CBSE Results: An open letter to all the relatives and friends who asked for my marks!

Dear Kanpur waali chaachi who hasn’t called me once in the last 8 years,

How does your conscience allow you to call me on the day my result is being announced? You didn’t call me when I was studying for the Boards. You didn’t call me to ask if I was doing fine. But, of course, my score in the Boards becomes a major concern not just for you, but Kaneda wale uncle too and almost everyone in my neighbourhood. They say there are some people against whom you just can’t win — and you, chaachi ji, are one of them.

Y u do dis, aunty? (Source:GIPHY)

If I say I scored 95%, you’ll name a hundred other kids who scored above 95% (because, let’s face it, you called almost all of them up and asked their percentages too) and if, God forbid, I tell you that I scored in the 70s, you’ll be convinced that I’ll be berozgaar for life.

I often wonder how sharp your memory must be that you’re able to remember the percentages of so many kids correctly up to 4 decimal places!

Aunty's reaction when I told her I scored less than 80%. (Source: GIPHY)

Little did I know that you were an incarnation of Shakuntala Devi, your avataar though (mis)using her mental abilities to lower the self-esteem of young kids, one phone call at a time.

So, let’s turn the tables for once, shall we?

Let me ask you — how much did you score in the Boards? Was it above 95%? But of course, you’ll say ‘humaare dino mein...', scoring above 60 was difficult. Well, guess what, aunty — it still is difficult to score well in the Boards, given the immense pressure that is put on us to live up to the unrealistic expectations of our parents, friends and all of society. But I’ll have to give credit where it is due — people are way too hard on you. You are not the only culprit here.

When you find out your friend scored more than you... (Source: Tenor)

People often overlook how students shame other students when they don’t do well. I remember when I scored 5 out of 20 marks in a class test — even my closest friends didn’t leave one opportunity to bash me for it. While us students are collectively critical of shaming someone for their test scores, we are all equally guilty of doing the same thing to each other.

Talk of being harsh! (Source: GIPHY)

And then, there are social media 'influencers' who breezily promote the idea that, hey, 'marks don’t matter'. In an effort to encourage and inspire confidence amongst those who didn’t score that well, they pull down the ones who did score well — or at least, are happy with their score — by telling them pretty much that their good score won’t necessarily make them successful. Why do we have to put down a certain group, just to motivate the others? There is plenty of space for both ‘good scorers’ and ‘bad scorers’ in the world — we need not pit them against each other.

Dear relatives, dear friends and dear social media influencers, I hope you have understood where I am coming from. I hope that the next time, you won’t shame students from either end of the spectrum and will put their insecurities to rest, instead of de-motivating them. I hope you will understand, genuinely, it's just school. It's not, and need not be, a lesson for our whole lives.

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