Going to Hajj, In India

The curious thing about India is that half of its population is the government.

Either through the nominal method of having a relative in a government department or by sitting in preparation of one of the numerous exams that gives one a foothold in the government, half the Indians proudly call themselves "lords", a euphemism for the civil servant.

The irony is not lost on the million plus class of people who call themselves 'ass'zpirants, I mean aspirants who give the exam for getting into the the government by becoming top bureaucrats. Ostensibly, the aim of these young men and women is to serve the country and to help the poor, but then these are rote answers prepared for the interview sessions and have no relevance in the real life.

'Respect' goes a long way in a traditional society, to achieve which aspirants like me line up the queue s outside the centres for coaching. I had asked myself, several times in a row after several years of indecision, that what should I do after my college. By now, the 'what if ' had become so encoded in my conscious, that the final answer didn't fall too far from the tree and I decided upon IFS, the bureaucratic foreign service as my goal.

12. That's how many officers would eventually be selected by the government out of a million plus that applied, for their elite IFS service. It's inconceivable that the odds would be so small, for even a "hunger games" offer far better odds than this.

 I remember thinking of the image of a child, jumping straight down a cliff, hoping that he'd grow some wings along the way down. Millions of children doing the same, would come to represent the picture that was present in Delhi, where they'd all gather to prepare.

You see, Delhi represents the Mecca, the Medina, the Vatican, the Haridwar of all the coaching aspirants. They come there, not only to study, but to pray at the shrines of all those coaching centres, that line the city of narrow lanes, in droves no less intense than in which the pilgrims come.

One fine morning, I found my life packed in a suitcase and deposited at the railway station of Delhi, from where I was supposed to take the first test in the series of unending ones.....the test to buy a seat at the Vajiram coaching institute.