The Ordeal

The Ordeal

last updateLast Updated : 2023-09-03
By:  Gaanzmy  Ongoing
Language: English
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Sixteen-year-old Rithanya can’t wait to go to boarding school and follow her dream of entering the Armed Forces Medical College. A far cry from the busy city life in her hometown of Bangalore, the strict, rural boarding school has strange rules and a stringent way of life for the students. Rithanya quickly settles in, making friends and enjoying her new life away from her sometimes overbearing family. But it isn’t all fun and games. The hostel food is intolerable and Rithanya starts to feel the pressure of her intense studies. She has terrible nightmares of failing her exams and disgracing her family, and her poor diet isn’t helping. The drudgery of capsuled academic studies, stringent rules, unpalatable food and the rat race for perfection triggers depression and an attack of psychosis of unimaginable magnitude in her mind. Once a bright and carefree girl, she falls into a terrible mental state of overwork and anxiety. Her deteriorating condition is of great concern to her family. Can Rithanya get better and continue her studies, or will the overwhelming pressure and her deteriorating mental health threaten to spoil her future plans?

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Rithanya gets her results

It was half-past six in the morning and the Garden City was sluggishly wakening from a sunrise slumber. In a place like hers, the month of May marked the peak of summer and the morning light was playing hide and seek through the window curtains. Rithanya was still sleepy as she woke up to some unusual bustle, rubbed her eyes and looked around her. Scratching her head, she slowly walked down the hallway to the living room. Her family was assembled there and a tense atmosphere prevailed. She looked at her father. The 5’6” figure with his tummy outgrowing his body and salt and pepper hair on a balding head, kept on punching numbers on his Nokia 1600 on the veranda. His face showed annoyance.Probably the other person is not picking up the phone, she thought. Wonder what worries him. Varadarajan – Her father, whom they called Dadda, was a headmaster in a reputed city school who taught science to the super senior level students or the Grade 12 ‘kids’.Rithanya's eyes looked for her mother.

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Gaanzmy
Good grinning
2023-08-10 00:30:14
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25 Chapters

Rithanya gets her results

It was half-past six in the morning and the Garden City was sluggishly wakening from a sunrise slumber. In a place like hers, the month of May marked the peak of summer and the morning light was playing hide and seek through the window curtains. Rithanya was still sleepy as she woke up to some unusual bustle, rubbed her eyes and looked around her. Scratching her head, she slowly walked down the hallway to the living room. Her family was assembled there and a tense atmosphere prevailed. She looked at her father. The 5’6” figure with his tummy outgrowing his body and salt and pepper hair on a balding head, kept on punching numbers on his Nokia 1600 on the veranda. His face showed annoyance.Probably the other person is not picking up the phone, she thought. Wonder what worries him. Varadarajan – Her father, whom they called Dadda, was a headmaster in a reputed city school who taught science to the super senior level students or the Grade 12 ‘kids’.Rithanya's eyes looked for her mother.
last updateLast Updated : 2024-10-29
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Which school will take her?

“It is just 968,” said father rushing inside. Rithanya was looking at him in awe. Both Dadda and Amma seemed a bit disappointed. Satvik was too confused to show any sort of emotion. He was stumbling over his expressions.“Yay! 88 per cent. Wow, I aimed for 85% but I have got more.” Rithanya exclaimed with joy. If any of you do not know how to add fuel to the burning fire, you should probably approach Rithanya. For, she was doing exactly that with her words.“Well, I am disappointed with you. I was expecting you to score above 1000 out of 1100. So, it remains my dream!” said Dadda.“No Dadda. I am content with 85% and now the additional 3% is a bonus and I can celebrate it, right? If I had aimed for 95% and had got only 88% I would not be able to celebrate.” Rithanya responded in a merry mood.“I should have seized the bike and stopped you from playing matches. You would have scored better.” Amma’s disappointed voice came from the corner of the room.“No Amma, I would have failed if yo
last updateLast Updated : 2024-10-29
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All new school

For a girl born and brought up in the hustle and bustle of a metropolitan city with high rise buildings and snail-paced traffic, rural villages were a wonder. Rithanya’s new school was located 380 kilometres away from her home city, Bangalore, with a tedious eight-hour journey by bus and no connectivity via rail or air. So her parents decided to take their car and drive to the village where the school was located. Loading the extra-large suitcase, bags and books, and all other miscellanies, Dadda and Satvik occupied the front seats with Dadda driving; she and her mother were seated at the back. Rithanya relaxed enjoying the scenery. Her parents never knew how village atmosphere could offer boundless happiness to a city-bred girl of 16 years. On both sides of the road, the vast countryside spread in green splendour cultivated with paddy, sugarcane and bananas bathed in bright sunshine. It was a feast to the eyes of one who loved nature without any bias. Rithanaya liked the place wholeh
last updateLast Updated : 2024-10-29
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Getting acquainted with hostel folks

Has anyone ever thought for a minute how one gets a gang of friends? Well, it all just happens in hostel life. Rithanya's new roommates were depressed missing their parents. She was the only person who remained happy in the room, laughing at others and making fun. She began talking to her roommates, going around the room, hugging them and consoling them. Raised as a city girl it was easy for Rithanya to shed inhibitions and begin the interaction to make friends. There were five more girls in her room; Janet, Rheya, Fowzia, Diva, and Moni.Fowzia and Diva were classmates from high school days. Fowzia could not speak the local language and knew only Urdu, Hindi and English. She was a devout Muslim. The warden and the school instructed her not to wear the burqa inside the school campuses. So, she had requested for full-sleeved uniforms and permission to wear hijab, the covering for the hair. Moni was a very shy girl who talked sparsely. She just cried and cried and cried. Maybe she had b
last updateLast Updated : 2024-10-29
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Getting ready

