Sixteen. Class 11. About 120 of us hesitating before deciding the course of our entire lives. 50 opted for science, 40 settled for commerce, 15 sorted to the humanities and some 15 changed to better schools. I was rewarded my sister’s old science textbooks. You were automatically looked up to if you were a science student because only the top students were allowed. The ones who secured average grades studied commerce, unless, of course, a topper voluntarily fancied those subjects. And absolutely nobody wanted the humanities, it was the last resort for those at the bottom of the class. It was day 12 of being a science student and I was conflicted. I liked the respect I was accorded for putting up with physics, chemistry, biology, and maths but did not enjoy or understand my syllabus. Before, I always thought I would take humanities, but at the last moment, I was cajoled by my family into selecting a more stable career path. On my twelfth day as a dignified science student, one friend in humanities told me she was struggling to choose between economics and history. That Saturday afternoon I went home and cried. I wanted to struggle picking between economics and history too, but I was in science instead. I spent the weekend guilting my family into letting me study the arts. In return, I felt guilt for choosing my own path. So, I made myself small.

In my preferred stream, I wanted to take history. But Mrs. A, the pushy economics teacher convinced me to take her class with maths (my worst subject). Unsure but ultimately agreed because I had caused enough trouble at home. Lost my peers’ respect too by hanging out with the humanities rejects. Mrs. S, the history teacher came up to me to shake her head in disappointment, “Even you couldn’t handle science?” The Monday I told Mr. V, my physics class teacher about my switch, he counted all the ways humanities would let me down. I told him I could handle it.

I soothed myself by thinking that practical classes like eco and maths could provide a future. Besides I was in the arts stream and that is what mattered. You win some, you lose some. And apparently, I had exhausted all my courage downgrading to the arts. I took to economics well and surprisingly became the terrifying Mrs. A’s pet. She liked that I was quiet. I liked that I could make sense of the material.

Maths, as always, was a different story for me. A humiliating one. Frail Mr. D always took the cruellest digs. It was as if he knew that behind his back, some students made fun of his wobbly stance. As a natural course of action, he chose to be petty. He exclusively helped the students who could help themselves. The rest of us, he found our weak points. Mine was my older sister, who scored nearly perfect marks in his class. Did not help that I looked like her. He spent that year and the next insisting I was not anything like her. That he doubted it very much. “Really?” “You’re R’s sister?” “Then why do you do so poorly every time?” He proceeded never to help. He would only agree to solve difficult and out-of-syllabus questions asked by his favourite students, skipping several steps to show off his genius. He liked anyone who was on his level and interacted with them nicely. Students like me deeply inconvenienced him by needing actual tutoring. Under his tutelage, I failed an exam for the first (and last) time in my life. When I got that 29/100 on my pre-boards, I felt my young heart sink. Like I was a disgrace to the family. Like I would never be anyone. Ended before my life could even start. I called my sister crying and she asked, half-irritated with my weeping, “Will it matter in the next 5 years?” I replied no. I wanted to study literature. The next year, I did. And 5 years later, I became a writer by profession. It has been 10 years. It never mattered, to begin with.

Ujjwala Kaushik is a writer from Delhi. She started as a spoken word poet who then dabbled in content writing. She now conducts experiments with short stories while attempting to mix literary fiction with her Indian roots. She is interested in examining gender and power dynamics through craft. The writer and her experiments can be found on Substack at Doodling Thoughts.