Reliance Sucks!

Genre: Experiences

This is that month of the year when every Tom Dick and Bihari wanting to go to The Big A give their TOEFL tests and I am no exception to it. I took 21st September as my test date, long after most of my class buddies were done with it. I was forewarned by them that the Reliance test centre at Chembur sucks bigtime and that I should change my test centre even if that means paying an additional $50. But, I decided to go ahead with my original plan.

As I reached the Reliance World at Chembur at 8am, I was greeted by a lone sleepy employee sitting behind half-closed shutter of the shop. The reporting time was 8:30am and true to Indian standards, the process started only at 9am. Out of the 30 candidates present at the venue, 16 were accomodated in Lab 1 (which is the fancy name given to the standard cyber cafe there) and the remaining 14, myself included, were asked to wait.

This wait went on and on and on. After two hours we were told that there was a System Error and the Reliance engineers were trying to fix it. All through, the staff at the centre was busy chatting and giggling amongst themselves. Obviously this was adding salt to our wounds and by 12 noon, tempers rose and the staff came under the line of fire of the students with a healthy sardarji leading from the front. At this point, the staff decided to bail themselves out and suggested that we take a "30 minute lunch break" and return for the test.

This test centre happens to be in the most un-happening part of Mumbai and there was no food joint around. Finally, we (myself, a wannabe-rockstar type of dude, a bored-with-Indian-job guy and a pretty looking I-am-lost kind of girl - complete strangers but united by the ordeal) managed to find a Restaurant-cum-Bar that was obviously devoid of drunkards at this hour of the day who agreed to serve us some food. Returning to the centre, the situation had not improved. We once again gheraoed the Branch Manager lady who locked herself inside a Video Conferencing room to avoid further questioning. Finally, at 1pm, we were asked to register ourselves in a hurry and get ready for the test. In this chaos, the staff took a really ugly photo of mine in which I am looking darker than the darkest African and assigned me a computer terminal.

After the five hour wait, I was in no mental state to concentrate but I had no choice. I instructed the computer to start the test. At first go, it didn't. I realised that the mouse given to me was really stubborn and only if I hit it real hard, it would click. So, there I was- hitting the mouse button so hard that everyone around was staring at me. Finally the test began at 1.15pm. Thankfully, the first reading passage that appeared was titled "American Railroads". Thank God!! This interesting topic ensured that I got into the exam mood forgetting the earlier ordeal. I dont know what would have happened if the first passage would have been something on Black American History or Romanticism and Neo-classicism. (I encountered both these topics in Listening section).

The Reading, Listening and Speaking sections went off well but as soon as I began the Writing section, it was trouble again. The Space Bar on my keyboard just won't work and the idiots at Reliance World who had never bothered checking the keyboards earlier now decided to change my keyboard. The timer was running all this while and thanks to these idiots, I could start my essay writing only when 17 minutes 30 seconds were remaining out of the allotted 20. Nevertheless, I managed to complete writing my essay in time,so no damage done.

Finally, when I stepped out of the exam centre, I was barely in a position to talk or stand. I desperately looked around for a Feedback form where I could vent out all my anger, but the asses at Reliance are smart- they did not provide any Feedback form probably because they already knew whet "feedback" they would get!

Never had I expected that my TOEFL would end up being Test Of Endurance upto Frustrating Levels.