In India, the national board examinations are a pivotal moment of school life; a milestone in itself. The romance our country has with these examinations is akin to the love of a favorite sporting event for gamers, or an Oscar for the artists of the tabloid world. National exams for students are held at levels of grade 10 and grade 12. It is not the student alone who takes the exams; board exams are a social enterprise, consuming the imagination, time, and energies of parents, grandparents, siblings, extended families, neighbors, school communities, and everyone else who crosses the cosmic path of the examinee that year. Whoever said it takes a village to raise a child!

When national boards make changes to the syllabus or exam patterns, it makes headline news in the country, and everyone scrambles to get into ship-shape for the new challenges thrown into the system like a gauntlet.

Ah, the illustrious board exams in India! For us students between 15 and 18, these are a delightful dance of stress and pressure. We dream of Napoleon's Civil Code or the names of carbon isotopes and allotropes floating in space. It's a time when we get to showcase our skills in the ancient art of cramming vast amounts of information, storing it into our brains, only to regurgitate it onto the paper on D-day. “Doomsday” is indeed how the students feel when they walk into examination halls for their board exams.

A lot of preparation goes into surviving the actual exam day. The joy of waking up (if you have slept at all) at ungodly hours to study, fuelled by endless cups of tea (the soothing elixir that helps us gulp down the pain and take a breath!), and parental expectations truly makes it a magical experience. And let's not forget the thrill of the roller coaster ride of emotion, because isn’t it fun turning a perfectly great system of education into a competitive sport or, better still, a Victorian Duel between students?! The board exams are a living testament to the Indian education system's ability to turn learning into a high-stakes day-trading exercise when the market is in mayhem. Quite synonymous to a circus act for a trapeze artist, without the safety net in place.

I took the national board exams this spring. All year, I had an extreme desire, that grew exponentially each week, to rip my books into a million bits at the end of the exams or simply burn them and watch the embers rise up in the sky. I had no clue that these destructive thoughts searing through my brain were shared by almost everybody else in my batch. And yet, when the exams were finished, none of us implemented this brutal demolishment. I guess we were just relieved that it was all over and eventually forgot about the same books that made us want to pull our hair out.

Finally, to present the icing on the cake, as if the year-long torment of students was not a sufficient sadistic pleasure for everyone who had suffered similarly in their youth, news poured in about the expected dates of the results. Have a heart, folks! We have just begun to breathe and have realized that the world still has birds, green grass, and perfect blue skies. We have managed to beat the locks of the escape room (the study table), don’t we deserve some time to celebrate our glorious victory?

This brings to my mind an important question: What is the need for such stress-provoking exams? When the focus should be on learning the fun things that enhance knowledge and experience, why can’t we find a better and more enjoyable system to evaluate the true potential of a child?

Why is the system designed like a video game that gives you three lives, then displays at the end “GAME OVER”? One exam, one day cannot define who you are, and should not define who you are going to become tomorrow.