Failure as a stepping stone.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

If you have spent time around me, and if I have talked to you, then at some point I my have brought up the topic of my 11th year, PUC 1 with PCMB as my subject option. I studied in the SSLC or state board and did not go for extra tuitions for any of my subjects. My grade 10 scores were thanks to the frequent knocks my sibling placed on my head, while I was home tutored. But sibling was persistent and persevered, I caused her a lot of stress and my marks were the only thing that really made up for all the trauma I inflicted on her. 

I joined the NCC, while in the 11th standard, although in those days, it used to be referred to as Pre-university or PUC for short. I tried joining the basketball and softball teams and did not succeed. So NCC, Navy it was. The NCC, Navy wing had their offices based out of MG Road and in every city, MG Road is usually close to the city centre or downtown. The navy sessions included a Sunday morning practice in dress-whites, which is the navy uniform. The field we used to practice in had red mud, so every Sunday morning, I would wear a bleached white pant and shirt with crisp creases and post the practice would rush home to wash it with bleach to remove the red-mud stains and then starch it and iron it. 

Incidentally I learnt to iron by observing the local laundry chap who used to iron my dad’s shirts and our uniforms. It’s a very easy and interesting way to learn a task. Of course, he used a heavy iron and filled it with hot coal and pressed the clothes down. I use the modern electrical version, which is super light and does not provide the same level of satisfaction. However, I can’t imagine travelling with the coal based iron box. Anyway, I am glad I learnt this task, because on more than one occasion I’ve had to iron my clothes and knowing the right way to do something makes the task that much more easier.

So, when I started with the NCC Navy, I worked hard to ensure the whites remained white, and the crease was a sharp crisp one. My uniform was my pride and joy, an example for the other cadets to follow. And this is an interesting way to make an impression, so when the NCC Navy required cadets to participate in the ship-modelling competitions or the boat-pulling competitions in the upcoming camps, I volunteered. Unlike the way it sounds, ship-modelling does not mean ‘ramp walking’ or ‘fashion shows’ on a ship, it meant, creating a mini-working replica of the Indian navy ships. It’s a very boring process where you sit and use a DIY kit, of a model ship to create the replica. You balance the hull, and chip and polish it and paint it and create the perfect model, which if fitted with a motor, will sail on a water body without tipping or falling. It was a learning and introduced me to the world of DIY projects. I enjoyed it. Our model was so prefect, our CO (commanding officer) ‘gifted’ it to a visiting dignitary. 

Boat pulling was a fancy term for rowing. We were a team of 8-10 cadets who were seated in a kayak shaped boat, and had to row from one end of the water body to the other in a race with other contingents. It was an exhausting activity and one practice session usually lasted 4 to 5 hours and there was nothing you could do after these sessions, as your hands would hurt a lot. 

Between the boat-pulling, the ship-modelling and the marching practice, I hardly had any energy left for my other regular college/PUC classes. I had forgotten what the classes looked like, or what taking notes really meant. I missed a lot of my practical sessions, and while some portion of our attendance was excused because we attended the camps, I was in a huge deficit as far as attendance and the consequent learning was concerned. With a lot of cajoling and begging, I got the Army Commanding Officer to sign off on my attendance and the college had to provide me the requisite documents to have my hall-ticket ok’ed. 

My only advice here is, never ever get the hall-ticket ok’ed, if you are not ready to give the exams. I had not attended the classes, I came from an SSLC background, which meant that a lot of the syllabus this year, was a repeat for the ICSE and the CBSE students, but for me, everything was new and I had to have attended the classes to actually understand what was happening. But, in my eagerness to attend all the camps and win all those medals and accolades, I had missed a lot of the classes, and the classes that I did attend made absolutely no sense to me, because they were usually a continuation of a previous session which I had missed. I kept procrastinating and pushing the ‘catching-up’ until, it was too late. When the ‘hall-ticket’ was handed to me, a month before the exams were to start, I believed I had a lot of time to catch up and learn, but no amount of staring at the textbook or the printed word in them, did I understand what was happening in them. Needless to say, the exams were a humongous flop. And it was just me, the rest of my team, had kept up with the tuitions and had been able to catch up and they scraped through easily. 

I was the disaster. That year, I was the example. As I had not passed the examination, I was dropped out of the NCC Navy, as they had been clear that the NCC was an option if you passed and kept your grades up, if not, you did not qualify to participate. Hushed whispers when I passed by and even some of my classmates being bold enough to confront me about my scores did not deter me. Don’t get me wrong, I was miserable, because I knew that I had messed up everything. But, I had not lost hope, I convinced the parents to put me into a slightly easier course, and joined the ARTS combinations with History, Economics, Sociology and Psychology as my subject options. I had tried the Science and I could not understand the practical sessions as I could not follow the physics lecturer, plus she was the reporting officer for the NCC in my institute and while she appreciated all the certificates and accolades I had brought the previous year, she disliked my confidence and consequently my attitude. 

Arts started at a different end of the college, the only distraction in those classes were the trains hooting past at fixed intervals. I did not have to handle the fumes from the chemistry labs, or the dissection of the cockroaches in biology or the hushed silence of the geniuses in the physics labs. The entire faculty of Arts, were a really chilled out set of lecturers. They were extremely proficient in their subjects and the lessons went off without a hitch, unlike the previous year of having a substitute teacher who was a student walking us through math, actually having an experienced teacher walk through the sessions was a pleasure to sit through. My attendance was exemplary, I was not tempted to miss a class, because they were actually interesting. My exam results that year helped build what confidence I had lost the previous year. 

At some point during the entire fiasco post the results in PCMB and the start of HEPyS I questioned my confidence and attitude. Towards studies, towards assignments and practical’s and towards education in general. I felt slightly miffed, because I thought my brain should have been able to grasp what I had missed while out on camps, it was humiliating and it was humbling. I travelled from the same location, to the same destination, and unlike the other students who had failed earlier and joined other institutes, I decided to continue in the same institute, running into the earlier teachers from time to time, but being polite and respectful, accepting that they were not to be blamed. The teachers were not at fault that I had missed the classes, it was not their fault I had not been able to grasp the seriousness of my situation, it was not their fault that I had not passed their subjects. Running into the same students who had been my friends earlier, who avoided me, because they believed that failure could rub-off and influence their results. Listening to those hushed whispers, the frantic steps that walked in the opposite direction as I walked the hallways to and from my new classes. Everything made me realise exactly how lucky I was, I may have failed an exam, but it had helped me identify people who really cared for me, identify those who would support me and make real friends this time around. At no point did I give my results more credit than it required, I did not contemplate depression or self-harm, on the contrary, I consider it a learning on the importance of failure. It helped me put in perspective what had happened and the cause for it and more importantly, how to avoid it. It gave me new friends, it gave me a new career option that’s more my forte, than engineering or medicine would have been. Definitely a stepping stone to self-realisation.