This article has been submitted by Anupriya Dhonchak for the CLATGyan Blog Post Writing Competition. If you think it’s a good read, ‘Like’ the article (the button is at the bottom of this piece) or post a comment using the ‘Comments’ section below.
In the apparently defined circumstances, there is so much we can attribute to that surreal factor we casually call chance. We experience excruciating pain because of chance and we derive ineffable bliss because of chance. It adds thrill to an otherwise monotonous life of pre-existing connotations and denotations. Through the crevices of definitions run the corvettes of chance and that’s probably what differentiates life from maths; life can never be contained in an equation for it entails much more than calculations. Life is like art, where you have no clue how one word or step just like one stroke of brush could change the outcome in inconceivable ways, until it does. And an artist can never really be held responsible for his actions later because by then, he’d already have changed; each work of art being a new apotheosis for him. Sometimes, I feel artists are lucky people who are seized by their emotions. These emotions culminate into art, ever ready to trade their happiness for the feeling of grief, and hence feeling more intensely about themselves.
But for the rest of us, is chance the balance of probabilities that exist in a wonderful fascinating prospect of life, after all? Walking the distance while we weigh the odds of finding a cunning shock against an ineffable surprise at the end. We are often more strongly affected by the fear of the former than the anticipation of the latter. And if we have been positive about something, only to be disappointed later, chances are that we will not want to make the same mistake of taking the same chance again.
Even those of us who have given the papers with due preparation are not quite as relieved as we had expected to be. In our places, we are smart enough to realise that those papers do not define us but arguably may define our future. This is not a rant about ‘how objective papers are not a touchstone of capability’, not the least about the ‘skills required to succeed at a profession like law’. Honestly, that was never the purpose. Truth be told, I cannot sustain my concentration on any thought for far too long. All the existing aromas, lights and metals are Neruda’s little boats that sail towards those isles of law school that I picture waiting for me. From ‘checking dozens of posts on analysis of the examination’ to thinking that I must have missed a few questions if I finished so early, I am having quite a fun time.
I started with philosophizing (and had planned to finish there, trust me) about the mysterious ways in which the universe works and how we can never fully come to terms with its uncertainty and be stoic about things that are beyond our control, not the least when they affect us so deeply. Yet, there is one thing we can do. Now that we’re done with our examinations, we can condition our mind to accepting the fact that no three digit score will define our limitations or our achievements for that matter. It is nothing but a measure of how good we were at taking that particular paper, the way it was designed that particular year.
Far away from good old Austenland, entrances pierced our soul and while we wait for our fate, we’re half agony, half hope.
