She kept looking at her paper. She never understood why she scored so less. She felt embarressed to ask her friends to check out, she felt ashamed to tell her mother, though her mother never expected her to scored full marks. But it was Minnie’s will to get better marks. She never expected herself to score 22 out of 30 marks.

She felt she had not studied enough. She thought, “Kannada is so difficult”. She kept cursing herself, cursing for being so weak in this subject.

Minnie had no other option but to swallow her pain and frustration within herself. She returned back her answer sheet to her Kannada teacher. Her Kannada teacher just smiled at her while taking the paper back. “She was so good in class!”, her teacher thought.

During the Parent Teacher meeting, Minnie’s mother visited Minnie’s school. Her mother hoping,”Hope there are no complaints about Minnie”.

The class teacher hand over the answer sheets to Minnie’s mother with her progress report card. Minnie’s mother first checked the marks card. “It is good”, she said to herself. “Except for Kannada!”, Minnie’s mother was about to curse herself for not spending more time on Minnie’s studies. “She did all on herself!”, appreciated her daughter. But a corner of her mind was cursing herself for not concentrating more on revising Kannada as in  other subjects Minnie had score 30,29,28 out of 30.

As she was going through Minnie’s Kannada answer sheet, she found that one main question was not given any marks. She checked twice, the third time to confirm. “Minnie must get marks in this question”.  Gathering her courage Minnie’s mother showed the question with no marks to the class teacher. “Sir, this question is been corrected but no marks are allotted to it”, Minnie’s mother confirmed. Giving a look at previous and later questions and also scanning through the whole answer sheet, “Yes ma’am, For this question marks is not been allotted”, the class teacher said.

“Would you want to get it checked by the Kannada teacher?”, he asked. “Shall I take these papers?”, Minnie’s mother asked pointing to the set of Minnie’s answer papers.

“Sure ma’am”, the class teacher allowed Minnie’s mother to take the answer sheet-set to get it checked by Kannada teacher, who was a class teacher of another class and was attending her students’ parents in her class room. 

“Excuse me ma’am”, Minnie’s mother requested before entering the class room.

“Yes ma’am, please take your seat”, Kannada teacher was polite. After she ended the conversation with the other parents, turning to Minnie’s mother who was sitting at the second desk asked,”Ma’am any doubts?”

Minnie’s mother handed here the Kannada answer sheet and pointing to the question not been allotted marks,”I think this question is not been allotted marks!”.

The Kannada teacher checked the whole answer sheet, reread the answers and confirmed,”I might have missed it to give marks here. Sorry for that ma’am”.

She continued,”This happened with you, it is good ma’am”, apologisingly. That was because they both were colleagues and they both were parents too today. So they both are aware of the pain of parent and a teacher during PTM.

“Ma’am, no problem. It’s just her percentage will increase”, Minnie’s mother said convincing.

To err is human. No man is perfect.

As a popular boy band has quoted, “You are born to be real, not perfect”. People born with good and real qualities know that they are not perfect as they stay down to earth, be honest with themselves, act according to their values and bringing their full self to every interaction.