Everyday, every single day, I pack my bag and go to a hybrid between an amusement-park and a circus. And I tell you with immense conviction that it is not amusing – not at all. The circus begins with a prayer which I haven’t been able to mug in four years here. We’re forced to mug enough in college anyway, for instance, in our industrial psychology classes.

These classes operate on certain assumptions. These are –
a) all students are dumb; as dumb as the professors secretly know they themselves are (shhh! It’s a well-kept secret)
b) all students have appalling English skills and need to be told how to spell words like “progressive” and “aind” (and of course, nobody in class knows how to spell aind because only Her Highness pronounces and as “aind”)
c) all students need to be taught like they’re a quarter of a step ahead of third grade i.e. all notes must be dictated by Her Highness and copied down by us, the scribes-in-training. Holding a pen unless you are using it to write the holy words of Her Holiness is pretence and deemed punishable. Thus, do not hold a pen (pun intended). Her Holiness is also hornophobic and while hunger, as a drive, justified a whole semester of “teaching” by her, sex drive was done in an hour of mumbles, blushes aind a real quick quickie.
d) all students must reproduce the material given in class in the test much like animals performing tricks in a circus.
e) all students must leave their minds outside the classroom.
f) all students must always quote our prof’s daughter’s doings as examples wherever possible. Whether it makes sense or not is of no consequence because it’s a circus yaar, if you want sense why come to college?

The way this works-

You show up at the performance i.e. you come to college and get five marks for being bodily present and mentally absent. You learn your tricks i.e. you copy all your notes and perform i.e. regurgitate all that you learn in the test.

You graduate and do not study psychology because apparently, there’s no money in it and come back with a token hubby and your firstborn and then you are the ideal student. I cannot find an analogy for this from the circus-world even and maybe that is because this isn’t even expected out of those animals.

Saturdays have two extra shows like the three theory rides over the week aren’t enough. Yesterday saw us, the animals being locked in the cage of a classroom for we had deeply disappointed our Ringmistress by not copying down the squiggles on the transparencies while she was away. Yes, even that happens here.

Chains are yet to come. Maybe a week from now…