EITHER his parents were prescient, or they couldn’t care less. The first thought that struck me when he introduced himself as Professor Roach was “Oh my! Poor chap must have been the butt of jokes all his life.” Turns out, the joke was on me, as the lowly — like the Indian supreme court chief justice is to some — loathsome, creepy-crawly has come into its own.

Half the world lives in fear of a nuclear holocaust resulting from a war; the rest is apprehensive about an accident, such as a leak at a nuclear facility similar to Chernobyl in Ukraine or Fukushima in Japan. Cockroaches are said to be sufficiently equipped to survive in a post-apocalyptic, radioactive environment. Their slow-dividing DNA makes them 200 times more resilient to radiation than humans. It is not for nothing that they outlived the mighty dinosaurs.

Fortunately, not of the nuclear type, but leaks led to the formation of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in India. Exam paper leaks seem to have become endemic in the subcontinent. From competitive civil services exams to entry tests for professional education institutions administered locally, to internationally governed O- /A-Level exams — paper leaks,........

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