part one: good education is not a right, its a privilege

good education is not a right, its a privilege...
and all you people out there better not abuse/waste the privilege that you have.

yesterday i went to take my first bcom exam. i had no idea i was in for such a big shock. at the examination centre (the mathematics department of the Karachi University), the rooms had no number, no invigilators, broken windows, broken boards, people moved around freely. i was surrounded by burqa women most of whom (including myself) didn't even know where we were supposed to sit.

i wanted to use the bathroom. i asked someone where it was. turned out to be this funny looking brown ancient wooden door where someone had scribbled "bathroom" on it in urdu, with blue chalk. i opened the door and jumped back. the bathroom had the a disgusting stench and wasn't even clean. the sink in the corner didn't have any proper drainage from where the water would leak out.

i opened the door to one of the stalls and was confronted by a tiny little space with an indian styled toilet in it. beside the toilet stood 2 HUGE mops (which i dont think were ever used). i was glad for the sneakers that i was wearing. i came out of the toilet three times telling mum i couldn't use it but she said i should. after i was done i looked around for a button, for anything that was supposed to activate the flush, but where the flush button should have been, there was an empty pipe which i was not inclined to touch at all. came outside to find someone performing ablutions on the sink. washed my hands quickly and stepped out. and breathed.

met someone from lyceum who was taking the bcom as well. she apparently had done this before. i was told that for a 20 mark question, all i have to concentrate on is the opening paragraph and the conclusion, and that i need to write a minimum of 15 pages or they wouldn't mark me well. it was quantity that mattered over quality.

hira (the girl from lyceum, NOT my sister) checked her watch and started going towards the 2nd floor. i followed her wondering where the exam was going to be held. we looked around, she asked someone whether the list had been set up and was told by a burqa woman that it hadn't. after around 10 minutes or so, 2 men came and started to stick sheets of paper up on one of the pillars.

when the women around me saw them, they scrambled towards them as fast as they could, pushing and shoving each other to get a better view of what was written on the sheets they were putting up. i felt like i was in some poor starved village where these 2 men came to hand out pieces of bread that everyone were trying to fight over. hira looked at my bewildered face and laughed saying "that piece of paper has our seating arrangement". i looked at the crowd of women in front of me and laughed out: they were pushing and shoving each other to get a better view of the paper the men were putting up, but being burqa women, they maintained a strict distance from them-approximately 3 feet-that the women in the 1st row were trying very hard to maintain. reminded me of security at a cricket match trying to keep spectators from rushing into the fields.

to be continued later...