Illustration: Akila Weerasinghe / Himal Southasian
Illustration: Akila Weerasinghe / Himal Southasian

The ‘note’ economy

A brief history of English-literature exams in contemporary India.

Sumana Roy is the author of two works of nonfiction, 'How I Became a Tree' and 'Provincials', as well as 'Missing: A Novel, My Mother’s Lover and Other Stories', and two collections of poems, 'Out of Syllabus' and 'VIP: Very Important Plant'.

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"How many corpses have you disposed of today?" one professor asks another.

The quieter one is confused, as he often is. The words are in Bangla, where their violence is shocking. "Aaj kawta laash phelli?"

The questioner, content with having established his wit, explains, "Arrey, how many answer scripts have you evaluated today? What else is one to call these answer scripts?"

Such conversations about the answer script are not uncommon.

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