Mock common admission tests (CATs) are conducted by every CAT prep institute to prepare students to face the real thing in October. The CAT coaching centre for which I work decided to begin the season with a Sunday Mock to gain an advantage over our competitors. As we inch closer to developing an online platform to enable our students to take the Mock on the screen, our first Mock was a paper and pencil one administered for free. We marketed it across all colleges in Mumbai to get the highest number of students to appear. The Mock was followed by a detailed analysis of both Math and English sections. The idea is to impress prospective students enough for them to join us for the one-year prep course.
Going by the response, it seems to have worked. It didn’t start that way though. When we reached the school we had rented for the Mock at 10:30 a m, 50-odd students were waiting at the gate. Nalini, our counsellor, was disappointed. She had assiduously cold-called over a thousand prospectives over the past week. Her experience suggests five per cent of such calls materialise into walk-ins. By that yardstick, 50 was an adequate number. Yet, one hopes against hope.
All of us had worked against time to get the Mock going. The window for admissions to CAT prep courses is slim, with most students settled into their regimens by July. So, the marketing exercise was essential. But we hadn’t had much time. As English faculty, I had contributed the questions in the Verbal section. My colleagues had each done one of the following: arranged space to conduct the exam, got the papers printed, hired an online test service to supply optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets, negotiated terms with a computer peripherals operator to scan the answer sheets, and other odds and ends.
By 11 a m, the time of the test, there were still only 120 students. We had booked seven classes and so far only three had been filled, that too partially. We decided to go ahead and begin. Just as we were distributing the OMR sheets, a noisy horde of students lined the long corridor between the school entrance and the classrooms. “We are sorry sir,” they screamed in unison, “but there was a technical fault at Mahim station, and our trains got late.” Oh relief! We smiled, and welcomed them. Within 20 minutes, the rooms swelled with close to 200 students. Nalini, of course, was smiling ear to ear.
At 2 p m, the analysis began. I took the Verbal part and a colleague discussed the Math section. The Verbal section had questions on reading comprehension, jumbled statements, completion of paragraphs, vocabulary and grammar. From how to approach CAT in general to discussing every question in the test, the session was elaborate and satisfying. Over two detailed hours, we laughed and learnt in equal measure. The outcome: Nalini’s fingers moved frantically as she input details of students keen to start attending classes from the very next day.
As I left the centre to walk towards Dadar station, the sun lost its ferocity and the sky was overcast. In spite of repeated reminders from friends, I am yet to develop the habit of carrying an umbrella at all times in Mumbai. You forget the cardinal rule, you pay. The rains, which visit Mumbai first in June and stay on till October, cast a spell on the city. Like the weather for the British, the rains are the subject of much gratuitous analysis by residents here. Before they arrive, everybody paints dark pictures of heaving crowds, knee-deep water, and general chaos. Few hearty voices – like my roommate’s – claim the opposite, of the new lease of life the rains gift the city, regeneration, the pleasing weather, the cool breeze. Bogged down by memories of the 2005 floods, I tend to side with the pessimists.
Walking towards Dadar station, I was about to be proved right. The weather inexplicably turned and the clouds opened (as frequently happens in Mumbai). Big fat drops of water lashed my unprepared self. No taxi in sight, no umbrella, the Dadar station about a kilometre away — this had all the makings of a disaster.
But no. Just as I imagined the worst, the outpouring slowed to an indulgent drip-drop. It’s curious, isn’t it, how we urban dwellers, caught up in our daily struggles, hold fast to our sense of the proper and convenient. But sometimes, as we are about to keel over this precipice of solipsism, something unexpected goads us to look at things anew. Those tiny water droplets – silent yet forceful – imbued everything with a muted glitter. The world – so far grimy, stretched, moving to the faint patter of its own labours – was released into freedom, tapping its feet to an enchanting beat that united its vast expanse in ecstasy.
The author has switched too many jobs in the past and hopes he can hold down this one
