Dropping grades naturally means worried parents. So like many concerned parents, Maya's parents decided to send her to FIITJEEE, a coaching institution only for children who want a future in medicine or engineering, and Maya wanted neither, but no one listens to a 12-year- old girl.
FIITJEE is nothing like school- it is worse. The teachers only care about the rote memorization ability of students, and their parents' wealth. Maya, of course, couldn't understand a thing that was being taught and started falling more behind than she already was. Log, trigonometry, calculus, and all that advanced stuff went way over her head, and to be honest, she didn't even try to understand them. In one of her advanced Mathematics tests, Maya scored -8 (yes, it is possible to get less than zero apparently). Everyone got shocked and started wondering how anyone could get such terrible scores. FIITJEEE arranged for an IQ test, and the test concluded that Maya is intellectually challenged. (I happen to know Maya, and I can guarantee that she is in no way intellectually challenged). Soon the students and teachers started picking on her, and things went further down south, but these things didn't bother her much.
The most appalling thing she witnessed in FIITJEEE was the backwardness of educated people- the juxtaposition that exists in the entire Indian society. One day, as a sidetrack topic, the Physics teacher started a debate on how men are better than women. No, it can't exactly be termed as a debate because in debates there is always an opposing view. In a class of 45 students, 20 of whom were girls, none sought to beg to differ. Everyone agreed with him, including the female students.
Even though Maya had a lot to say on this, couldn't. After all, she was failing in class. All the male students in the class were better than her. What right did she have to say otherwise?
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