Practice, In theory

We were really surprised to hear that we would be having a theory class on Forensic Medicine that day, since the university had held the theory exam a week ago. The practical exams were to start the following week, and all the departments had announced their intention of giving us lab revision classes. All of us had totally forgotten what congested spleens looked like under a microscope, and it was real nice of them to do that, especially when the trouble we've made over our year and a half is considered.

It came as real shock that the Forensic guys were taking a theory class, and that too from 9.30 AM to 3.30 PM. That's 7 hours, for the mathematically challenged geniuses like me. Almost everyone turned up for the class with unquenchable enthusiasm, an astonishing event, since the turnout is only about 78% for the classes where attendance is compulsory. The class turned out to be about the theoretical aspects of the practical exam, and was a total washout. Nothing more will be said about the class, and the title loses its relevance.

Unaccustomed to having both eyes open as early as 9.30 in the AM, I had raced to class with the minimum of fuss, without wasting time over frivolities such as breakfast. I had brushed my teeth and washed my face, but only out of consideration for R's feelings, who is submitted to the rare privilege of being my friend. After the lecturers exited the torturing chamber at 11.30 amidst thundering applause (the 3.30 ending time turned out to be a myth), I dragged R to the canteen and polished off some atrocious food giving it the respect all edible materials command. After racking our brains for a while, we discovered there was nothing further to do at college, and tearfully decided to return home.

We were joined on our journey to the bus stop by G, and the three crazy females had fun giving a cute guy the directions to the office. I believe he ended up at the pharmacy college. Suddenly, A rang up R and announced that all the inmates of the Ladies' Hostel were going to catch the new Harry Potter movie, were we interested in joining them. Even after years of friendship, I haven't been able to convince R that the Harry Potter books are fun to read, and she nixed the idea on the spot. So did I, but for different reasons (a book is a book is a book is not a movie). G had already seen it, and considered 2 hours from her life as hopelessly wasted.

The three of us walked on,waiting for the next cute guy to pop up, when G suggested we see the new comedy. R and I liked the idea, and we rang up A to discuss the new development, but A remained true to Umbridge. That's when we ran into our good friend K, and begged him on our knees to accompany us, promising him a place in heaven as St. Peter's right hand man, since 3 'little' girls isn't a strong enough number for my folks. But K said he was going to see Harry Potter no matter what, but a couple of his friends were getting the tickets to the comedy that very second and to call one of them to book us tickets if we wanted to go. Torn by K's betrayal, we wearily trudged to the bus stop. Everyone we met on the way had the same thing to say, "Ha-rry. Ha-rry. Ha-rry." Unable to take more of this harrying, the three heartbroken girls decided to drown their sorrows in Sprite, and unhappily took a detour to the bakery.

After a couple of swigs from the Sprite bottle, washed down by a sandwich, our spirits rose high enough to catch a bus to the Planetarium. But Fate had a different idea...

While in the bus, G's boyfriend, N, rang her up and said he'd go with us, even though he'd seen the movie twice. Moved by his sacrifice, we arranged for K's friends to book us tickets. Having an hour and a half left for the movie to begin, we thought we'd sample the delights the planetarium had to offer, only to discover that the planet show began at 2.30, the same time as our movie.

That's when I realized we had no idea where the movie theatre was. N informed us over the phone that it was only a 5 minute walk from Big Bazaar. That was all we needed to hear. The next thing I knew, we were taking the escalator to the clothes section at Big Bazaar. All hail department stores. It's a deep unsolvable mystery, how we lost track of time. The highlight of the mad rush to the theatre at 2.28 PM was running into the seedy lodge next to the movie house.

We found N waiting outside with our tickets, and entered the hall just as as the movie began. The first sight that greeted our eyes as we shuffled inside was a smiling K waving to us. A closer look revealed the reason for his smile, almost all the seats in the balcony were occupied by our classmates from the Ladies' Hostel. Then the lights went off, we switched off our brains for a couple of hours and watched Communism being massacred on the screen.

I've been busy. Studying.

