The German Pen

I was a studious teenager. The kind who did homework on time. The kind who sat in the front row. The kind who believed that if you followed the rules, the rules would reward you. Then college happened. And everything changed.

I was fed up. Of school routines. Of uniforms. Of assemblies. Of teachers lecturing about things that had no connection to the life I saw outside the window. Lessons of no use. Maths that had no value. Algebraic equations that could not buy a cigarette. Derivatives that could not fill a stomach. Calculus that could not solve the only equation that mattered: how to survive.

I joined engineering. And maths was still there. Core subject for the first few semesters. I was always bad at maths. Always hated it. The only maths I knew was the maths of the street corner. Two rupee cigarette. You give five rupees. You get back three. The commodity changes. The maths stays the same. That was my level. That was my limit.

So I stopped trying. Joined the worst gang in class. The ones who sat at the back. The ones who laughed too loud. The ones who had given up before the first lecture ended. We drank. We smoked. We did not go to classes very regularly. We skipped exams. Postponed them to the next semester. Then the next. Then the next.

Time flew. Third year came. Two more semesters left. The pending papers were accumulating like debt. Like interest on a loan I had taken out in my first year and never repaid. By the last semester, the tension and anxiety made me skip even more exams. The more I failed, the more I ran. The more I ran, the more I failed.

The course ended. I had twenty-one subjects pending. Twenty-one. That number sat on my chest like a rock. I could not breathe. I could not sleep. I could not look my parents in the eye.

One exam season came. I went to a nearby hostel. The place where students gathered before exams. To study together. To push each other. To stay awake through the night with coffee and fear. I went there. I stayed. I smoked. I drank. The night before the exam, I did nothing. No study. Just smoke. Just drink. Just the slow, quiet spiral of a man who had given up but had not yet admitted it.

Sleepless night. The sun rose. The exam was in a few hours. I walked to the hall with a friend. We were late. Not terribly late. But late enough that the corridors were empty. Late enough that we could hear our own footsteps echoing off the walls. Late enough that my heart was beating in my throat.

And then I realised. I had forgotten to take a pen. The one thing you need. The one thing you cannot borrow. The one thing that turns your knowledge into marks. Without a pen, you are nothing in an exam hall. Just a body in a chair. Just a failure waiting to be confirmed.

I panicked. No time to go out and buy one. No shop nearby. No friend to lend me one because my friend was walking beside me, probably in the same state of panic about his own forgotten things. If I walked into the hall and asked someone for a spare pen during the exam, the examiner would see. The examiner would shout. The examiner would humiliate me in front of everyone. I had seen it happen. The sharp voice. The red face. The slow walk to the front of the hall. The public undressing of a student who had not prepared.

I did not want that. I could not take that. Not after everything. Not after twenty-one pending papers. Not after years of running. I was in a dilemma. A few seconds. Walking. Footsteps. Heartbeat. Thousand thoughts.

And then the anxiety became something else. A prayer? I do not know. I did not fold my hands. I did not close my eyes. I did not chant. It was just a silent cry. From the bottom of my chest. From the place where hope goes when you have stopped hoping. A wordless thing. A lifting. A letting go.

I looked down. I do not know why. I just looked at the ground. Walking. Looking down. And I saw it. A glittering thick silver pen. Lying on the floor. Right in my path. As if it had been waiting for me. As if someone had placed it there moments before I arrived.

My friend saw it too. He saw me look down. He saw me stop. He saw me pick it up. He was shocked. His mouth fell open. He shouted. Man, are you enlightened?

I did not answer. I did not know what to feel. I turned the pen in my hand. Scanned it. Read the words engraved on the side. Made in Germany.

I do not know why that mattered. But it did. A German pen. Not a cheap plastic thing. Not a giveaway from a bank. A real pen. Thick. Silver. Solid. The kind of pen that feels heavy in your hand. The kind of pen that makes you want to write something worth reading.

I walked into the hall. I sat down. I started writing. The questions were hard. The answers were uncertain. But I had a pen. A German pen. And something in me had shifted.

Then another realisation. Another wave of panic. I had not brought a scientific calculator. Without it, the exam was impossible. The equations needed it. The derivations needed it. The whole paper was built around the assumption that every student would have one. I had forgotten. In the chaos of the morning. In the panic of the pen. In the sleepless fog of the night before. I had forgotten the one thing that could not be replaced.

I was depressed. For a second. Maybe two. I thought to myself: after all this. After the pen. After the walk. After the prayer I did not know I was praying. I will have to come again. I will have to take this exam again. Another paper. Another number to add to the pile. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. The number would never stop growing.

Then something happened. I do not know what made me do it. My hand moved. By itself. Without my permission. Without my knowledge. My hand went to the under drawer of the desk. The small space where students sometimes keep loose papers. Where chalk dust collects. Where forgotten things go to be forgotten.

My fingers searched. I do not know what I was looking for. I was not looking for anything. My hand was just... moving. Touching. Feeling. And then something stumbled against my palm. A shape. A corner. A surface that was not wood, not paper, not dust.

I slowly took it out. I looked at it. I do not know what to say about what I saw. It was a calculator. A scientific calculator. But not like any calculator I had ever seen. Casio calculators are black. Grey. Serious. Professional. This was different. This was multicolored. Beautiful. Playful. Rainbow colored. Like a toy. Like something a child would carry to school. Like something that should not exist in an engineering exam hall.

But it worked. It had all the functions. The buttons were crisp. The display was clear. It was a Casio. A real one. Just dressed in colors that made no sense.

Never in my life had I seen such a calculator. Never before. Never since. A rainbow calculator. In a dusty under drawer. In an exam hall I had never entered before. Waiting for me. Just like the pen. Just like the moment.

I do not know what my feelings were that time. I still do not know. Confusion. Gratitude. Terror. Wonder. Something that was not any of those. Something that had no name. I sat there, holding a German pen in one hand and a rainbow calculator in the other, and I thought: someone is paying attention. someone saw me. someone answered.

I wrote the exam. I do not remember if I passed. I think I did. But that is not the point. The point is what happened before. The walk. The panic. The prayer I did not know I was praying. The pen on the ground. The calculator in the drawer. The friend who asked if I was enlightened.

I do not know if I was enlightened. I do not know if I am enlightened now. But I know something. I know that prayer is not chanting. It is not crying. It is not jumping around. It is not folding your hands and closing your eyes and repeating words that someone else wrote. Prayer is a silent cry from the bottom of the heart. A wordless thing. A lifting. A letting go. And sometimes, it gets answered.

Not always. Not predictably. Not in the way you expect. But sometimes. In a pen on the ground. In a calculator in a drawer. In a friend who shouts are you enlightened and means it as a joke but it lands like a blessing.

I later gifted that calculator to a junior friend of mine in college. A young man who was struggling. Who needed help. Who did not have a rainbow in his drawer. I gave it to him. I did not tell him the story. I just said take this. it is lucky. He took it. He smiled. He passed his exams. I do not know if the calculator helped. I like to think it did.

I still have the pen somewhere. Or maybe I lost it. I do not remember. The pen is not the point. The calculator is not the point. The point is the moment. The walk. The look down. The glitter. The rainbow. The silent cry that was answered before I even knew I was crying.

That is God's hand. Not in miracles that split the sky. In a pen. In a calculator. In a friend who shouts are you enlightened and does not know he is a prophet.