Exams in India always called for a visit from the holy ghost of maths. Maxing every maths exam for an averagely intelligent male child was a very reasonable societal expectation. The maths exam was the ultimate test of how intelligent you were, how successful you would be and how well you carried the family pride forward. Post the exam, the high school maths question paper would be solved fully by full grown adults with about a 30 years head start on you in life and a judgement be passed of how easy it was and how a great opportunity to max the exam had been missed. Despite this all important test of self worth, I never understood what it meant to study maths or practice it. To me, maths meant understanding the underlying concept and then trying to apply it creatively to solve problems thrown at you on the day of the exam. Practicing potential problems ad nauseum before the exam till it became purely mechanical on D day was a thought which never occurred to me. The end result was that the mythical 100/100 was never mine. The anxiety to achieve the 100 had some behavioral offshoots, though, such as repeating a popular song in the mind over and over again during the exam. Others included procrastinating studying the subject till the last moment.
To stave off an impending dread of studying maths, I used to study social sciences. Unfortunately, however, studying social sciences meant trying to read it and memorize it till I could spill it out exactly as is from the textbook on paper. Social studies never meant a visit to Lodi gardens which was in the backyard of a friend, or even a visit to the Hauz Khas monument which was in my back yard. Tantrums before exams as to how I am being forced to study drab history and civics when I'm never going to ever use it in the future as a budding engineer or a scientist were commonplace. In retrospect, though, these tantrums betrayed a weird fascination for the subject and a denial for the impending boredom of maths. Social science remains an uncharted, fascinating academic area which never got its due from me. Looking back on my 30 years, I feel that most of my decisions in my life have been taken with a heavy dose of society and cultural influences. However a big gap in my understanding of the society has led to a peculiarly prescriptive and predictable life. The cost of ignoring social sciences is mine to pay.
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