The title isn't true, you know. It's true that my exams have been going on for the last 3 months, the last I checked. Yeah, yeah, I know. But I haven't been busy studying. I've been busy lazing around every couple of days, then getting all edgy and panicky the day before the exam, ringing up R for 'inspiration' only to find out she's in the exact same state, and hanging up after a zillion "What's wrong with us?", "Why are we like this?" and "Maybe it's the climate.", noticing the situation is worse since I just spent an hour on the phone, bringing on another panic attack, prompting me to attempt an all-nighter, and then falling asleep at 1230 hours to wake up at 1000 hours the next (or technically, the same) morning with the revelation that there are 20 chapters left, and less than 4 hours in which to complete that. That's when I get busy.

Where does all this terrifying efficiency go when I know the exam is still a couple of days off? I read 200 pages in less than 2 hours the night before the exam, but I get through only about half a page (alright, half a paragraph) a day otherwise. I can watch TV for hours, browse for even longer periods, and these days I manage about 12 hours' sleep. Oh, my God. What is wrong with me?

Penicillin, here I come.

The Indestructible Salmonella

It was one of those cold winter evenings. Or as cold as winter evenings get in the tropics. Whatever. This isn’t a weather report.

Our heroine was in depths of despair. She paced the room, looking for a way out. There were none. She was trapped. She suppressed a groan. On thinking it over, she decided to groan louder. Several loud ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ later, her mother heard her. Mission success.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“I think I’m coming down with something. I’m feeling really tired. And there’s this weird ache all over.”

“Don’t you have an exam tomorrow?”

Damn! She had to remember that. Switch to plan B.

“That’s what, Mama. I can’t concentrate. Probably because of this fever.”

“Hmmm... No temperature. Are you shamming?”

What an idiotic question.

“Would I do that?”

There goes her brow. Now why didn’t I inherit that?

“I can’t understand any of this nonsense, Mama. I’m sure I’m coming down with something. I don’t feel good. (Groans.) Besides Microbiology is pure nonsense.”

“Nonsense? Don’t talk about your studies that way.”

“But Micro is nonsense, Mama. It’s really tough.”

“I’ve heard it’s really interesting.”

“You listen to Manu too much.”

“A brilliant young doctor doesn’t throw away a lucrative career in surgery for one in Microbiology if he didn’t feel strongly about it.”

Yeah, whatever.

“Hey, why don’t I ask him to come over and teach me something? Maybe some of that enthusiasm will rub off on me. Now, why didn’t I think of that earlier?”

“I hope he gets something into that thick skull of yours.”

“I’m not thick skulled. I got into medical school.”

“But you’re having hard time staying in. Ring him up, then. Do you need a tablet for the ‘fever’?”

Man, is she sarcastic.

“Yeah. (Groans.) I’d like some hot coffee too. Sore throat. (Coughs.) ”

Acetaminophen never killed anybody. Or did it? Gulp!

* * *

“Hi, Manu. I have a test on bacteriology tomorrow. Can you come over and teach me something? I don’t know anything. Please?”

“Come on, don’t be so pessimistic. I’m sure you know the basics.”

Yeah, right.

“Please, coz. You’ve got to help me.”

“Sure. Be there in an hour.”

“Thanks a million. You’re a lifesaver.”

* * *

“Teach me something, coz. I really need to pass this one.”

“Did you flunk the previous one?”

Uh-oh...

“Errr... Barely scraped through.”

“Let’s see. Bacteriology, right? Hmmm… Ok. Let’s start with Salmonella. What do you know about Salmonella?”

“It’s a bacteria.”

“And I was thinking it's a virus. Thank you for enlightening me on that point. And bacterium is singular, wiseass. What disease does Salmonella cause?”

“Ooh, serious diseases. Pretty bad ones, you know, where you can even lose the patient. Severe disease. Salmonella is a bad bacteria. Bacterium. It causes horrible diseases. You know, a really severe-”

“Typhoid.”

“Typhoid, yeah. I know that. I was just going to say typhoid. Now typhoid is a bad disease, you know. It’s a really serious disease. You-”

“Stop. Please. What organ does it primarily affect?”

