It was a hot summer in May. The season is famous for its succulent mangoes and sweltering heat. It is famous for another reason: the disappearance of children of the 14-16 age group from the open spaces/playgrounds.

Dahiya, the local Indian writer, was enjoying his afternoon nap. The fan provided no respite from the heat, other than to help circulate the hot air. From the bottom, in a staccato pattern, similar to the shot of an AK-47, came the sounds, ‘sine theta’, ‘cos theta’, ‘tan theta’ and their variants.

Little Ramu, not so little anymore, a stocky 16-year-old boy, was sitting on the floor, preparing for the multitude of exams to enter India’s Colleges of Medicine and Engineering.

The whole family (father, mother and co) had moved, luggage and baggage to the training institutes in Bandigarh, to take advantage of the ‘best training facilities’ in the country. This would help Ramu to secure a ‘deserving seat’ and a ‘secure’ and ‘stable life’.

Ramu’s father snapped up from his now disturbed sleep. “Ramu! I’ll spank you. I didn’t hear your ‘thetas’ loud enough. Don’t you want to pass the exams? In my field, which is SEO writing, they talk about ‘keyword density’. It’s the number of times a word has to appear in my writing, to be noticed by ‘search engines’ I’ll coin a term for you, ‘study density/theta density’, which is the number of times your ‘sine thetas’ and ‘ because thetas’ shows up when you study out loud, during my hour nap. If it doesn’t show up well enough, your effort will be rejected, meaning you won’t be selected by universities. But before that happens, another search engine , that’s my hand, it would have made a resounding stroke on your rosy cheeks. Your cheeks would then become Mussoorie apple like red variants.”

“But dad,” Ramu replied, “this engineering and medicine thing doesn’t interest me. I want to be an actor.” “You want to be a what!” Dad said, “what will people say? They’ll look down on me.”

“But dad, I want to be famous, you know how… Battu Khan! I wish the world would kiss the floor I walk on, honor the space I occupy, and… sigh when I give them a long look.” “.

“Sure,” Dad replied, “for now, you’ll rub your nose against the pages in front of you, idealize with the formulas in front of you, and sigh with delight as you complete a chapter, get it? Your ‘theta density’ should be as dense and jarring, to wake a sleeping gorilla from its deep slumber. You know, Ramu, if you get into one of these universities, you are ‘settled for life’ and you ‘stabilize’.”

“Ah!” said Ramu, “you mean Daddy, you sit on a sticky chair from 9 to 5 every day, until you put holes in them, or until you reach retirement age, whichever comes first. Then, produce more of your own in peace, and return like homing pigeons with your progeny, to the training workshops of Bandigarh. Correct? I get it now. But this ‘being stable’ part, I don’t get. Does it mean that all the others who don’t get into the college of their choice are ‘unstable’, ie do they need to go to an Institute for the mentally ill for treatment?

Dad said, “Enough now! Stop arguing with me and get on with what the rest of your family have been doing for generations, before I spank you!”

Ramu then went on and on… ‘sine theta’, ‘cos theta’, ‘tan theta’… until the cows came home, like him fueling the engines of the ‘Coaching Mills of Bandigarh’.