The month of March-April brings in the aroma of Alphonso mangoes into Mumbai. However school children and college students are not in the mood to eat mangoes as they are busy cramming for their examinations. Students eagerly look forward to their last examination so that they can get rid of the books and go out and have a fun time.
As usual, we are at the Sarangapani Club and having a discussion on “Examination pe Charcha”. Prabha Said “Poor children, they have to slog so much for the exams. Life has become so competitive that all kids are very tense before their exams.”. Prabha interjected, “Do you know that Gavaskar said you may be playing your first test or your 100th test, when you go out to open the innings you have butterflies in the stomach and it settles down after some time”.
Kaushik made a very key point, “I don’t mind the effort put in by the kids as they want to build their career. What I find difficult to digest is why do they take books to exam centres and keep studying till one second before the exam? Can’t they relax once they have left home till the start of the exam.” Kingo always wanted to get one up on Kaushik and said with a victorious smile,” Kaushik, if that is true, why do you keep discussing systems with your partner till the start of the game in a Bridge tournament? Why don’t you just relax and meet friends before the start of the tournament.”
Padma, quick on numbers, said it has been statistically proven that kids who relax on the morning of the exam get a one per cent uplift compared to kids who keep cramming till the last minute”. Kingo wanted to drill it in and exploded saying, ”Kaushik, if you relax and don’t discuss systems till the start of the first deal, we will probably perform 10 per cent better in tournaments than what we are doing now”. Kaushik nodded in approval and made a commitment that he will not discuss systems on the day of the tournament.
Prabha summed it up with an important point – “Did you notice that the nerves last for just the first few minutes and once you get into the groove, you write your answers properly and bid and play properly. Kingo who had a sense of unique humour added that we must have the concept of trial ball which we had when we played cricket as children. Every session must start with first deal as trial deal and allow nerves to settle and scoring starts from second deal”.
Kaushik had the last comment on the subject saying, ”Look at it practically, if we have one trial deal per session which will mean one less session per day. Organizers and Players won’t like it.” The plate of alphonso arrived. They all enjoyed the king of all fruits with the king of card games and made a promise “No Discussions on Tournament Day”
