The CLAT Hours and Afterwards

This article has been submitted by Sriram Kumar for the CLATGyan Blog Post Writing Competition. If you think this article is a good read, ‘Like’ this article on Facebook (the button is at the bottom of this piece) or post a comment using the ‘comments’ section below.

Asad asked us to write about anything, a short story, a movie review, and some ‘city lovin’ so now I’ll proceed to overwhelm you with clichés by writing about the CLAT day itself. If meme theories are anything to go by, relatable stuff is popular stuff. And if there’s 4000 bucks up for grabs, hell yeah, I’m writing this.

So, the D Day horror story unfolds. 12^th May came all too early! All the preparation over one year seemed insufficient and the tummy-butterflies were in full form, kicking at full force. I may have even thrown up some Frooti on the way, but I believe that was because of the weather. I’m from Gurgaon and the test-centre was at Amity in Noida and thus entailed a long journey. When the cab guy arrived at my house 15 minutes late, I gave him a piece of my mind, which went something like this, “Test miss ho jayega bhaiyya! 2 baje tak pahunchna hai”. Had it not been just 11 a.m when this happened, that might have been more effective. Anyway, I reached Amity at 12:30, got lost in their campus, ate some extremely offensive looking stuff at the canteen, got lost in their campus again and finally made it to the auditorium, which was somehow already filled with kids and anxious parents (don’t these people have stuff to do at home? Arriving 3 hours before the exam. Huh.). One look at the kids and three distinct types stood out.

1. The thin kids in shirts exactly one size large, hipster glasses and an iPhone, chatting up their buddies in chaste Hindi.
2. The over-studious types with big fat books that yelled out “LLB ENTRANCE GUIDE”, somehow trying to cram stuff in their minds in the last few hours.
3. The clueless kids who just sat around gawking at the ceiling, presumably taken in by the painfully useless fan. This is where I belong I guess.

When they finally decided to let us into the classrooms, there was pushing and minor scuffling at the doors (again, what is their hurry?!) and the teachers had to guide us to our seats. Did I mention the butterflies were in full on ninja mode now? So we sat down and made acquaintances in a jiffy, ranting about how GK was making life miserable and how Math ought to be banned. Oh and almost everyone was going on about how CLATGyan’s annual GK Compendium was a lifesaver. And then there were the nutcases without pencils, or ball pens or admit cards. However they provide for some much needed amusement, so let’s not diss on them.

We started the paper on time, tore half of the rough sheet while breaking the annoying seal, and start colouring the OMR sheets with answers, some educated and some random. The thing with CLAT is, you never know what they might throw at you. This year’s paper had hard Math questions like Volume, Diameter and other stuff that terrorized me in 9^th grade. Old ghosts anyone? GK was enjoyable and predictably had a question on the Miss World pageant. Who sets the paper and why this obsession with beauty queens? Wink wink. The final bell rang, papers were snatched, tears were shed and we left the campus, with the promise of returning if none of the NLUs took us in. The butterflies went back into their cocoons, promising to come back two days before the results. For the rest of the 30,000 of you guys out there, best of luck*.

*As long as you get one or more marks less than me.