Experience Of A Lifetime

      After having worked hard for over three weeks and having recited the same speech for over three hundred times in two days, I just wanted to collect my prize and go home and relax.
       But by the time they asked us to pack up our stuff, the confidence we had in ourselves was completely destroyed by our teacher. Worrying too much, she asked me and my partner to go down to the auditorium for the prize distribution ceremony. After having assured her that we would call her on her mobile and inform her whatever the news would be(good or BAD),we made our way downstairs and found seats and saved three extra seats – two for the guys who were doing the math project from our school and one for their teacher-and we waited. But only one of them turned up with their teacher and seated themselves in this order-the math teacher on my left, my project partner behind her and the math guy on his right.
       Both the math guy and my project partner being in my class we easily got into the topic of cursing the school and finding fault with everything from the way the auditorium was not air conditioned right up to the part where the judges had not arrived yet (to be precise they were 23 minutes late) and how this would never happen in our school, we finally breathed a sigh of relief when the judges arrived.
       After garlanding the judges and a tortured session of prayer sang by those school students, the announcer requested the judges to give a speech. The first judge spoke for some five hours, I mean five minutes, and the judge who succeeded him spoke for some three minutes. Finally at 4.38 the ceremony started. First was some eco-friendly whazzat sub theme had three prizes awarded and then the math sub theme got two prizes. One of the two prizes was won by our school math project guys.
      Finally our sub theme ‘Industry and Environment’ started. First prize (not first place) was given to this group we feared would get. I collapsed. Tears sprang to my eyes. I wouldn’t focus on anything. Next prize was not for us either. Only two more to go in this sub theme. The math guy, from behind me, kept giving words of confidence such as “Theirs is a crap topic and if that gets a prize you certainly will”, too bad it just bounced off me. Suddenly (at least suddenly for us) the announcer started announcing the name of the next project which won the prize. She said it so quickly(it must have been my imagination) “Ethanol from cellulose-E85”. And our names and the name of our school. The second she said the name of our project my face must have started glowing. I urged my partner to call our teacher and guess I was screaming since everybody in the immediate vicinity started staring in my direction. Who cares? That second at 4:52: something, was what I worked towards for nearly a month, and I was all smiles.
       Both of us dashed to the stage and after waiting patiently for the photographer to finish clicking away snaps, both of us took off for the second floor classroom where our teacher was waiting. Though I was behind my partner I was the first one to tell her since I got her on the mobile first.
       I guess she was especially happy for me since I was so confident of our winning that she said out aloud that I would have been devastated if we hadn’t.
       Well after making my way back, I actually bore the idiotic behavior of the math project guy (that’s the first time I did that) and while waiting for my dad at the gate I called everybody, well just about everybody, on my contact list and told them the news.
       Well, we’ll be having so much work in the next two months and after that we’ll go to the North for the finals.      
And my ecstasy was well reflected by the rain (rain raises my spirits up so high) which followed.
      21/08/07-officially the best day of my life.