Board Exams

In no time our board exams neared. We were strictly ordered not to bring any of IIT books to the study hours and that we only should study for board exams. It was January and our exams were in march. It was very cool in the mornings and we took permission from the ‘in-charge’ to sit inside the rooms and study. The real game started then. Anyone who wanted some sleep can go into the rooms and sleep. One would be watching outside for warden and he gives signal when he arrives. We used to fight for the newspaper and we almost read every column of sports page and cinema. All this in the study hours. IPE(intermediate public examinations) as they were called , were light to us. We cant get any engineering seat with those marks. So why to study? Just for the college so that it can advertise with those marks. Of course we studied and I cant forget the most awful days of my life. Those are while studying Sanskrit. I couldn’t understand a single thing in that. Everyone says that Sanskrit is a scoring subject and its easy to get 98 in it. It is scoring, but to get above 95 we needed to work . No need of hard work, at least 'work' is enough. But to do some work we gotta get some interest in that. Interest in sanskrit????? How could I get that? I was worried. I discussed with my friends . There were many like me, who hated Sanskrit and had no interest in that. In the pre-final exams I got 70 marks and got a good scolding from my Sanskrit lecturer. He scolded in Sanskrit. So I dint understand many of them. there were about 10 guys like me who were vexed up with Sanskrit.
We all sat together 2 days before the board exam and mugged up the entire syllabus, because we wanted to prove that we too can study Sanskrit. I got 90 marks in board exams. I was satisfied with those marks even though half of the class got above 96..
I finished my board exams of 11th grade and got 426 marks out of 470. Later I wrote the improvement exams and got 444. After the boards we were given holidays. Can you guess how many days??????? Two days. Only two days after boards???? This is the situation in Andhra Pradesh, especially when you are preparing for IIT kind of examination. After those two days we were back with big IIT books.