooorning, sir," muttered the mutineers.

A nod from the troll-like creature assigned to us indicated that he was prepared to accept, on available evidence, that it was morning and, in certain circumstances, by some people, it might be considered good. This was a man under pressure, if stress were food he would have succeeded in turning his life into porridge.

There were about 300 students inside the hall and the place could give you the creeps. I wished I could do some redecorating with some floral wallpaper and a firebomb for choice.

To this day, I do not remember all that happened but it all started with a senior coming into the class with a pillow and falling asleep (or at least pretending to) and then waking up in 15 minutes and screaming "oh God, better get cracking," and then doodling some gibberish on his paper and turning it in.

That truly set the mood.

Someone got a copy of the exam and ran out screaming, "Abdul bhai, Abdul bhai, I’ve got the secret documents!"

Next came the paper airplanes out of the exam question papers and aimed at the examiners left nostril.

Someone started talking through the entire exam, reading questions aloud, debating the answers with themselves out loud. When asked to stop, the person yelled out, "I'm SOOO sure you can hear me thinking." Then the guy started talking about what a jerk the examiner was.

By this time, things were getting interesting and the examiners were well and truly mad.

Then came along some rich brat and the guy brought along an entire band party as in a marriage band with dancing people and sat down with great flourish and asked for the question paper. When asked, he claimed that he was going to be taping his next video album during the exam and almost convinced the examiner to let them stay by telling the examiner to expect a percentage of the profits if they were allowed to stay.

Then one guy who had been sitting quietly with his paper screams at the examiner, "I don't understand ANY of this. I've been to every lecture all semester long! What's the deal? And who the hell are you? Where's the regular guy?"

By this time, some girls brought out some Nintendo Game Boys (very popular then) and started playing with the volumes at max levels

The guy next to me was answering the paper in the midst of this chaos very earnestly. As no one was bothering, I leaned over and saw that he was answering all the questions with refusals! Sample answer –“I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that it conflicts with my religious beliefs” Some other guys joined in, some even invented a new language on the spot and gave long and detailed answers involving equations, integers and fractions and roman numerals in a law paper. Some guys were making acronyms with the multiple-choice questions, for eg. DCCAB.BABE. etc...

By this time, someone introduced two pet dogs to the general pandemonium. Pomerians if I remember correctly

Soon there was a bevy of prof’s trying to bring control into the huge room when a slim rather dark fellow dressed in a lungi and shawl ran into the exam room looking about frantically., breathed a enormous sigh of relief, went to the professors and said, "They've found me, I have to leave the country" and ran off.

It was a riot. The V.C. was sent for to control the mayhem

Fifteen minutes later, a goan fellow stood up, ripped his papers into very small pieces, threw them into the air and yelled out "Merry Christmas." And then went and asked for another copy of the exam, saying that he had lost the first one. As soon as the prof handed him the question paper, he ate it.

Someone broke out crayons and fluorescent markers and drawing class was on.

One dude came inside the exam hall at this stage wearing slippers, a bathrobe, a towel on his head, and nothing else.

Soon the students were bringing things to throw at the prof’s when they were not looking and blaming it on the person nearest.

Then there was this bunch of guys who every five minutes, would stand up, collect all their things, move to another seat, and continue with the examination.

One guy turned in the answer script approximately 30 minutes into it. As he walked out, he started commenting on how easy it was. One of the professor’s (the one who set the paper perhaps) saw red and chased him all the way to the university gates, I believe.

One showed up completely drunk. (Completely drunk means at some point during the exam, they should start crying for mommy or their ex-girlfriends)

Twenty minutes before the warning bell someone threw the answer papers down violently, screamed out "Fuck this!" and walked out triumphantly.

Every now and then, a few students clapped twice rapidly. When asked why, they were told in a very derogatory tone, "the light bulb that goes on above our heads when we get an idea is hooked up to a clapper. DUH!"

By this time, the fun was catching, we had students from different classes like engineering and management who had no clue about law and claiming that they had been to every lecture and were fighting for their rights to take the exam.

One female upon receiving the exam, looked it over, laughed loudly and said, "You don't really expect me to waste my time on this drivel? Saas bhi kabhi Bahu thi is on!!!"

One guy brought a water pistol with him. Enough said.

One guy started humming film songs from the moment the exam began, and when they finally get him to leave one way or another, he began whistling “Vande Mataram” and marched outside the hall alternating the whistling with “Inquilab Zindabad” and saluting the professors every time he passed the doors

Some one came in wearing a full dress costume, beard, sword, shield and all in Shivaji the Maratha costume and politely asked for a question paper

By this time, the Vice Chancellor who had come to stop the mess was laughing so hard that he had turned red and needed water.

But he had some serious manpower with him. A couple of what we thought of as the big men on campus stepped through and gave everyone the official, professional look that said that for your comfort and convenience we have decided not to kill you at this very moment. It just plain did not work.

A girl came up with her boyfriend and requested a back massage the entire way through the exam, insisting that this person was needed, as she had bad circulation.

Another guy, quite the stud, complained about the heat and started stripping like a Mumbai bar dancer and two others started showering him with torn question papers like money.

My neighbour called the raging professors over, pointed to a question and asked for the answer and started trying to work it out of him.

Some guys started playing Frisbee inside the class.

One guy brought a really large, cumbersome ganesha idol and put it right next to himself and started conducting prayers to it with flowers, and diyas and all

A smart dude started delivering candy, flowers, balloons, telegrams etc to the girl he was trying to impress, so every few minutes, there would be this totally freaked out messenger boy bringing stuff and calling her name out. The whole class would stop whatever they were doing and also chant her name. This went on through the exams. I think she said yes when the exam ended

Our musically oriented classmates went back to the hostel and brought back their instruments and started playing various tunes. When asked to stop, they claimed that it helped them think and brought copies of the Examination Rules with them, challenging the professors to find the section on musical instruments during finals. The professors tried…oh, they tried……

The rest of the prof’s were not technically insane by then. They had passed through the rapids of insanity some time previously, and were now sculling around in some peaceful pool on the other side. They were often quite coherent, although not by normal human standards

After that, well, it was at the point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink.
The whole show ended with the bell and the next day, the faculty board gave into the Student Body demands without a murmur and for quite a few terms after that, any loud noises during an examination would get rather pleasing results from the professors who were present during the one time the students took on the system and blew it to pieces