Rendezvous with Rashmin

This was the time when i was studying for my final exam in my first year of junior college in R A podar college, mumbai. Since that was the year i had taken up to playing chess full time ( my parents told me " do what you want but see to to it that you dont flunk) I used to hardly study. I needed 36 marks in marathi to get my total to 105 so that i get promoted to the next year. I had even forgotten how the marathi text book looked. Because of my utter carelessness i studied some other subject instead of marathi which i realised an hour before the final exam.

This was the first time I was facing a major crisis situation in life. "jaiGurudevs" had not yet entered my life. I was quite shattered. In that one hour i met 2 types of people . The first category of people who were asking questions like ," why dint you see the time table properly?" added with expressions that would make me feel like an helpless ass. The other category was of people who were finding a way out but couldnt think of and then just gave up

A few minutes later a very dear friend of mine, Abhay happened to see me. He asked what happened. After i told him He just smiled and first made me realize that there is no problem in the first place. I told him that i was thinking of studying for 3 hours and and then writing the paper for the last one hour. He again smiled and told me that 45 mins was enough time to comfortably pass in the subject. His composure and confidence relaxed my mind which was already visualizing the horrific drama that would happen at home if i lost a year because of such a stupid mistake.

He just open the index of the book and in just 15 mins narrated the stories of almost all the chapters and then gave me the gist of all the poetries in another 10 mins. He told me to remember the names of the characters so that i know the chapter from which the question is asked.
In the last 10 mins he asked me to revise the whole thing. For the first time( and also the last time) in my life I revised before an exam.

I just filled up the answer sheets with whatever i had gathered in those 45 mins and of course with a lot of my own imagination.

I always remember this incident as a lesson in acceptance followed by action.

I scored exactly 36. I passed.

Love
Rashmin