The Human Xeroxers

The Indian educational system needs no introduction. For the uninitiated, let me tell you that(am being a bit extreme here, but got facts to back me up)

a) A 13 year old school student carries books weighing 80% of his body weight

b) "The Teacher" can beat a kid to death for not doing home work

c) Marks are the ultimate criteria for judging the worth of a child. The kid can kick ass in chess, join the cricket team or sketch well, but still is a "bad kid" if he does not score well.He is made to attend coaching classes just so that he misses the fun at chess or cricket ;)

Purely a South Indian thingy this:

d) For a guy , a girl is always an enigma till he reaches college. He does not know what it is to talk to a girl. A girl is always someone who sits at the other side of the class. Is someone who "bad kids" talk to. Is someone who does not need permission to take half day leave and the boy always wondered why. Is someone who you can talk to later in life, after you pass the board exams and get into a good college. The funda? Well, I have not got it yet.

So the bottom line is "When in school, study and do no more, no less". To score well meant the ultimate thing for any middle-class school going student.

a) For an LKG student a good score guarantees that one toy he always wanted. Not studying well meant "watching the neighbor kid play with it"

b) For a fifth grade guy, getting the into the top 5 ranks guarantees his first bicycle. No prizes for guessing: School bus till the good rank comes.

c) The list goes on. Pocket money for the 10th grade and a bike for the 12th grade.

After this, Indian parents feel they have led the horse to the water. And it is up to the horse to drink or not. What they don't realize is that the horse has been tortured along its way and the South Indian horse is the most pitiable one. It wouldn't have seen an horsess till then ;) Mare, for the grammar conscious.

I kinda digressed from the title. Yeah, The Human Xeroxers. All the above mentioned points are the some of the reasons that all the student junta copy during exams. Or is it just human to copy?

I have strong opinions about people accepting this. I will never believe a person if he/she says he/she has not cheated in an exam, ever. I have never missed copying in an exam if I had the opportunity. Before I start feeling ashamed of what I said, I can recollect my school peeps going overboard when it comes to copying. To some of them, copying became a part of their survival.

People who copy are broadly classified into 2 categories:

1) Haves(Have the information needed to copy)
2) Have nots (require help either from the Haves or from others)

HAVES:

Introducing the "bit". North Indian version "Chits".

a) The art of bit making, like all other inventions, comes out of necessity. A bit in student lingo can mean a 2 X 2 inch piece of paper that contains valuable information. I have seen pioneers who increase the information and decrease the size of the bit.




b) More time is spent writing "chits" or "the bit" than in studying. From the conventional hide-em-in-the-sock to the innovative stuff-em-inside-the-tie, the student junta have mastered the art of bit making.

c) A few if not many, prodigies, hide 'em in their undies and fake an urgent nature's call. These are the ones that the Indian Intelligence Agencies need to recruit.

HAVE NOTS:

a) The gutsy lazy ones who neither study nor have the patience to write chits.

b) These are the Canon Powershots. Can take snaps without flash in a jiffy and quickly reproduce them on paper.

c) Some fake a nature's call and wait for one of those HAVES to come to the loo. The HAVE NOTS truly do not deserve to pass ;)

In my my life, very few blokes qualify as prodigies, since I rate myself an 8 out of 10 in this art. But a tribute to some 10/10 prodigies whom I respect, till date.

The Mango Seed guy: Rank#3

Shiv was in 10th standard and I was in 11th. This guy had written down the entire poem and prose(English Exam) and hidden them in 2 chits with a rubberband attached to his arm, beneath the shirt sleeve. When the 10 mark section came, he showed me the question paper and opened both the chits and asked me if I knew which one he should copy from. Mango Seed was the name of the prose.

The Index guy: Rank #2

Sathish(my classmate) used to write almost the whole syllabus on small paper chits, burning the midnight oil. The characters can be read only with 2 things on Earth.His eyes and a magnifying glass. The best part however, was that he wrote a small index, neatly tabulated in his hand. It looked like this.




LP, RP and TP were left, right and top pockets! This guy was simply a genius. For practicals, he had the admin password(how he got it is a secret till date) and used to upload all the programs on to the public folder before the exams started. That was the ultimate social service for all of us.

On linux console a command like

li -main/proglist

would fetch us the programs. All we had to do was fake as if we are typing something and keep opening the debug window from time to time. Just when the time was getting over, copy, paste & run the program, and Bobs your uncle!

(I owe you big time Sathish Machaan)

The God of Xerox: Rank#1

One week before the exam, this guy flicked the "additional sheets"(A4 size)from the faculty department and wrote all the answers for the possible questions and hid them between his pad and a pad cover. If the expected questions came, he took the particular one out and attached it to the main page. He signed his additional sheets looking at the signature of the invigilator on the main page. This guy was simply the best, in my opinion, for what he did demanded brains, guts and watertight execution.

I shall blame the educational system for all that my friends or I did. Copying is like a by-product of a sort of a butterfly effect of the...damn I'll stop. It doesnt make sense, I know.

If you guys remember anything of this kind, leave comments and enhance this knowledge base of nonsense ;)