ONE YEAR

I am the kind of a person who believes in holding onto the goodness of the past. And, more so, certain special days. I look back at such days, read my diary entries and reflect. The happiness, the joy, the relief...whatever it might have been. I tend to feel those emotions again and simply live that day again.
I wonder why I do it. I've wondered a thousand times. I have never really been able to answer the question with anything apart from, " Because I am like that!" In many ways, I don't want to let go; don't want to really believe that the day no longer is as important as it was then. After all, do we do that with Birthdays? Or Anniversaries? Even Deaths are remembered. So why not the day when I got my Std. 10 result? Or the day I stepped into the real world? Or the day when Liverpool won the Champions' League? They are special to me. They are days I want to remember 50 years down the line. Because they mean something......and something special.

Thats hardly the introduction I would have wanted for this entry, but never mind. A long introduction always has its magic. Its June 14th, 2009. And today I celebrate the one year anniversary of my CET results. Its very strange calling this an 'anniversary'. So I guess I'm going to say, I celebrate one year since my results. One year since the day I realised that, all that sweat, and toil and ( using my favourite phrase, here) "working my ass off" had finally paid off. I was reserved a Government Medical College seat.....Something I had not thought, would happen to me, all during the time I was preparing for the entrance examination.
I can remember every moment of that morning. Contrary to my usual style, I got up half an hour later. At about 8:30am, instead of the normal 8:00am. Mom had just left for the hospital ( she had an early cataract to cater to). Dad was almost ready. And me? Well, I got up....sat for sometime thinking about the importance of the day, and then said " Chuck it..I don't really expect anything much!" and got out of bed. After all, not all morning dreams actually end up being real, do they?
We had been told that the results would be out by 11:00 am. So I took my time. Brushed my teeth, read the morning newspaper ( end to end, for a change) and decided to get dressed. All through, my dad continued like a stuck gramaphone record really, " Why don't you check your result? It must have come out by now. Come on....I know you want to do it yourself....Please!"
I have a routine. Everytime, I have to see any result, whether its an entrance test, or match score, I make sure I have nothing else left to do, before I sit to check it out. A bath, breakfast, getting my bed tidied up, getting my hair right, saying a small, "Please let it be what I want" to God, taking my Luck-pendant with me...everything.
I said to Dad, I'd do it at 11:00am, and well, I had to do everything else before it. I could sense the desperation and frustration and absolute irritation, in his eyes..... For all the times in the world when I had to stick to my 'routine'!!!
Finally, giving into his incessant nudging ( nagging, really), I decided to check it out at 10:00am. I said it wouldn't even be up on the net yet. The scheduled time was 11:00am. Well, as fate would have it, the result was there. Pretty much what I expected. I had expected a 176 out of 200. I got a 177 out of 200. What I didn't expect, was a rank as high as 545. It made me wonder for a bit. A score as low as 177 and a rank like 545!! Something is a little wrong here.
And, well, Mom came home and things cleared up. It had been a low-scoring test, unlike the previous year, and with 545, I was sure of a Government Medical seat. The rest of the day went by in a blur. Meeting my teachers, distributing laddoos, and smiling!! I had fallen in love with BJ Medical College, the first ever time I saw it. I always put that down to the fact that I was never going to get in there, anyway. But, now I actually had a chance!! I've always thought I have the tendency to perform much beyond my expectations. This was one of them. In a way.
Of course, I wasn't sure of the college I would be getting into, but I guess, celebrating a seat was enough. And we know the story now, don't we? I did get into BJ, and I have never been happier!!!!
So, to June 14th: the day that pretty much changed my life. I had, literally, trained myself to believe I wanted to get into an engineering college, till this day when I saw that 545. Just want to remember how wonderful the world started looking after that one look at the computer screen :-)))