How I won the scholarship without learning anything

In eighth grade of school, I won a Sanskrit Scholarship. A regional scholarship that felicitated students that had demonstrated a talent in Sanskrit language. Criteria? Every student who scored 95% + in their year-end examination scores. I remember feeling so chuffed about winning this scholarship. The school arranged to take the 5 winners to the felicitation venue where we found ourselves amongst hundreds of other students from schools across New Delhi. Our moment of glory comprised to being called upon the stage and being handed a certificate along with an envelope containing Rupess Five Hundred, not an insignificant amount for an eighth grader, possibly the first money we had made ourselves.  I felt good about it for weeks at end, if not months.

In the 20 odd years than have gone past since then, I have found myself thinking many a times about this one classmate. A lanky girl with silky soft hair tied casually in a hip length plait. She had few friends and was considered aloof and rude by many. Finding every opportunity to burn her skin darker still at the basketball court, one of the odd girls who chose that sport. Scampering around school corridors in winters without bothering to put moisturizer on her skin, her brown skin flaked with white due to dryness. She had chosen Sanskrit as her third language too.

In our eighth grade, we had to start writing short essays in Sanskrit. There were the standard topics – an animal, popular Hindu festival, a city, a famous leader etc. The unstated expectation was for the students to refer to guides (un-regulated coaching books available outside of prescribed school curriculum) and copy out those essays word for word. For the purpose of examination, there would be a choice of 5 essay topics. If you were a smart student, you would have seen enough test papers of the past to identify 4-5 topics which gave you a reasonable guarantee that atleast 1 of them will show up amongst the 5 choices in the annual examination. So you memorize these 4-5 essays, cross your fingers, and vomit it out on the exam day.

It made life simple for our Sanskrit teacher as well. Our homework submissions during the year were largely error-proof. Errors, if any, were mostly because of the student’s laziness in copying from the “guide” books. Imagine her plight when this lanky girl submitted one original essay after the other. They were full of mistakes as she learnt to put the language to use. I remember seeing her assignments when they came back after evaluation. The pages would be blood red from the teacher’s pen. The teacher wasn’t amused. The girl however was determined.

She was the only one who really learnt the language. No wonder she never got that scholarship.