Admissions.

Reservations, percentages, submissions of forms into multiple colleges, grumbles against The System beat any other topic of conversation these days. Even the upcoming elections, Bhai Parrikar’s condition, rains (too much) and the electricity (lack of) don’t overtake it. Last night, at a friend’s house for an impromptu dinner, a pet choked over something. Once the howling of dog in pain, yowling of mistress in panic, hurling of accusations (“how could you feed her a fishbone?”) by master and sense of emergency diminished, all present returned to what’s bad with education—and a zillion other things-- in India today. Present were a nuclear-physicist turned educator, an electrical-engineer turned educator, a nutritionist turned educator, an architect turned educator and me. I was the only listener, an intelligence-challenged housewife. Not involved with kindergarten, primary, secondary or college related problems, I sat for over two hours with a this-is-exciting expression on my face. My mind was on the yet to be served homemade apple-crumble dessert. Shri Husband regularly veered the conversation towards some ultra-cerebral stuff-- is homeschooling better than sending children to institutions-- drawing into further debate the already agitated congregation. For some reason, sending someone to an institution sounds horrid. The word institution seems to denote rehabilitation centres, prisons, old-age homes, de-addiction places. But, schools and hospitals, like families, are institutions, no? Shri Husband, sneakily reading what I was typing, denied that any members of his domestic and extended family felt there was anything wrong with the word. Does there exist a magic lamp that renders husbands temporarily non-intrusive whilst wives are writing columns? Bai Goanna suggests I should write to the PMO’s office to tell an Indian scientist to make a device like that… researched and manufactured in India and marketed to benefit wives beyond our borders. So much money to be made, she said. I digress. Admissions. Am told, there are parents these days who have the idea that there are other ways of earning a living than becoming doctor-engineer-taxi-chalak. They are those parents, mostly, who have the means to pay their offspring’s rent/grocery bills whilst they (adult-kids, not Mummy-Puppa) go scuba-diving, practicing classical guitar or tracking exotic fungi in the Sahyadris. Such parents don’t have to worry about entrance exams and capitation fees or local guardians should their ward be sent out of Goa to complete a course. Goans are ok to send their children abroad, on cruise-liners, but not to, say, Barielly, to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute. That’s reasonable, they discuss amongst themselves, because our bovine-porcine cuisine aficionados would not like the food served in north-Indian ‘dhabhas’: black dal, cauliflower sabzi, tandoori chicken (this last one’s acceptable). North-Indian fish is fresh-water and the gravies are made without coconut. Oh no, the Goan parent moans, our ‘poot’ can’t survive on that. The good part is, Goan parents don’t discriminate between daughters and sons, they deny out-of-state opportunities to both. When someone actually ventures ‘out’, it makes local news: Ms Y Z Prabhu got her Ph D from Panchpakwan University on the theme: “Why the scales of the black pomfret aren’t edible”. In the photo accompanying the press-release stands an MLA by her side. And her parents. Aunts and Uncles. Sometimes it’s just a mug-shot. Now she needs to get admitted into a government job is the message her eldest uncle tells the world. Back to admissions: for colleges, the first choice is Goa. Or the USA/NZ/Oz if they’re rich parents. Then, Belgaum-Bangalore-Bombay, depending on where one has relatives one gets along with. Besides fees, boarding and lodging, there is money to be spent on sweaters and blankets, new towels presently acceptable clothing styles and mobile-phone bills. Admissions are about budgeting, not just getting good marks. Interest in the subject and aptitude? Naa-naa. Getting admitted into coaching-classes is equally stressful. Like reputed schools, colleges and kindergartens, coaching-classes are carefully selected. There are advertisements to flip through: which class had how many toppers in which entrance exam. (The Indian Entrance Exam is a phenomenon by itself, a pre-cursor to many kinds of admission, of that in another article.) There are coaching-class ex-students to connect with to find out how much attention is personal and how much one-eightieth: fraction depends on class-strength, could go to one-hundred-and-eightieth also. Parents of such students have to be spoken to, to know whether the air-conditioned classes keep their temperatures at ‘cool’: why all such classes are air-conditioned to begin with is beyond my comprehension, but I’m logic-challenged as well, Bai Goanna patiently and repeatedly tells me. The grandparents of a toddler in my neighbourhood have been very frequently visiting a certain temple to check whether the goddess-deity they worship is going to allow the little one to be a student of the school they have chosen. The school is far away and expensive, but, says the grandfather, it’s for networking. Like the battle of Waterloo was won on the playgrounds of Eton, so also, corporate-India is apparently ruled by Montessori-mates, I was told this by the grandfather. I repeated it to Shri Husband. His snort was undecipherable: a mixture of contempt, ridicule, disbelief and pure laughter. Besides, he added, he didn’t understand what role the goddess played in admissions anyway. A couple that has moved to our village from another state have been running around trying to admit their child. Domicile, language, syllabus all matter. New friends, weather, food matter. But none cares about all those things: it’s admission and admission alone, that brings on the headache. Admission of file into Minister’s office, admission of person wanting to meet Minister, these cause headaches, too. Of those, another time.