Exam Season in Chennai

It is eleven at night and the ceiling fan is on full. Outside the window, the auto-rickshaws have mostly gone quiet, and a dog is barking somewhere near the temple tank. Priya sits on her bed surrounded by physics notes, highlighters with the caps off, and a steel tumbler of filter coffee that her mother made at nine. It is cold now.

The entrance exam is in three weeks. Everyone has an opinion about it. Her uncle says engineering is the only safe path. Her coaching centre posts the toppers' photos on a banner by the road. Her cousin got a good rank last year and nobody lets her forget it. Her friends send each other mock test scores at midnight.

Priya is clever, and she works hard. That is not the problem. The problem is that she cannot stop. When she closes a book, her mind keeps running. What if I blank on the day. What if I disappoint Amma. What if this one exam decides everything. Her stomach has hurt for a week. Last night she cried in the bathroom with the tap running so no one would hear.

On the fridge, under a magnet shaped like a mango, there is a small card in her mother's handwriting. It has been there so long that Priya stopped seeing it. That night, getting water, she read it properly for the first time. “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”

Careful, she knew from Sunday school, meant full of care. Anxious. Be anxious for nothing. It sounded impossible. But she noticed that the verse did not say, stop thinking about the exam. It said, in everything, bring it. Name it. Ask. And give thanks while you are asking.

So, standing in the kitchen in the dark, she tried. She whispered the exact fears, one by one, the way you would tell a friend. The blanking. Amma. The banner. Then, because the verse said thanksgiving, she made herself list three things she was thankful for. The coffee, even cold. Her friend Divya, who always shares notes. Amma, who made the coffee.

It did not make the exam go away. The next verse promises something else: “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds.” Keep, like a guard at a gate. Priya liked that. The worries could still knock. They did not have to come in and sit down.

She made a small rule for the next three weeks. Before she opened her books each evening, two minutes of prayer: fears named, thanks given. Before sleep, the same. She also did something harder. She told her mother about the stomach aches. Amma listened, then hugged her for a long time, and said, “Your rank is not your worth, kanna.”

The exam came. Priya did not blank. She also did not top. Her result was good but not brilliant, and there are decisions still ahead about which college and which course. Her uncle still has opinions.

But the card is still on the fridge, and now she sees it every time. Her friends have started asking her how she stayed calm. She tells them the truth. She did not stay calm. She just stopped carrying it alone.