CATatonic

Forgive me for the rather pathetic (and, I have to admit, geeky) pun in the title. But six months of preparing for the CAT does permit one to play with one’s vocabulary.

Okay, the pun is still unforgivable.

If you’ve been following the Indian news today, you’ll know what happened. The CAT (Common Admission Test for Indian MBA programs) paper was leaked. Of course, this was not actually revealed until some time after the paper had actually started. So this is what happened.

Monday to Saturday: Bihari crooks sell the CAT paper and answer key at 200 to 400 Kilorupees.

Sunday, 10:30 am: the CAT procedure starts.

Sunday, 11:00 am: the CBI nabs the Bihari crooks. At this time, everyone giving the paper (which includes me) has opened the seal and started marking answers on the response sheet.

Sunday, 1 pm: The CAT ends, people walk out of the exam centres, and find out that the paper was leaked, and has thus been cancelled.

Whooopsie.

The feeling you get when you hear news like that is the same feeling you get when you set an alarm, wake up early, and set off for the eight am tutorial only to find that the instructor hasn’t turned up. Magnified several thousand times. In the immortal words of sPas- is this bugging? I mean, this is the second time in my life I’ve ever taken anything so seriously, and it goes fruit shaped.

But then, surprise is the nature of the universe.

As of now, there is every indication that there will be another CAT in a couple of months. Hoo boy, there goes what little was left of my winter vacations. On the other hand, I haven’t prepared for more than half a year just to get discouraged now. I will give the CAT again, and when I do it the next time, I will pull my quant score up too, by Mars and Juno! So there.

Some other thoughts follow. This is not a terribly well structured Fillet, I’m afraid.

I went and met Bhaiyya after lunch. Bhaiyya had been watching SET Max rather than the news channels, so I redirected him to Aaj tak. He was pretty amused, especially at the news segment with the bellyaching guys from Meerut and Bikaner. He found himself unable to sympathise with them, feeling that they should rather be delighted. They got a free mock CAT in an ultra-realistic environment, and that, too, one set by IIM profs.

Bhaiyya always manages to see the bright side of things. It’s wonderful.

Bhaiyya was also tickled pink at the thought of everyone who had coughed up muchos moolah for the CAT paper having sunk their investment with no return. I must confess, I hadn’t though of that aspect of the affair before, and I too was tickled pink.

Another thought that pops up is that the security level at MODEM, the computer symposium held at my old school MSVV is far superior to the security level at the IIMs. At MODEM, the programming papers would be sealed in brown evelopes, unseen by all except the people who’d set the questions, the Computer Club President, and the guy who stapled the sheets (who was always handpicked and trustworthy). This, when MODEM runs more on faith, dumb luck, and caffeine than anything else, while the IIMs are probably ISO 9000 organisations.

Another point to be noted is that the whole trouble started with Biharis. Time to quote a passage from William Dalrymple’s The Age of Kali, a book I had read less than a week ago:

In a very real sense, Bihar may be a kind of Heart of Darkness, pumping violence and corruption, pulse after pulse, out in to the rest of the subcontinent…. So serious and infectious is the Bihar disease that it is now throwing in to question the whole notion of an Indian economic miracle. The question is whether the prosperity of the south and west of the country can outweigh the moral decay which is spreading out from Bihar and the east.

While I am opposed to violence, there must be exceptions to every rule. And if the Assamese wish to kill any Biharis they come across in the future, I will not stick my oar in. Indeed, I might cluck approvingly. And if this is vigilante violence, what of it? So is Daredevil a vigilante. And there are action figures of him.

Of course, a more non violent way would be to simply grant Bihar independence from India, and then erect a fence around it. Later, we could do the same to Uttar Pradesh.

For the nonce, though, I’m going to study for CAT 2003 Mk II.

0 Responses to CATatonic

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