(1) The year I am talking about is 2012.
(2) I understand now that the comparatively colder weather here has its disadvantages too. They bring in the mosquitoes, which swarm around you ominously in groups of five to ten and ram in their piercing mouthparts on your warm skin whenever given the chance, before getting squashed with the palm of your hand. I try to call kill one now. My hands, outstretched, waiting for it to be sandwiched by my clapping.
Succeeding, I place it on the top of my desk and pulverize it with the back of my thumb.
(3) I’m repeating a year at school.
Why I have been held back
=tenth grade.
(4) I didn’t pass the test exams, which we all have to sit for; instead of giving our second terms, to qualify for the board exam—the big daddy of all secondary school tensions. Sadly, my family does not hold the acquaintances of a single MP or any of their relatives/friends to wheedle for my case, so it is simply another year for me.
(5) Observations: The heat starts to subdue in October and by mid-November one can easily pass the day without sweating. The sun appears, but, it seems, only to reassure that he is there, glistening on our skin but just that. On mornings when I make my way to school I can sometimes feel the fog.
(6) The teachers called mom and brainwashed her into thinking that it would be swell if I appear in ninth grade’s 3rd term exams. They said it would be good practice for me, that it would also give me a possibility to socialize with my new set of classmates, and that it would definitely be better than waiting for the year to end.
(7) I’m experiencing a bad kind of déjà-vu. I have given these exams before. Now I’m giving them again. Sometimes, as I am seated on my bench, thinking how to solve this problem, I cannot help shaking off this hilarious feeling, that maybe I am inhaling the same air over again. That the moist, cool morning air I have undergone last year has turned up again to shoot through my respiratory system. It reads weird now that I express it on paper.
(8) Last year.
I remember last year. I read The Remains of the Day last year, the book being probably the best one I’ve read that year. I’m reading it this year too. Indeed, I think I’m trying to re-live, if I can call it that, this handful of days in accordance with last year’s. E.g. I’m reading TROTD in the same manner I read it last year: On early mornings, with a shawl wrapped around me and a mug of tea (no sugar, no milk…just tea) beside me.
(9) The exams have ended, and now I can wait, peacefully and unhindered, for next year.
(10) This always happens. You wish for some free time, because you are exhausted, because you need to space out and yet when you are granted that, you become clueless and scrap through it all until you are devoid of extra time and wish for it again. You never accomplish the thing you want to because time wants to wane at the wrong times.
I can’t seem to figure out how I am to spend all my time. (Later note: my gibberish about time “waning” seems unbearable now, like I just said them to get some realistic vibe out there. Wherever ‘there’ is) I’ve been listening to music mostly now. Listening to it more than I think I should. There’s this band I just discovered, which seems quite interesting. Their music reminds me of Switchfoot. I don’t know why. The call themselves “Nemesis” or something. Nemesis. The Greek personification of retribution. You know, the Cypria tells us that Nemesis, the revenge goddess, had turned herself into a goose to run away from Zeus. But Zeus then transformed himself into a swan and caught her. Apparently, the “catching” part was fairly intimate, because then Nemesis laid an egg. The egg was carried off to Leda who, and this is a guess now, kept it warm (I don’t want to know how), from which Helen was born. Now, Helen represented beauty (albeit the stereotypical dumb blonde kind of beauty {was Helen blonde? I can’t remember now}).
So, as far as my brain, that duped me into failing the test exams, tells me: Retribution is, literally, the mother of beauty. It sounds like this short-story I read on the internet from The New Yorker’s website recently. Yes, I read The New Yorker. The online version. Sue me.
(11) Sometimes I do calculations in my head.
Because I will be repeating a year, by the time I’m done with school, I’ll be around Nineteen years of age. (That is, if I pass all the tests in one go.) College might mean four or more years, excluding session jams. By the time I’ll be finished, I will be in my mid-twenties.
(12) It is December, 21st. The world’s supposed to die today. I know I’m being ridiculous, but a five minute stay on Facebook assures me quite reliably that the world is going to end. Do I want the world to end? Is this my version of “retribution” for being stuck for another year? Wishing that the world gets killed off won’t result in anything beautiful. I know that. Or will it?
I, also, know that everything that went wrong last year was my fault. I accept that at face value. It’s just that last year brought too much stuff for me to consume. I was too exhausted and skipped schools a lot. Everyone asked me repeatedly what my problem was and I repeatedly told them that I was feeling unnaturally exhausted. They said “exhaustion” was something I made up to replace “lazy”.
I denied the possibility of that.
(13) Okay, the world didn’t end that day.
I have to finish TROTD fast. I admit Ishiguro is just amazing at certain places and that I had to re-read some of the striking passages again and again to savor it properly. But that is no excuse to awfully slow down. There are other books staring down at me, waiting to be picked up. I glance over my study table and there, stacked upon one another, are my textbooks; they stare at me too. They want me to pick them up. I, too, feel the pressure, and tell myself that I will, I will read/study them.
I assure myself, I will try everything “with renewed effort,” and when time comes, maybe I will “be in a position to pleasantly surprise” everyone. Maybe this is my path of retribution, that will lead to some sort of beauty—a beauty perhaps so intense that it is unbearable.