This reminds me of a particular event from my student life. It was the year 1999-2000, I think. So my own civil services exam got over on 15th of November, then this common admission test to the various IIM’s, this used to be a paper pencil test not an online test, so it was scheduled for the 10th of December. Now till 15th of November I was busy with my civil services exams. I finished the exams, four five days I slept comfortably. And then I said fine, because I’ve filled up the form and it’s an interesting exam, there are these nice questions and puzzles. So let’s write that exam. I didn’t have too many stakes attached to that CAT. So I picked up those few books that you require and I started preparing and I joined a test series with my batch mates in IIT, that test series used to be conducted in IIT itself. So everybody who was writing that test was an IITian. So I would just go and write the test with them, it was a mock test. And whenever I would write that test my rank there would be somewhere in the middle. There were so many of them who were preparing since one year, two years also, minimum six months, eight months and they desperately wanted to go to the IIM’s. So they had worked very hard and they were all talented people, obviously. Some of them were prodigiously talented. So that is the way it was. Then came the 10th of December, so I went in, I wrote the paper, I realized that I had attempted fewer questions than I usually used to attempt. Before that particular year the CAT used to have around 180 questions and you had done well if you had attempted around 140 or 150. I could see that this year I had not attempted as many. So I thought maybe I have not done well. But ok, it is alright. I came out and then what do I see there, people are crying, sobbing, weeping inconsolably. Somebody is tearing apart his shirt including some of those toppers who used to do so well in the mock tests. So I asked them, “What happened”? And they said, “Don’t ask us, we are devastated, the world has come to an end”. Why? They said the pattern changed. I said, “Really”? Now the fact was I didn’t even realise that the pattern had changed because I didn’t know what the previous pattern was. That was not really there in the mind. So I said, “Yes probably, it has changed. Yes. Then they said, “How much could you attempt”? I said, “I too have not done well, I mean just like you I also have not done well. I‘ve attempted only 113”. Then they started thumping their chests even more wildly. I said, “What happened”? They said, “We could not attempt even 100”. Now it was impossible. It was impossible. I knew some of them, they were really swift as far as IQ goes, and they were really up there, in fact higher than me. There is no doubt. And they had prepared really well. And that I tell you is exactly the reason why they failed. They had prepared so much, when you prepare so much and the pattern changes, then you crumble. And patterns will change. Life will not conform to any patterns.