“Salmonella? Typhoid? It's a very bad disease, you know. Pretty serious. You can even lose the patient. Really bad when it affects the... The brain.”

“Your brain is definitely affected, assuming that you have one, of course.”

Sarcasm certainly runs in the family.

“ Shut up. Lungs, then. Respiratory infection. It causes a necrotising haemorrhage into the-.”

Oh, man. How can such anyone outside the Mafia look so murderous?

“Enteric fever. FYI, that means the GIT. I hope you know what the GIT is.”

“Gastro-intestinal tract. I’m not an idiot.”

“Really?”

He can do the single brow lift too?

“Very well. Salmonella causes typhoid, an enteric fever.”

“What is the diagnostic test for typhoid?”

“Err… A blood test?”

“Oh, my God! Have you heard of the Widal test?”

Why dal??? Sounds like a culinary disaster.

“Of course I have. I’m not an idiot.”

“Really?”

“Knock it off, coz. Tell me about the Widal test.”

“It's used to measure the level of certain antigens in the blood. Which ones?”

Whoa! Antigens? S for Salmonella, so there’s probably an S antigen. And he said antigens, so there’s more than one. T for typhoid.

“S antigen and T antigen.”

“Where did you get that from?”

This isn’t going well at all.

“The textbook.”

“Which one? The last I checked, it was H and O.”

“I knew that… I confused it with something else. H stands for ‘heavy’, right?”

The book hit her squarely on the head, and the last thing she remembered as she lost consciousness was the sound of frenzied swearing.

NOTE: The characters and incidents in the above account are blah blah blah blah blah. You know the rest. And no, this is not an autobiographical account.

Good Morning?

Beastly way to begin a day, if you ask me, by getting up from bed. Now what real good does it do? You spend the first half of the day wishing you’d stayed in bed, and the remaining half waiting for bedtime. The longing intensifies after lunchtime, when you're gastronomically satisfied, and the lecturer is doing his best imitation of the sandman. You look around and marvel at those souls who can actually lift up a pen and take down notes, instead of using it as a lever to prevent yourself from flopping onto the desk.

So, getting up from bed. You’re in bed, sleeping, and having the best dream of your life, and just before the hero clasps you in his arms and proclaims ‘Muriel, I shall be devoted to thee until…..’, a shrill sound, quite unlike anything usually found in dreams of this kind, interrupts the proceedings. The hero looks around with a bewildered air, and the sound grows louder. Muriel tugs at his sleeve and urges him to complete what he was saying, when the sound grows even louder and Romeo disappears in a puff of smoke. And suddenly, you’re up. Just like that. Swearing vindictively, you spend the next few moments condemning the inventor of the alarm clock and his immediate family to a particularly oppressive hell in which there would only be this shrill beep sound with no apparent source.

After you find the cursed thing, you proceed to switch it off and try to get a few more moments of rest, to recuperate from the violent stress you’ve undergone. Romeo and Muriel decide to give it another try, when the villain arrives, in the shape of The Dad. Not Muriel’s, nor Romeo’s (they are currently taking part in a street protest against alarm clocks), it’s your own old man. Although there is nothing old about the hands that yank the sheets off you and the baritone that screams ‘GET UP!!!!!!!!’, you resort to giving him dirty looks while demurely murmuring ‘Alright, alright, I’m up, Dad, I was just recovering from one of the more terrifying nightmares’ in a tone of voice suggestive of wishing him a place in the afore-mentioned hell.

Having completed your ablutions, your prospects begin to look up after a cup of tea. There’s nothing like tea for perking you up. Everyday, after class, all the people who had barely enough energy to raise their hands to officially register their presence in class would rush off with undiminished enthusiasm for the tea stall next to the office, where you can get a cup (a glass, really; cups are hard to come by) of tea for next to nothing, while they mesmerize each other with tales of how they witnessed the ruthless excision of an ingrown toenail in the OT earlier that day and other such weighty matters. And after the tea, they would immediately rush to their respective homes, and catch up on lost sleep.

