Objects in the rear view mirror (appear closer than they are)

I was driving home the other day and I saw a guy hitch a ride with a complete stranger on a bike. Now this is a fairly common occurrence in India and there are a lot of people who either hitch rides or who give rides to people they don't know. I myself have done it several times, both sat behind someone who took me in the direction I wanted to go (and did not have the money in my pocket to get there) or dropped someone on my way.

That simple occurrence triggered off a chain of memories in my mind.

In a flash, I had gone back 15 years to a cold night just before my Physics examination for the XIIth standard exams. Now most people in India know that this is probably the most important examination that one would have to take and this make or breaks your life (even though at that time, we did not take it as seriously). The outcome of the exams and the marks you get in those exams pretty much decide whether you get to do the vocation of your choice or you get your choice made for you. So it was not uncommon to get bunches of old question papers and solve them under simulated exam conditions to see how well you can do.

As I approached my Physics exam, I did what almost everybody of my age was doing. I had solved another year's question paper and wanted it to get corrected. The authority for us at the time was a professor by the name of Sumant. Unfortunately, Sumant Sir had recently shifted houses and all I had was his address. His telephone connection had not shifted yet and so there was no way to get in touch with him. Mind you, this is way before cell phones made their appearance in India.

That led to me riding around the area where he stayed on my bicycle for almost an hour around 9:30pm and still not being able to get to his house. At that time, I was running low on patience and high on anxiety. Luckily for me, a guy was getting out on his bike for an evening ride. I stopped him to ask for directions and I think he figured out my state from my quivering voice. So he asked me to park my bike near his house and offered to take me to the house himself. In that state of mine, that was a God sent. So I rode up to Sumant Sir's house with this very kind man, thanked him profusely, then got my paper corrected (100/100 just in case you want to know) and then walked all the way back to my bike at what was already 10:30 in the night. The next day, I thought I had cracked my paper and felt that I had done the right thing
by getting that boost of confidence the night before.

That memory triggered off another one from the same year. This one had to do with Mathematics (my favorite subject amongst all of the ones we had for the year). I remember sitting waiting for Professor NM Kulkarni (NM as he was referred t0) on the first day of class. Then a sudden commotion amongst students meant that NM had arrived. This guy had a very different way of teaching. On the very first day, he came on stage (there was an actual stage to facilitate us being seen by him, really short as he was) and wrote a differential equation on the board and asked us to solve it. Only three of us in a class of more than hundred got it. He asked us our names and then started the lesson. Only later did I realize that he had done this at other classes as well and noted the people who had solved the problem he had given.

When all classes got together (more than 400 people), he moved the bunch of us to one long bench in the middle of the classroom. That was a bench that we all had to sit on and it was an unwritten rule which forbid others to sit there. I remember this very peculiar way of his. Every time he had taught us something, he would come the next day and write about 50 equations for us to solve on the board. We would probably take around 20 minutes to crack the ones on the board while the rest of the class struggled with them. As we waited, he would come to our bench and scribble an equation on the bench top with his chalk and walk away. That single equation was enough for us to scratch our heads for the better part of the class. Only twice in all the times he had done that did I look at the equation and go "That's easy" and answered it immediately. I remember his expression when I called him to tell him that it was done. All the other times, it was a fight to get the equation solved. Gladly, most of us never let him down and always had an answer for it by the end of class.

I also remember riding my bicycle to his house (this one I knew quite well from having gone there too many times) after the exam and discussing the paper with him. I also remember him telling me exactly how much I would get (I got exactly those many marks). When I last spoke to him, he told me how he still had a solved paper of mine which was all correct even with the optional problems. He had called it the most perfect paper solved amongst the recent batches. Too bad that I had not done the same during the actual exams.

But no harm no foul. I went on to do exactly what I wanted to do and then on to other things. And finally to blogging here. It's funny how fresh these memories are in my mind. Meatloaf was right. Objects in the rear view mirror really do appear closer than they are.