Unfolding masks

Year 2021:

The world was slowly recovering from the pandemic.

People started to roam around, without their masks.

Schools/colleges started re-opening, and exams started happening few months ago.

One of the exams, which I attended was called MH-CET.

An entrance exam consisting of multiple-choice questions,

From the subjects of the stream you’ve opted. (ex: Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, etc.)

Such questions are needed to be solved in a time span of 3 hours.

This exam is crucial, as it determines the college you’d get for pursuing a degree.

But,

As I wasted my entire time watching some other funny videos,

Trying to entertain myself and keep my mind out of overthinking.

I genuinely didn’t care about:

• What the portion was

• What type of questions are asked

• What the results would be

I went with 0 preparations. I seemingly didn’t give a f*ck

But as soon as I entered the examination hall, I realized that I’ve messed up pretty bad.

Around August, the exams took place.

To my mind, it appeared like I went to waste another 3 hours of my life.

But my heart knew, that shit’s only going to get worse after this.

Somehow finished the exam, came back home and throwed my body on the bed,

And started doing the same thing all over again.

I had a moment of realization that I’d be fucked when the results come out.

But the thought was not big enough to affect my time-wasting abilities as I mastered it by then.

However, when my WhatsApp notified me with the text, “MHCET results will be out in a week”

Nervousness started kicking in, as time went passing by.

October 27th, the day came, when the results were going to be announced.

Everyone around me, started going on the website

Checking again and again to know about their marks, which made the site to crash.

The website went live again during the evening, around 6:30.

As soon as I checked my results,

The graph of nervousness went even more below further, as the components of fear and disappointment were added too.

I got something around to 53%, which was not obviously even average.

As the good-to-go-percentile consisted numbers above 80.

I had my dad siting besides me, trying to calm my emotions down as I went numb.

My mother tried the same, but it didn’t work.

But my grand parents, who didn’t really care about my academics lately

Started talking shit about less marks, no future. 

I can understand it could’ve come out of a sense of care,

But they also stated that I wasn’t capable enough of doing great.

Even blaming my parents for not paying attention on me.

It was that exact time, when I noticed about how fake and uninterested they were in me,

Amongst my other 3 siblings, whom they absolutely loved.

In that moment, I lost all my respect for them. It just went then and there!

Thinking about it now,

I realize how people around you,

Have a constant mask of being ideal to pretend their better self to the world.

Often the mask goes un-recognized to many,

As they seem to be very cheerful and caring, but deep down, they're not really feeling it.

They might be putting on a “façade of happiness” and empathy that isn't genuine.

But as soon as some unexpected things take place,

The mask comes down real quick.

Their true-self doesn’t take much time to reveal itself.

So, the only thing I’d say out of this story is..

“Never judge a person too quickly/late

By giving them either no time, or prolonged time to reveal their realities.”