Student Fixing

      'Fixing',' Fitting' ,' Management', 'Arrangement'... words packed with power and potential.These are the key words to whooping success in the modern world. I learnt the aura and resonance of the words a wee bit late in life,and have now decided to make the most of them at the slightest opportunity.My chance came soon enough ! Room No.20 in 'Gauhati Commerce College'. It was chock-a-block with B.Com.Pt-II students.The boys in smart blackish grey trousers and pale blue shirts, and the girls in pleasing pink-checked kameezes, white salwars and flapping, creamy white dupattas! So very cool and soothing to the eye. But it was not so pleasant very soon.The room began getting crowded by the minute. Soon, it was bursting at the seams. I sat at platform trying to man the jostling crowd as I desperately tried to attest their photostat documents needed for the form filling-in day, for the forthcoming examination. As Bearer Uttam , the faithful, energetically stamped away and I began endorsing the photostat papers with my signature,the whole enterprise appeared as defeating as the myth of Sysiphus.We were simply making no headway.The students seemed only to grow in volume, no matter how much I tried to lessen the number. Suddenly, in the middle of the melee a voice rasped in, 'Ma'm - can you attest my papers first? "My father is in the hospital!" I looked up. A flush of altruism , humanism, philanthrophism or whatever word you may have for it, gushed up in me. My look eased. I softened immediately.Two others pushed forward. One gushed, 'Ma'm--my mother is having an operation today'.The other could barely whisper,'My brother had a bike accident this morning. Ma'm could we both have our papers attested first?' I was in trouble. A real dilemma! I looked around for help. I didn't know how to tackle this .The serpentine queue wriggled, shook and convulsed before me. Bearer Uttam stood ramrod straight (as straight as his podgy self would allow him), the rubber stamp poised in air. I would get no help from that quarter. The decision had to be mine, and mine alone. I looked up at my earnest pleaders once more. Just then I caught their eye.'The eye'!-oh! the Achilles' heel of every human kind. The eye--the window to the soul ,the eye that can't ever lie ! Aha ! And it was the 'eye' that told me all. The schemes and strategies uncovered in a jiffy and the culprits were all exposed.Now, to tackle them ! 'Hmm'. I cleared my throat. Another hopeful turned desperately to me .Was I really such a credulous fool that kids less than half my age were all set to take me for a ride?! Ah! thats an angle I have to think of and come to terms with, in leisure. Now, turing to the immediate situation. Surely--,I just couldn't allow these 'bravehearts' to outwit me. But I really had no energy to argue with any of them. My mind started ticking, my grey cells in quick tandum. Soon, my eyes took on a crafty glint as they narrowed with a super brilliant brain-wave.Yes that's it. I can still beat them at their game.Oh! Yes ! I took a stiff British posture, a very British accent and an altogether British strategy (perhaps,being an English teacher helped). I adopted a game-a student 'fixing' game. I called it an 'Internal Arrangement' "All Right!" I boomed ."All those who need to go to the hospital make a seperate line.We'll have a SPECIAL MEDICAL LINE. I'll attest their papers first.The rest will have to wait for their turns in the queue". One minute .Two minutes. Wonderful! My game was gaining momentum. No seperate line yet. I tapped patiently on the desk, ticking off seconds. Soon, it was five minutes. No 'SPECIAL MEDICAL LINE' still . "Well" said I, triumphantly."There sunddenly seems to be no urgency on any medical ground." We will proceed the usual way. I took up my pen, and Bearer Uttam stood up an inch straighter,impatient to begin. An instant later we were both totally engrossed. But that was after I did a quick survey of the room and saw  the instant 'Internal Arrangement' among the students at work. I shook with silent amusement to note the handful of o pportunists wincing under the glares, silent threats and inaudidle promises of black-eyes, purple head-bumps, unforgettable thrashing and what-have-you, from their other mates. I saw them mutely hang their heads and take up positions at the end of the line, hospital appointments totally forgotten.Or, rather, the prospect of the 'REAL HOSPITAL VISITS' which awaited if they pushed their cases  too hard-was proving too daunting for their liking! All of them took up positions in the line and began waiting for their turns.The quiet tension in the classroom, the silent gnashes, the tremulous roars and the inaudible snarls ricochetted around, as the boys flexed their muscles and the girls whet their painted claws, daring the 'hospital group' to outsmart the hundred faces before me. I could not help smile to my self at the magnificent success of my little game of 'group fixing' or 'student fixing'!