Vivek is 17, and as every middle-class family in India would attest, it was high time he was enrolled in coaching classes for the notoriously competitive entrance exams of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Vivek’s father, who sees an IIT degree as a moral certificate, ships his only son off to a residential preparatory school in Kota, the Mecca for IIT coaching. Over two years, Vivek goes through the motions of Indian adolescence, but it is his parents who do the growing up. As time passes, Vivek’s father learns that there are those with low morale who are studying in IITs, leading him to cryptically tell Vivek that IIT is not the end-goal in life on the night before his IIT entrance exam.
