Victory is for those who look beyond fear and can steal it from the clutches of defeat and despair. I knew not defeat, fear and despair, well the fact was I knew nothing! Welcome to an engineering oral examination an event also called the Viva. The reason for my ignorance is quite simply illustrated by the following chain of events the morning of the Viva.
Some souls were studying their notes and some, quite inexplicably were revising their notes. “Devote the remaining time to study the working, fabrication and design of the field effect transistor.” The voice of sanity resonated through my consciousness.
Amen!
“Tendulkar is taking on the Aussies! He is on 51, he is smashing them.” Thus spoke my friend his voice now resonated through my consciousness, belittling that one of sanity.
Amen!
We headed to “Kay Gee’s: Chainese restaurant” which is an Indian joint with lots of ‘Schezwan’. We knew the owner, he knew us, we could turn on the television, the food was cheap and well what more do you want?
Everything at Kay Gee’s is red and has schezwan in it. The menu card has the prefix-‘Schezwan’ to everything; Schezwan Dal Fry, Schezwan Alu Gobi, Schezwan Paneer tikka masala, and my personal favourite Schezwan French fries.
If ever the world wanted to know how Indo-Chinese relations could move forward Kay Gee’s, the colour red and Schezwan were it!
We then witnessed true class, Sachin Tendulkar. The commentators on air sung poems on the man. “The greatest in our lifetime………. …………What a shot, what a player, what a man…...He dances down the pitch again ………That shot had elegance grace and exquisite timing……173 not out…..”
Not that we hadn’t heard those words before but they were the only thing we had to describe something as surreal, they resounded all around us, they were all we had. Two runs and a ball later he got out. 17 runs and 18 balls later the Indian team save one man lost the plot, the match, the series and momentarily the goodwill of a billion spectators.
We rushed to college to face our examiners; the internal guide, the one who is supposed to be on your side but isn’t because you didn’t attend her lectures! And the external who is unimpressed by the fact that she has traveled fifteen kilometers away from her actual workplace to undertake the Viva of students whom she knew, knew nothing!
The drill was simple two questions for each student, say something, and say anything.
“Explain Deried Pad Trandidtor?”
I was blank and she thought it was inexplicable that a student could not explain lucidly the most basic of concepts. What she meant was the ‘series pass transistor’; a common configuration of a transistor in a circuit.
Just my luck of all the examiners mine had to have a lisp.
“What is Pig Chop?”
Lightning struck twice at the same place and on the same dumb founded soul, me.
I screamed inside my head, “Come again ma’am were you speaking in English? What do you mean by chopping of a Pig? I am vegetarian! I don’t like or know anything about any swine save the flu after which it is named”
She referred to a concept called Pinch Off - a voltage condition that occurs across that abomination called the transistor.
I left the battlefield, the lisp and the transistor. Not quite the victory I had imagined. But I still had the prospect of describing Sachin’s innings and loads of cheap red ‘Chainese’ food. Who needs victory?
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