It was five in the morning. Alarms shrieked from every room in the hostel. The whole building reverberated with the sound. On top of it, the warden was walking through all the corridors, calling out to everyone to wake up and get ready.With shivers, Rithanya woke up from her sleep. It was a very different experience for her. She had never got such a wakeup call in her lifetime. Amma used to give her a lovely wake-up call which would eventually turn into a wake-up yell. Dadda would come to her room to give her a wake-up kiss and Rithanya would pull him next to her, hug him tight and get back to sleep. Finally, she would give in to the wake-up-call-turned-yell and sluggishly walk to find Amma in the holy, sacred room called the kitchen, doing something or the other, mumbling a prayer. She would inhale the blissful aroma of her mother's cuisine. Like a cat, she would slowly get behind her, hug her and get admonishments for diluting her piousness. Rithanya shrugged and got up from her b
last updateLast Updated : 2024-10-29
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At the classroom

The girls entered their classroom. There was a big metal door with a name board XI-BE1. She had never seen such a big section name. Stepping into her classroom, Rithanya was shocked to see that there were almost 60 students in the class. Twenty benches placed ten each in two columns. Some benches had five girls. Some had three girls and some four.She was fuddled. Seriously? So many people in one class? How will the last bencher hear what the teacher is teaching? How will the last benchers see what the teacher writes on the board?The six girls finally settled in one bench – third from the last row and on the right side of the class. Some gangs are formed only at that time. Most of the girls were sitting with girls from their hometowns or neighbourhoods. She found such rules for gang formation very funny. She thought, Probably, I should write a guide on ‘how to become friends easily’ targeting the hostel dwellers.All of a sudden, the whole class fell silent; it was pin-drop silence,
last updateLast Updated : 2024-10-29
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Biscuits and buns for a meal

The first two days were jolly good. There were no female teachers for their class. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English and Language classes were all handled by male staff. For the language classes, there were only three girls who opted for Hindi as an alternative language to the native or rather a regional language "Tamil". Rithanya, Fowzia, and Hera went to another small room to learn Hindi. Along with them, three other girls from the adjacent classes also attended. "Whoa! Six in a class", Fowzia exclaimed. "Is Tamil so common or is it a sin to learn Hindi?" Rithanya voiced her doubt. Their Hindi teacher was a very young guy who spoke so softly that Rithanya could barely hear anything in the class. His tone sounded like a lullaby to her.The lunch break. The girls went to the dining hall for food again to find a long queue. It was total chaos. Rithanya could not understand why such chaos happens all the time. Why not follow an orderly line for taking food? Someone in the crowd shout
last updateLast Updated : 2024-10-29
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First Holiday

The girls in the room got settled. Already one month had passed since the classes began. The staff members had begun full-fledged teaching and Rithanya was trying to concentrate on her studies. All the girls, the seniors and juniors had started studying so much that Rithanya began to feel the pressure of studies through her peers. If she planned to become a doctor or rather get into a medical college, she had to study so extensively that she had to forego sleep, comforts and many more things. She had to prepare herself; she had to be competent enough to survive among a bunch of nerds. All these years, Rithanya had never realized the pressure of studies or felt the urge to score more and more. But she had always loved the learning process by acquiring wider knowledge of her subjects and formally approached her school education. To be a part of the community she lived in now, Rithanya had to get herself fully engrossed in her studies."Rithu, we haven't seen you in the dining hall
last updateLast Updated : 2024-10-29
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Am I in a fish market?

The girls got busy packing their dirty clothes. They locked their suitcases and trunk boxes with big locks. Excitement reached its peak as they quickly freshened up and were all set to escape the hostel after finishing their morning classes.Rithanya felt odd seeing the excitement all around. She would not say that she was not at all eager to meet her family but she could not feel so much excited. She felt the hostel was all of a sudden transformed into an asylum and the girls had undergone some multiple personality disorder. The girls at the hostel, the seniors and juniors alike, who behaved like score- generating robots all these days, always focussed too much on studies and scoring high marks, started behaving like normal humans with emotions. It was too much to digest for Rithanya. She didn‟t pack her dirty clothes. She didn‟t dress up to look pretty. She didn‟t scream and yell in the rooms. She never planned to bunk the classes. She had never failed to pay attention in the class.
last updateLast Updated : 2024-10-29
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Gulping the food at one go

"Rithu, have you eaten anything? I brought some roti and sabji for you. Would you like to have some?" Amma's voice carried a tone of concern as she addressed her daughter, Rithanya.Rithanya's reaction, however, was far from appreciative. Her voice carried a sharp edge as she screeched, "Where is the roti? Why are you telling me this so late?" Impatience and frustration laced her words, the toll of her experiences evident in her tone.Before Amma could offer an explanation, Rithanya cut her off abruptly, demanding, "Give me the food." The packet was handed over in silence, a stark contrast to the motherly warmth that Amma had intended to convey. A sense of disappointment clouded Amma's features, her efforts to provide care and nourishment met with a wall of discontent.As Rithanya dug into the food with newfound vigor, her actions seemed to mirror her voracious appetite for something beyond the meal itself. Every morsel was consumed with determination, leaving no trace of the sustenanc
last updateLast Updated : 2024-10-29
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