3 Hours of Pure Horror

And so it was, on the 19^th day of the month of April in the year of 2009, the Engineering Drawing 2 exam. For the fortunate ones who don’t know, Engineering Drawing 2 is the sequel to Engineering Drawing alias Engineering Graphics, the draconian subject that has been terrorizing thousands upon thousands of engineering fresher’s since time immemorial. Yes, the authorities might decide to call it Engineering Drawing “2”, but make no mistake; it is many times more difficult, more sinister, and more perilous than Engineering Drawing 1. Here, the lines and planes are replaced by SOLID objects. Heck, there are 5 kinds of the pyramid itself - from the docile triangular type to the menacing octagonal one. The notorious free hand drawings graduate from nuts and bolts to couplings and joints. Simply put, if ED 1 was Scarecrow, ED 2, my friend, is the Joker.

It was like any other exam day, albeit the tension in the air was intense and palpable. Quarter to 11, He, along with about a hundred others, walked into the gargantuan drawing hall with his drafter, drawing tools and a frightened soul. Settling into his assigned seat, he found a battered drawing board in front and a dysfunctional fan above.

Fuck, just what the doctor ordered.

But, assured that countless others in the room didn’t have anything better, he fixed his drafter, arranged the tools, clipped the drawing sheet and closed his eyes to pray to the Gods one last time, as the question papers were being distributed. Not one to waste any time in reading the question paper, he straightaway went to question 1, a problem on hexagonal pyramid (15 marks).

Just 15 marks for a hexagonal pyramid problem!

Ominous signs of impending danger. He counted the number of questions… 7! His heart beat faster, the exam had now begun. Trying hard to calm down, he picked up the pencil and focused all his attention on the question. Not too keen on making petty mistakes, he went over the question twice or thrice and underlined the important phrases and values, and began to draw… taking extra care of neatness and symmetry, and of course the solution to the problem. It was a type that never featured in those practice sums and assignments, the difficult type. But delving into the problem calmed him down and he patiently solved the problem, step by step, to the conclusion.

Phew, I think I have got it right.

Relieved, he glanced at his wrist watch, and realized, to his utter horror, that it was almost noon. A full hour in solving a question of 15 marks! Trouble. Again, his pulse shot up, and poignant memories of the ED 1 paper flooded back to his mind.

It was 29^th November 2008, final exam of first semester, and he believed he was well prepared, at least for section 1. The question paper too, in student parlance, was “easy” (5 questions in all). Buoyed, he had absolutely sailed through section 1, uncharacteristically confident about the correctness and neatness of his solutions. Section 2 had two questions – free hand drawings and orthographic drawing, 25 marks each, 1 hour to go. Ample time to do the orthographic drawing nicely and get all 25. Moreover, believe it or not, the orthographic problem was the same as the one given in an assignment. Jackpot! He happily chucked the free hand drawings (good for nothing fellows) and went all guns blazing on the orthographic, drawing more from memory than from looking. Done, 25 marks nailed. But, just then, a friend sitting a couple of rows back whispered to him and said “abe, X direction toh dekh! HELL, THE X DIRECTION IS… DIFFERENT! HOW COULD I MISS THAT! “Tune pura galat kar diya hai!” Pure Horror. For the uninitiated, changing the X direction turns the solution on its head, literally. What a brilliant move by the wily old prof. Around him, the invigilator had already started collecting the sheets and he had but a couple of minutes. Dazed, he picked up the eraser, pencil and the roller scale (to hell with the drafter) and furiously tried to make amends. But, a little is all he could do before it was time. 

Looks like this is going to be even worse.

 He was already on question 2 (15 marks); relatively easy but lengthy. However, his focus had began to whither, and he couldn’t help glancing at the watch every few minutes; the eraser came to be used more and more, the lines began to lose their sharpness and symmetry, and like it happens on most exam days, a random song started playing at the back of his mind. Sweating profusely, and desperately trying to keep the sweat beads from falling on the drawing sheet, he somehow scrambled to the finishing line on question 2. 12:50 pm.

2 hours, 30 marks. Ha, at least closing in on THE 40 mark.

Better part of the exam was over. An hour was all he had to salvage something out of this nightmare, and he moved onto the question 3. Focus continued to wither, and that random song played on incessantly as a part of his mind directed his hands in the development of a cone, and a part wandered back in time again to the first lecture of ED 1, to that spontaneous resolution he had made.

“Engineering drawing is not a subject; it is a language - a language of Mechanical Engineers. In future, if you want to communicate with the engineers in Germany or Japan or China, what will you do? Do you think they understand Hindi or Gujarati or English? No, but they will understand engineering drawing, they’ll understand what you tell them through your drawings” the veteran professor had said and smiled as his words of wisdom dawned upon his students, the mechanical engineers in the making, who listened with rapt attention.

I am going to MASTER engineering drawing.

Master? Yeah, right. There is no hope in hell.

 Horrified at the prospect of screwing up work with German and Japanese and Chinese engineers, he decided to step on the gas. There wasn’t any time for cuteness now. The swiftness of his strokes brought the battered board beneath to life, and the pencil’s fine lead occasionally punctured through the sheet as it traced the board’s own little peaks and valleys. Heat of the hour and heat of the moment triggered ceaseless sweating and several sweat beads from his head fell and made circular blobs on his sheet, on his solutions, bent over it as he was.

Can’t care lesser.

All the same, questions 3 and question 4 were done with, and with them Section 1 (50 marks). It was 1:45 pm, and the warning bell had just reverberated through the hall. 15 minutes was all he had to attempt something from section 2.

Fuck, there is NO other option.

 It was true; he didn’t have any other option than to go for the free hand drawings, his least favorite in all of ED syllabi. He absolutely detested the free hand drawings, for they had to be drawn with a free hand, something he outright sucked at. Nonetheless, he chose what he thought were the simplest from the choices and managed to draw a couple of things (3 marks each, only). Predictably, they didn’t look anything like they were meant to. Besides, not being able to recollect the exact dimensions, he labeled his drawings arbitrarily. Section 2 in his answer sheet was as good as blank.

Sharp at 2 pm, the bell launched into an exceeding long trrrriinnnnnggg, and on cue, the invigilators yelled “Stop writing!” “Please stop writing” as they scurried to collect the answer sheets from the students. “I TOLD YOU TO STOP WRITING!” roared one, a couple of rows in front.

If only this was about writing.

He smiled, unscrewed his drafter, straightened its rulers, and secured it in its special bag for good.