I lost my bike keys, spoke to an angry invigilator and then found them

As I was getting ready to write the CAT I realized that I had lost my bike keys. Rather than going back outside the centre and searching for them, I decided to go ahead and give the exam and leave things to sort themselves out as time was short.  It was later, as I stared at a blank screen and a counter showing 1:00:48 counting down to the start of the test, that the full extent of my horrible miscalculation dawned on me. I couldn’t help thinking I could’ve done something different like maybe going and searching for the keys the minute I realized they were gone, although that would’ve meant leaving my place in the queue and going all the way back outside the main gate and hunting for them while the precious (they seemed at that time) seconds ticked away. I couldn’t help thinking that I would have definitely found the keys if I had gone and searched for them at that time, and now, by the time the test finished in 3 hours, someone would’ve taken them and gone. In fact if they found the keys on the ground close to my bike, they might even have decided to steal it. I realized that to calm myself down and attempt the exam in the right spirit I needed to list down all the possible situations I could find myself in after the exam and the various courses of action I would take in each case. I made a flowchart out of it and that helped calm me down. The branches split depending on whether or not the keys were recoverable or not. And if not, then whether the bike was stolen or not.

I made the flowchart on the paper given to me for rough work by the exam invigilators.  However one of the guidelines was that I wasn’t supposed to write anything on the paper before the test started. When one of the invigilators saw that I had written something on the paper he swooped down on me like an eagle on its prey (going by his appearance I’d say he wasn’t a very good looking eagle either) and informed me that not only had I been cheating, I was fully aware that I was. Apparently I was the welcome break from his monotonous existence. I showed him the flowchart and explained the situation to him and he reluctantly agreed that what I had written had no relation whatsoever with the CAT exam which by the way wasn’t starting for another half an hour. He told me rather uncertainly that this was my last chance.. although I didn’t know what he meant by that and was willing to bet on the fact that he didn’t either. I resisted the temptation to ask him if it was one of those ‘first and last chance’ deals and if not, then wasn’t I entitled to another chance as this had been my first.

Anyway, we left each other alone till almost the end of the test. I had finished my test and was waiting for everyone to finish theirs because of the dumb rule that no student would be allowed to leave before all in the room had finished their tests. I wanted to leave the room badly as I was eager to start searching for my keys before the whole parking lot got crowded. Also, the light was fading quickly as the evening wore on. After finishing my test I was looking at the screen of the guy in front of me who was still writing the test and hadn’t completed it yet. Again the invigilator swooped. There was apparently another rule that no student would be allowed to look even roughly in the direction of another student’s screen as this would prove beyond doubt that he had been unscrupulously copying the answers with no regard whatsoever for the rules and regulations carefully handcrafted with hours of painstaking effort by the CAT God. The invigilator, who by his deeply lined face and permanent expression of disgust resembled a man who has been in contact with college students long enough to have become embittered, utterly without compassion and nursing a deep hatred of all young people, came over to my desk with his face contorted into a sickly leer of what I could only imagine to be some sort of triumph. He told me I had been caught, despite my best efforts (haha) at surreptitiousness as he had unquestionably seen me looking over at another student’s screen. I replied that I had indeed been looking at the other’s screen and just as the invigilator was  about to commence his victory dance, he noticed that my test was over, my answers had been submitted and ‘locked’. So it couldn’t have been an intent to copy which made me  look at the other student’s screen. I told him it was done merely in impatience as I wanted to get out of the place immediately, the reasons being split between going and searching for my bike keys and ending my association with this invigilator. The invigilator slunk away muttering threats and I could faintly make out the words ‘If anything happens in the next 5 minutes….’

Well, that’s where the funny ends, but thankfully I did get my bike keys back – a dhaba owner had seen it fall out of my pocket and kindly kept it for me. Sometimes things do work out. That’s life for you!

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