Not Placed

“When is the list coming?” Zaid asked with utmost anxiousness. “Chill bro…..it will come. If 9 pointers like you start worrying like this then what should 7 pointers like us do,” his department’s Training and Placement Representative (TPR) quipped. He put down the phone and slumped down on his bed in his 10ft X 10ft hostel room. It was his fifteenth interview and he didn’t want it to become his fifteenth rejection. He stared blankly at the wall that he had painted with a colorful graffiti depicting the four years of an average engineering student in India. “This time I answered all the questions correctly, I can’t be rejected,” he murmured to himself. “But so I did in previous fourteen interviews,” he sighed.

His introspection session was interrupted by a beep of his smartphone. It was a whatsapp message in his department group. An image. Suddenly his breath became heavy, his heart started pounding heavily on his rib cage. The moment of truth was in front of him, again. Apprehensively, he opened the message. It was a short list with three names and none of them was his. The TPR was placed though. “Seems like a 9 pointer like me should start worrying now,” he thought. What went wrong? His mind started rewinding his entire academic life. A topper since class 1^st, he had always been the apple of eyes for his parents as well as teachers. Almost everyone was impressed by his eidetic memory, particularly his drawing teacher. He once drew the thronged square of city with sheer perfection without even looking at anything; all those people’s expression, those car brands, those shop positions were there in his head. No wonder such a brain cracked the toughest engineering entrance and made into the most reputed engineering college of country. He was already a celebrity in his family. He was the Sharma ji’s son for all his cousins. Everyone was proud of him, even he was complacent about his achievements. He enjoyed all those praise, that feeling of superiority over others who weren’t as smart as him. Even in college no one could match his beautifully wired brain, he started by topping in first semester and no one could dethrone him from that position. He had never tasted defeat…..not until now.

“First time for everything eh?” he looked in the mirror. “Loser!” his reflection derided him. He couldn’t see himself in mirror. “So now you know how it feels,” it was his cousin staring back at him from the mirror. “I think I expected too much from you. You can’t even bag a job,” his cousin got transformed into his father. His husky voice echoed in his ears. “Stop!” he pulled his hair. “Loser!” his reflection smirked. “I said STOP!” he screamed and punched on the mirror. “What went wrong? What went wrong?” His head was throbbing. There were voices screaming under his skull.

Blood oozed from his knuckle and a few drops landed on a page lying on floor. Suddenly the voices got muffled. His eyes saw a peculiar pattern in those drops. He picked up the paper and moved his finger over the paper joining the droplets in lines. In a matter of seconds, the droplets took form of a ballerina with arms stretched like wings. He looked at it for a while. A satisfying smile came up on his face but then suddenly those voices again erupted in his mind. “What went wrong?” His gaze was fixed at the caricature of a boy with graduation robes in his graffiti. “What went wrong?” He again stared blankly at the graffiti; and the answer stared back to him in oblivion.