Regret

Pratik Mainali

Two precious years lost in that dreadful college. In tumultuous times I was, thus I went in, keen to learn something, to challenge my views, broaden my intellectual horizons, to a “prestigious college” but it turned out to be a scam school organized by villagers to pocket some money for their new business, and in my quest for knowledge the village school turned out to be as useful as a fork in a sugar bowl. And when I finally escaped from the wrath of those raving lunatics and entered the real world, I was suddenly struck by the realization that I had gotten dumber than when I went in. A feeling of doom descended upon me.

The place I mentioned bore the impression of a sophisticated, modern college, but the once you got inside the impression faded and it turned out to be nothing more than a big fat scam.

An invisible cloak of mindlessness enshrouded the college, which was sarcastically titled an educational institution, and once you were hushed past the crowd by babbling goons and crept in the narrow rooms, the disorientation began. The cloak, no doubt, was carried by those lame duck of teachers.

In came the teachers, one by one, some nervous and uninterested, looking timidly at the feet of the students and talking to themselves, others confident and stubborn and violent but all of them stupid. Their blood red eyes wide open, their mouth steadily moving, but their brain long gone, degraded into mush.

All of the so called teachers turned out to be villagers, rough men with thick hands almost as thick as their skull, with the brain the size that would make a grain of sand look big, with the wit and sophistication of a donkey. They shrieked from their thick swollen tongue a tone so piercing and incomprehensible you wanted to stuff shards of glass in your ears and wince. You ask them a question you’d be up all night washing the spit off your hair or rubbing your swollen eye.

Simple minded twits, who couldn’t find solution to the simplest problem, who had a simplistic, distorted, and unrealistic view of the world, who whined half the class and uttered a sob story the other half, who were unsure of themselves and clearly poorly educated, were suddenly in charge of my future. And boy did they disappoint.

Unfettered by logic and reason, bereft of knowledge, they shamelessly tweaked the nose of decency, spit on the face of professionalism and pissed on the half dead rigid body of sophistication. You entered the class enthusiastic and hopeful, and the class began and so began the disorientation of the senses. Slowly dull days rolled by and then weeks, blankness cloaked your minds until you reached a point where you could barely think. Soon you realized that our world slowly getting dreary and depressing.

As days dragged by the feeling of vagueness and uncertainty engulfed me. Never had I felt so distant and hopeless. I found it inconceivable that the very people who were supposed to enlighten me were confusing and in a way trapping me. Their daily 40 minute stint was neither thought provoking nor interesting nor even vaguely meaningful. However, they were very often incomprehensible and complete thrash. With all this a torrent of emotions so overwhelming, unfamiliar and bewildering consumed me that I found myself becoming increasing disoriented and gloomy.

The college, I gathered, was deemed prestigious, not because of its instilling upon its students great values, skills and morals, but because of it having a good examination record. I soon realized that the reason behind its good results was old fashioned rote learning/ cramming. When exams loomed nearer they organized extra classes where students were taught to rote the answers that were repeated. Honestly, this process seemed strikingly similar to a scam. The students were taught exactly those things that would make an impression upon an examiner and nothing more. Hence, even the dullest of twits could come out as being exemplary clear thinkers.

All the interesting, enthusiastic students, I realized, were getting increasingly uninterested and beginning to drift away from the academics, to a more interesting subculture, while the dull, lifeless and talentless ones, were thriving as all they had to do was repeat a certain routine.

Book felt like opening a fold of toilet papers tied to a string. The staff was grim and miserable and ready to inflict their misery upon others. The administrators were power-hungry, old and out of touch, forgetful and incoherent, incompetent and rude.

One day, as I sat on the class, I felt nauseous, my chest tightened and colors rose on my cheeks. I grabbed the table. The table was still but the world began to spin. I collected myself and slowly asked the teacher permission to go to the sick room. He told yes, and slowly and carefully, I reached the room. There, as I lied in bed, the guard kept interrogating me. Until at length, he successfully annoyed me out. No sign of understanding by the staff was astonishing. Unnecessary rudeness and brashness baffling.

Failure and madness were inexorable but still patiently I waited for something intelligent or at least coherent to burst out of their unkempt mouth, to no result. They had no proper authority over the class, no sense of calmness, or security. Finally, as I reached to the end, with every but one ounce of hope squeezed out of my lungs, I sighed that out in despair, and shagged walked back home.

Such disappointment, such helplessness, such climate of uncertainty and fear. The unendurable oppression of the mind, the almost physical sickening of the gut, the revolt, the disgust, all this led to my rather grim stay at the college. So in conclusion, choosing wisely the college which college you want to attend is a must.