There isn't a more depressing breakfast than idli and sambhar to depress the hell out of you. The ability of the culinary misinvention in this department has been a subject of much debate among those employed in government offices, and although the majority rules against the statement, there is a small but strong minority in favour of it. The majority is not always right, as time has revealed time (pardon the pun) and again.

And people have the nerve to wish you a good morning. As if such a thing actually exists! In my personal experience, there had never been a good morning since the last one on 21st December, 1992, when I woke up to find that it was snowing. No, wait. That might have been a dream.

The best thing to be done is to ban alarm clocks, and throwing the inventor into a concentration camp* where they’d torture* him with ringing alarm clocks the moment he falls asleep, and allow him to subsist only on idli and sambhar. He would beg for mercy, but his tormentors, hardened veterans like Eichmann* (resurrected for this very purpose), would scornfully laugh at him, and sleep in a soundproofed room next to him, just to spite him. And we shall all laugh in glee, and go to bed at night more cheerfully, knowing there would be no alarm clocks to interrupt Romeo.

*I am not in any way, endorsing crimes against humanity.

The Last Day

The day dawned bright and early. The sun was up, the birds were twittering, and the mighty prince unsheathed his sword and... Oops! Wrong place. Let’s begin again.

We were all packed and ready by about 10.30 and were borne to the railway station by our trusty steeds. We stood around our bags, looking like amateur dealers in second-hand luggage. We had an uninspiring breakfast from the railway canteen. I skipped that and had a Frooti (now available in a pet bottle). Puris dripping oil aren't exactly my favourite.

The train journey back home was as eventful as the one to Hyderabad. People kathifying [talking], sleeping, singing, staring out the window at the dismal landscape... Nothing new there. But the card playing epidemic broke out, and every other person seemed to have bits of paper in their ears. I played only Uno, I wasn't interested in the Queens and Hearts.

Since gambling is illegal, and no amount of swearing on dead grandmothers’ graves would convince hard-hearted railway inspectors that we weren’t staking our rings and chains, I was made to keep lookout. A fat guy with a moustache, carrying a briefcase, dressed in khaki, I was told, was the villain. I saw a khaki shirt near the door and warned my friends. They quickly hid their cards, and the uniformed official passed us carrying a broomstick and a bucket, completely oblivious to our innocent expressions. I attempted a quiet exit, but wasn’t very successful. Let us draw a curtain of charity over the unpleasant events that followed immediately after.

Lunch was sponsored by one of the teachers who had accompanied us on the trip. Hyderabad biryanis. Yum!

The train snaked its way through brown hills and desolate mountains, and it grew steadily hotter. The stifling heat didn’t affect the hardcore gamers, and they continued to play with undiminished enthusiasm. The Uno players rested.

An excellent dinner prepared with the greatest of love and care by the extremely competent cooks aboard the train’s pantry saw a few people lying around groaning. I turned veggie, so you can imagine how bad it was.

Before we knew it, it was time for bed. The card players needed to be convinced that it really was dark and there really existed a world outside spades and aces, such as food, drink and sleep.

We slept well, and bad, bad people who call themselves my friends woke me up some time before 7. What’s the point in getting up when there isn’t anything to eat?

The train entered good old Kerala (yay!) in the afternoon, although we were too tired to notice. Our number began going down when the train stopped at stations, replaced by people who hadn’t been on the tour getting on.

AJ’s dad brought lunch for all of us when the train stopped at her station. Her mom had made chapatti and chicken curry! I shall be eternally grateful to him for the first fresh home-cooked meal I had on the trip.

We were really tired by the time we reached home-sweet-home again. I was really glad to see mom standing there, I never realised how much I'd missed her until then. I said my goodbyes to my friends, who gave me strict instructions (orders, really) to show up for the Orthopaedics posting the next day, and telling my mom to make sure I did. That was the last straw. I decided then and there that I wasn’t attending the posting (I have this nasty rebellious streak that is unmasked when people try to order me about). I cut postings the next day, and attended the afternoon practicals session. As it turned out, none of those people turned up even for the practicals. So much for practising what they preach.