The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2006

n April 30, 2004, Ram Balram took the secondary-level exam for the last time. Now, this may seem unimportant to the average person, who might say, “What the hell, the secondary level exam? Thousands of newly adolescent students take that exam every year.” And they would be right to be so dis- dainful, except for two things: one, every year the entire village of B_ _ waited for exam day with the anticipation of a carnival; and two, Ram Balram was 78 years old and had been trying to pass the secondary-level exam for the past 65 years. Located in the heart of India’s unassuming and oft- neglected south central region, B_ _ was remarkable for its citizens’ utter sameness. Ram Balram’s struggles func- tioned like the town’s historical ledger. Everyone had a Ram Balram story, and part of the celebration was the retelling of these stories over cups of warm tea in the cen- ter of town on the night before the exam. (In fact, the sto- rytelling was in danger of surpassing the actual event of the exam itself, and there was talk of creating a Ram Balram one-day storytelling festival. But the state gov- ernment had so far not been responsive about funding.) The most common and most popular tale concerned 1947, when the town was badly divided by religious strife. Ram Balram had agreed to wear a kufi while taking the test. Even then the superintendent of exams, waiting piously at the school entrance, commanded Ram Balram to lower his pants and show proof of religious affiliation — which he dutifully marked as Hindu — so that the record would be correct. A close second was the story of 1977, during the Emergency, when the time of the test conflicted with Ram Balram’s appointment for sterilization. He pored for so long over the questions that the government cutters grew snippy and bored, and left. It helped that Ram Balram had made a vow never to marry until he passed the exam. “We don’t need to worry about this one,” one cutter was heard to say. Other stories challenged for top honors. There was 1968, when Ram Balram was sick with smallpox, and rumor had it that the town head had located a nearly identical twin to Ram Balram who had taken the exam in his place (he, too, failed), though this was never proven. Too late, some- one had thought to check for the cauliflower-like brand of smallpox vaccination, but as a failing score was a failing score, the matter quickly died. In 1994, a scandal broke out over the test itself. A par- ticularly scholarly and fundamentalist set decried the exam, claiming it to be a copy of an ancient text that was itself a mimicry of an earlier work purportedly written by the 44 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 FS F I CT I ON R AM B ALRAM ’ S F INAL E XAM A N I NDIAN VILLAGE ’ S HISTORY AND HOPE ARE WRAPPED UP IN THE STRUGGLES OF A DODDERING BUT DETERMINED OLD MAN . O Rakesh Surampudi joined the Foreign Service in 2000, and has served in Mexico City, Santo Domingo and Islamabad, and with the Office of U.N. Political Affairs in the International Organizations Bureau. He is heading to Kolkata, India, for his next assignment. B Y R AKESH S URAMPUDI