Kurta Challenge

Cheating in examinations is an age-old practice.  Even though I don’t endorse it, I have always been fascinated by the creative and innovative methods adopted by students for cheating.  Copying from a friend and carrying chits are the oldest and the most common methods.  But there is a long list of different methods used by students like, writing on parts of the body, on slippers, on the cover of calculator, hiding chits in the folded sleeves of shirt, and so on.  Cheating by switching off the video in the pretext of low bandwidth during online exams and hiding chits inside the face mask are the latest additions to the list, thanks to corona virus.  Earlier boys used to outwit girls, but now a days, girls have also picked up the skills and thus bridged the gender inequality in cheating in exams!

I don’t claim that nobody can cheat in my exams, but it is not easy to cheat when I invigilate, because, true to the word ‘invigilate’, I am usually very vigilant.  Few years ago, there was a girl in my institute who was known as ‘copy queen’ among the teachers.  Her answers used to be as perfect as the textbook.  Once I was evaluating her answer paper for a test which was invigilated by another teacher.  She had verbatim copied a fairly long sentence from the textbook.  Even the punctuations were perfectly in place.  I called her and asked how she could reproduce the answer with so much precision.  She told me that she had learnt it well.  I asked her to repeat the sentence, which she couldn’t.  I told her, ‘No problem, I understand that you would have learnt it by heart the previous day of the exam.  Now, when I ask you unexpectedly, you may not be able to answer.  So, please take 24 hours’ time.  Tomorrow you have to write this again in front of me.  If you are able to do so, I will give marks for this answer, otherwise, I will give zero marks for this question’.  She never came back!

She used to wear long kurta on the day of exams.  Her time-tested technique was to hide small chits by pinning them at the inner portion of her kurta, so that when she sits, the chits would be inside the kurta on her lap.  At regular intervals, she would lift the edge of the kurta, and copy from the chit.  When the invigilator came close, she would keep the kurta straight as if nothing had happened.  A senior student, sitting next to her in the exam hall, had alerted me about this.  During the next exam, when I was invigilating, I was sure that she would have come prepared.  I was prepared too! As expected, she came wearing a long kurta.  As soon as the exam started, I went and stood next to her.  Standing there, I kept a vigil on other students, but did not move an inch from there.  She was very uncomfortable, kept looking here and there and occasionally looked at me.  She pretended as if she was writing something.  I could see a smile on the faces of few other students, who would have guessed why I was standing there.  After about 20 minutes into the exam, she submitted the answer paper and left.  I am sure, she would have cursed me, but I was happy that I stopped her from cheating, at least in one exam!

(Note: Those who are interested in cheating in exams can find some innovative ways of cheating at the following link.  But, remember, your teacher might have also read this!)

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