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I could hear the neurons firing in the corridors as keyboards clacked away that day. It was an oddly meditative sensation. One that the cacophony of break-time and the deserted silence of lesson time, don’t usually allow for. Perhaps, this was because I sat in the library and not in my designated room 208.  

Stuck on a couch as I tried to fit the feedback into the word limit. ‘Stuck’ is a good word to describe how I felt while writing. Typing in slurs and legato, then abruptly deleting it all- staccato. Repeating this cycle until I could finally trap the elusive paragraph in a goldilocks zone- as simple as possible but no simpler. 

I’m sure many of us felt like we were racing against time that day. I, however, felt like I was playing a test match against time. Specifically, if time was the West Indies in the last fixture of the historic 1971 series against India. I could liken the same ups and downs to those I faced while writing. 

There were some stylistic errors that I sought to get out of the way first and foremost, that gave me (India) a confident 360 run total in the first innings, the first hour and a half or so. What I didn’t realise was how the time passed as I scrambled to make more substantive changes to my commentary. Time was Gary Sobers with his 132 and by the last lesson had put up a massive 526     all-out. Yet somehow, after lunch, things began looking up and after I got home it took me only about half an hour to finish up.  

I too felt like by the end the match was drawn. I didn’t feel the intense rush of winning the last match, neither did I feel the dismay of a loss. Much like that   1-0 series win for India I too felt triumphant over a giant of my time. 

 -Saarthak Jha