THE DREADFUL BOARD FEVER

           The Board fever is here!  From the look of things, it seems worse than the deadliest of the deadly crop of fevers that seem to be afflicting scores of people these days.

            Come rainy season and the mosquitoes begin to compete with the Chinese and us Indians to multiply their numbers exponentially.  They seem to be everywhere.  These miniature demons seem to have built-in radar which chooses the safest nook and cranny of the human body to escape detection.  These pesky brats can successfully hoodwink even the most sophisticated state-of-the-art mosquito demolition contraptions.  There is even a fair chance that we can wrestle PoK territories back to our control but our war against the pesky moskis is a goner.

            These evil arthropods bestow upon us a variety of fevers.  We have run out of words in the English language to name these fevers, that we have to borrow from sundry African languages.  So we have these exotic fevers like Chikungunya, Dengue, Ross River fever, Malaria, Filaria and so on.  These illnesses can be debilitating, as anyone stricken by these will vouch for.  But this Board Exam fever seems to beat it all.

           Now, this Board Exam fever is raging high in our home too.  It’s been days since hunger pangs were actually felt; sleep is a rare commodity and counting hundreds of sheep resorted to as a routine.  The telly lies forlorn, untouched, uncared for, ignored, for most part of the day.  Any single sign of entertainment or recreation is frowned upon and shunned.  Books other than school text books and reference books are taboo.  We wait with bated breath for the D-day, our innards all tightly tensely knotted…

          Strangely, this fever seems to affect only us parents-my daughter is merrily going about her everyday business with not a care in the world!!