Mock tests and preparation schedules
arrived with increasing enthusiasm. Everyone
around me appeared to be revising
past question papers with nervous reverence.
In the library, the textbooks waited for
me. The small print made me wonder if
the authors wrote it expecting students to
carry magnifying glasses. I reread a paragraph
thrice—none of the words made
sense. My attention behaved like a fluttering
butterfly, hovering from one flower to
another.
Somewhere in the middle of this, I
remembered my old second-hand blue
Walkman, the one that required gentle
taps to behave. I remembered how the
songs felt slower. You couldn’t skip them
instantly. You had to wait, listen, and let
them unfold.
That evening, I found a playlist of
those old songs online, plugged in my earphones,
and walked around campus
listening. Something inside softened.
The rhythm was familiar,
like a hand resting on my shoulder,
offering reassurance. In the
middle of all the digital noise,
this felt like breathing.
The college campus was vibrant.
A group of students were
rehearsing a skit in the auditorium;
their laughter
reached the courtyard.
I didn’t watch the rehearsal.
I absorbed the
echoes. Something
about that quiet persistence
felt grounding in
a month otherwise full
of scattered minds and
mock test countdowns.
Moments like that—silent, unexpected,
and arriving without effort—carry
more meaning for me today than they did
then.
On some evenings, the nearby dosa
bandi became a small refuge. I watched
one group discussing exam strategies,
others arguing about which topics were
“most likely to be asked”. I didn’t join. I
just listened, letting the steam from the
dosa swirl around me like a quiet, edible
distraction.
Digital life tugged at everyone. Some
students watched last-minute revision
videos, while others switched between
solving mock papers and checking who
had viewed their status. None of it felt unusual.
It was the way the month before the
exam behaved. Some days, I gave in to this
digital pull. Other days, I placed my phone
face down and let it hum against the table
like a restless insect.
One night, while revising a difficult
subject, I noticed the faint smudge where
my hand had brushed over key sentences,
assuming a question would come from
that paragraph. There was something
calming in knowing that my notes had
their own imperfections, that my focus did
not have to be immaculate to be sincere.
By the end of that month, I realised I
was not trying to find focus. I was learning
how it paused in the middle of a lecture,
how it returned without warning during
a walk on campus, how it sometimes arrived
only when I was listening to an old
melody through my earphones.
It offered the insight that distraction is
not failure, and that some songs from an
old Walkman can slow the world down
just enough to make room for breath.