Preetha Venkatraman received the papers from the teacher and placed them on the desk and paid no attention to the marks that she had received on the Physics paper. She knew the marks she was going to receive when she had taken the exam, so did everyone in the class, so did her parents and the teachers. Everybody knew one day she was going to take over her fathers practice and become a famous doctor just like her father. Some contemplated that she might become a lawyer like her mom. She looked at the weekly class period time table. The next period was Chemistry and then Math for two hours and then lunch break and then Chemistry lab and then it would be time to go home. She was eagerly expecting to go home; her brother will be home for study holidays from college and tomorrow was her birthday!

Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard her best friend Kamala’s name being called. The class was almost over and everybody was stepping out of the class for a short five minute recess. But Kamala was detained by the teacher, since she was her friend she decided to stick around. She sat at her desk and after a few minutes, Kamala left the class room with the teacher and didn’t show up for the rest of the day. She was worried and concerned not knowing what was going on. The lab was very interesting and she was the first one to identify her salt as “Aluminium Sulphate”, and went on to test all other salts for the public exam. She wanted to test as many salt’s as possible and thorough herself, before the exams.

Next day she noticed something was wrong with Kamala, but it was such a busy day she didn’t get a chance to talk to her. Two more days of school and the exam study holidays would start. When she was about to leave for the day the principal called her in for a meeting. She was accompanied by her class teacher and a couple of others by the time she had reached the principals office. The Head Master was also there, so were her parents. She was surprised to see them there, but the look on their face indicated that is was definitely some good news and she took a seat next to her parents as indicated. She felt elated to hear the principal and others talk highly about her performance in school and how much they were counting on her. She understood what that meant immediately, that she s expected to score the first rank.

She came home happy and started studying with more enthusiasm than before. Her mom kissed her on the forehead and brought her snacks and horlicks for nourishment. She did some combined study with a couple of friends and mainly with Kamala. She knew Kamala was very slow and was not very smart in her studies. But she was a very hard worker and it took her more time to understand things than her, but she always helped her out as much as possible, considering the financial burden her parents were in, to send her to school. She felt Kamala was doing well and she can score more then passing marks. She had been failing some of the class tests but she had been showing an improvement. This time Preetha knew she will definitely pass the exams.

It was just a couple of days before the exams and she and Kamala went to the school to get the hall ticket for their exams. She got one with ease and Kamala had to stay back for a long time and in the end she couldn’t get her hall ticket, indicating that her parent’s signature was missing and they came back home. The day before the exam, she went to kamala’s house to see how she was doing, well she was prone to get pre-exam jitters. She found her crying in the corner, and the house wore a sad look and it took her some time to get Kamala to break the news and she broke into tears. Preetha was upset, very sad and was quiet mad at her teachers and the whole school organization. She knew she couldn’t do anything to help Kamala. She was mad at the school for not letting her appear for the exam, since she might fail and the school would loose their cent percent record that they have been carrying over the years.

English, Math,Physics and Chemistry were all over. She had done well; she knew she will get excellent marks. Today is the last day, it was Biology. She looked at the paper and the first question read “Write a brief note on Algae”. The answers started flooding into her mind and she started writing and stopped. Put her pen down and her face wore a smile. She remembered all the students who were prevented form writing the exam, who were believed to be candidates of failure, She thought to herself, this is for them, for all of them and to the school and its ego, She put the pen down, sat there for half hour, hardly wrote anything, handed the paper to the examiner and walked out of the building!