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The announcement came from the speakers in corners of the room hanging like spider web “one and half hours over”. The sound of my heartbeat, the announcement, both synchronized so good that it felt like a background score to a movie ending on a sad note.
I glanced to my both sides; people who looked alive and sober at the beginning were occasionally, like robots moving their hands; I could see a sea of heads, some in aimless direction but ‘still’ as if cursed by god to remain like that forever.
Everything was moving slowly but the time. I was sporadically going into a state of tranquility which broke every time the sense of time prevailed. The time was eluding so fast that it made me remember one cliché which said “when you desire for something from the bottom of your heart the whole world conspires to help it become elusive”. It was another fifteen minutes before I could be back to what I was meant to do. Fifteen minutes! My soul cried, but immediately making a quick resolution to not to get lost again and do the job at hands, I just thought of attacking my weakest area now.
Little did I know about what was waiting for me? As soon as I entered this section my worst fear came into life. Now, I knew that my fear was poised there for a long time, waiting for me like a lizard waiting patiently for a fly to sit near it before it could feast on it. I could hardly understand the moves it was making, but I knew that it was making its moves. I triumphed over few questions and few of them triumphed over me. The announcement came again, but this time to just say “time over”. I sighed but I didn’t know for what.
The hall which until now was abode of mystic silence suddenly sprang into chaos of larger silence. I stood up and followed the herd to the door. I looked back at the place where I sat a few moments ago. To my surprise I saw someone still fighting, not ready to give up. It raised its face knowing that I was peeking at it. My eyes started widening to see that it was nobody else but my soul. It took me a moment to get back into my mind. I smiled at it and told it with a bold authority “friend its time to move on”.

The room I wrote the exam in was on the third floor of this college building. College building! I got lost into thoughts again though this time after a bigger break. “Where the hell do IIMs find these colleges from? The real aptitude test starts from not the time when the bell cues you into writing the test, but from the time when you get ready in the morning of the D-day and leave to find these test centres. Many buckle under the pressure of finding the test centre itself. And few are smart enough (in their own eyes) to reach their centre half a day before and give a supremely confident grin stretching from ear to ear to a locked and barren gate of the centre”. Someone suddenly brushed their body against mine, making me leap off almost 4 steps of the stairs. I woke up and realized that I have almost descended to the first floor. People whose bodies were possessed by ghosts of some or the other kinds untill now; were exorcized from the unsullied outside air. People started recognizing one another again, smiling at one another as if they rediscovered an ancient art of alchemy.