CAT hangover.

Your best friend tells you horrible things about yourself. You realize that all those mean things may have been said in a rage but they're true and you had hoped that no one else had noticed.

Mr Douglas Adams' The Total Perspective Vortex shows its victim the entire unimaginable infinity of the universe with a very tiny marker that says "You Are Here" which points to a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot.

CAT is worse.

Even the most carefree, "Im just taking it for the heck of it", "I had no other plans for the 3rd Sunday of November so .." person who does not remember a single mensuration formula* entertains a secret hope that he has a chance. That he will get The Call. If one is really honest, The Calls.


Come Sunday. The lucky pen which helped pass that atrocious System Security paper is carefully put into the pencil box where it will lie unused. The pencils are examined for that HB mark and pointiness of the writing end. Tea/Coffee is gulped. Prayers are said. The examination centre is reached 1 hour before reporting time. Because you never know with traffic. So what if its 8 a.m. on a lazy Sunday morning? You never know. Seating arrangements are checked. And the wait begins. If you are lucky you have a chatty benchmate or someone around you has a chatty benchmate. Else all you will hear is the sound of old fans whirring. And tall people constantly trying to adjust to the fifth grader's bench.

You wait for the bell. Then you wait for the answer sheet. 15 minutes is spent in filling in your details in those little circles. And then resume waiting. The question paper is distibuted. Safe inside a plastic cover that you are not allowed to open unless they tell you to. You read the instructions. Some people try to squint through the first and last papers to get a glimpse of the questions inside, hoping, perhaps, to gain that crucial edge over others.

The invigilators calmly inform you, " You may open the question paper". You open the page to the section you decided to start with, as part of your strategy. whhaaaaaat? You turn the pages hoping to find a familiar type of question. Panic sets in. You dive in. Before you know it 40 minutes are up. Switch to the next section. They've got to be playing a prank! Lift up the chin n do the best you can. Whhooosh. It's time for the next section. Whooooaaa! 10 minutes left. You look at your answer sheet for a 'holistic view'. The shaded circles are like pathetic flotsam and jetsam in the vast ocean of non-coloured circles, mocking your effort, intelligence and foolish hopes. You bravely try to ensure that the ones you have filled in are like the one with the approving tick mark beside it in the sample answer sheet. Time's up.

My advice to CAT '08 takers: Prepare. Start now! Think out of the box. Colour inside the circles!

* I'm sure the people who did not learn Geometry formulae for CAT '07 are all smug!