The Book of Family Records
Being born into a big family has its own advantage or rather disadvantage for people like me. There is a not so interesting game that is regularly played in our family circle. The game is called "who has got how much marks". The rules of game is very simple, compare your marks or to be more precise your academic performance with that of your cousins, friends and siblings. Well there is no prize for winners. The game becomes tough when you have really good performers as competetors. Since I was the eldest of the lot there was a huge expectation of what target I would set, but ironically after few years I was declared retired from the game and now I'm a mere spectator. As you can see, 70% average marks will not make you eligible in the game. So getting in is also tough. But I do hav a set of record that will remain intact for years to come, i.e. " Maximum number of flunk in Math Tests". Well the game has a very dark side, wish there was a better way of recognising talent.
2 comments:
Fristly.. great to see your post again bro !!
he he .. wat a co-incidence bro..
a similar thing runs in my maternal family side except that it is not treated as a game tho. My grand parents have 5 kids out of which i was the son of the eldest daughter so the eldest grandson. So like wise ppl had a lot of expectations on me and goodness gracious that i scored 84% in 10th and was reignin on the roost, so much so that i was compared to my uncles ( the real geniusus of the household). But Only until my 2nd pu marks came out and its the same old story for me too and by then the other grand children too were in the competition and now am a mere spectator too :) :)
It wasn't a game when I was pitted against my cousin, and I just hated it...I had a leaning to the "arts" subjects and never scored really well when I took up Science subjects in school. My cousin was sure she would be doing Medicine, and her scores were excellent. In college, of course, I could never compare, as in Madras University, marks were liberally given, and in Calcutta University, they were NOT ...my 59% in Philosophy was a University record, but my grandmother just said, "You must get more marks...be like Uma *that cousin)...!" All my life I grew up thinking I must be a duffer! It took me a long time to realize that I am (often) not.
Lovely post, because I enjoyed both the post and the memories it brought, even though those memories were not pleasant ones.
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