A Number Ubiquitous..

Ask an engineering student that what's the one thing that identifies him the most and in all probability he/she will wryly say 'CGPA'. It is seemingly a necessary evil. The question a professor mostly asks when you get up to ask an uncomfortable question is, "What is your CGPA?" As if it is the thing that defines who you are. Are we really so naive to believe that a person, an identity, an entity, a living breathing soul can be represented by a number? Can you really reduce a person to a number?
Its not only professors, the equivalence thing actually goes up to the highest echelons. The companies want CGPA. Simple. It doesn't matter whether you can kick ass when it comes to matters of the mind. It doesn't matter if you can speak for yourself. They come with a rigid mind, a fixed 'criteria' and that criteria unsurprisingly is CGPA. I mean don't they trust themselves to be able to differentiate between a good and a bad prospect on the basis of the test that they designed and interviews they will conduct? Apparently not.
Something happened recently. In an unfortunate accident, we lost a friend, a lovely person and the world lost a promising young man. Always greeted me with a cheeky grin and a "hello sir!". I vividly remember him arguing a case against a wrong judgement meted out to them just because they were freshers. It was hard to come to terms with the loss of such a wonderful person in such an unfortunate manner. I hope he is at peace now.
We had a little ceremony in the college. Many people gathered in the auditorium. The director asked us to observe silence for two minutes for Tarunvir Khurana, 2010 batch CGPA 6.25. Everyone did and the ceremony was over. The sad part of the proceeding is that even at such an unfortunate hour, for the institute, he was 6.25. I'm sorry Sir. He wasn't a number and no human can be just a number. Everyone is a wonderful being. Not knowing everyone doesn't mean we can know about them through a number. He was Tarunvir Khurana, Tarun to everyone. Not 6.25. And its a grave insult to his memory to remember him as just that.