Ye tumhaari meri baatein

As the absolute last and final day of college draws inexorably closer, it seems everyone is feeling this bittersweet sensation of an era drawing to an end. A senior had once told me I would do well only to make business contacts in medical college and that I won't have made any real friends by the end of it. I just wish he'd stuck around to see how wrong he was.

We're all loving each other a little bit more than we ever have done in the last five and a half years. I guess we've all got our 'graduation goggles' on and the campus suddenly feels like a wistfully beautiful place to hang around with all the people you wish you had just a little more time to get to know better.

I've spent the last few weeks having this same conversation over and over and over with different people, "I wish I'd known you like this in second year. We'd have been better friends." or "Why didn't we hang out more? You're awesome!"

I was talking to T. about this last night and he was rather philosophical about it. He said we were like logs of wood carried downstream by the river-current, to draw close and then drift apart, buffeted by the force of the water. He said this was a metaphor the Geeta offered up about the transient nature of all relationships in life.

Wherever he managed to glean a Geeta to read through I may never know, but he did have a point. Such was life.

I told him I had this dreadfully forlorn sense of something important slipping away from me, a sense I'd never had in school or junior college. Back then, we'd all stay close by. Of course, we'd bump into each other we thought. But not this time. People will go off to different cities in different states or even different countries on different continents.

This was a real parting of ways. We are all done growing up now. Real life starts here on. There will always be a twinge of sadness for friends lost and friendships not mended. Even that idea of a real what-if for that one person who got away.

But it doesn't matter. We've got our lives stretching out in front of us still. And maybe the future has some real pleasant surprises in store for us.

And for what it's worth, there are always new friends to be made and old friends to be rediscovered.

Speaking of new friends, Astha of the charming letter in the previous post has just passed along a lovely blog-award which I am very grateful indeed to receive. Her post here has already led me to discover more blogs and through them, peek into more lives and perhaps make some new friends.

For that, I owe her great thanks. And from me, here's to all that could have been, all that was and most importantly, all that will be! :)

Voices at the door

Not much evokes the passage of time as effectively as a birthday or a new year's day. For me, like for most other people, time is an odd thing to deal with, it lingers at times, it flees at others. It dilates and contracts to suit our states of mind.

For me, the last year was a truly good one. It showed me the due importance of having a purpose in life, the knowledge of being on the right path in life, the indescribable joy of having found the right sort of people to love, the strength of friendships forged in times of duress, and the kindness of strangers.

I wonder what this one has in store. I wonder which way this crossroads of mixed directions has in mind for me. At this point, the best I can do is wonder.

Exams are drawing inexorably close. I can't decide if I have given them more importance than they deserve or less and which is worse.

Every year's end for almost twelve years now, Ishatai sends me a letter - a real letter in an envelope delivered by the postman and she ends it with a resolution from a proverb or a quote.

I like the one she sent this year and maybe I can borrow it as my resolution, too and if I am very lucky maybe I can keep it.

"To the dreams of thy youth, stay true." - Schiller

Happy New Year, folks!

Jebon mein hum raatein liye ghooma karen..

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." - Berthold Auerbach.

Listening to Aashish Khan on the sarod playing the deeply mellifluous Raga Chandranandan devised by his late father, I feel somehow more alive than I've felt in weeks. Perhaps it is because it starts off on a (to my ears) discordant, almost chaotic note and slowly but surely grows melodious and harmonious and ends in an incredible crescendo of joyful strumming. In a way, it reflects my own mental trajectory these past few days.

I've always thought of the sarod as a rather sombre instrument with the Raga Lalita Gauri being the traditional melancholy music that underscored melodramatically tragic scenes in old Hindi films. That's pretty much why I've been so wary of listening to it.

But I'm starting to discover its playful side. And what Chaitanya once scornfully called the "glorified Indian mandolin" is finally starting to appeal to me in ways that not much has these days.

It's like looking anew at an acquaintance you've vaguely known pretty much all your life but befriended only recently after a long heart-to-heart. Which is exactly what last night's conversation with S. felt like. I have her to thank for the recording that fills me with so much joy right now.

It'll be a while before I completely reconnect with the world I guess. But atleast there is this night - this magical musical marvellous night. Like there was Christmas eve. It's feels so good to be myself again.

Hold on Hope

It is cruel and unfair how we're fooled into believing in the absolute invulnerability of our parents. It is when they actually need our help that we realise that now we've grown up and they've grown old.

I wish I had learned to be more independent earlier on in life. This wud not have been so painful. Perhaps, it is a lesson that is best learned this way, heart-wrenching though it may be.

One cannot exercise control on fate. No matter how strongly you will your love to protect those you love, it cannot.

It is the most humbling thing to feel so completely helpless. Like S. told me, "Every little girl has to grow up one day." I just wish it wudnt have been this tough on me. Or perhaps, I am too weak to bear this cross without crumbling like this.

I am grateful tonight that this blog is actually this therapeutic for me. I'm a lot calmer now that I've typed this out.

Be nice! I cud be your doctor some day! :D

So, instead of making this a 'A journey ends; a journey begins' sort of a melodramatic post, just let me say, that five years, fifteen journals, hundreds of practicals and endless vivas later, I have passed my Final MBBS examination with gliding, if not flying, colours (alright, that was trying too hard, but today I'm allowed) and have earned the much-feted, much-coveted prefix of Doctor to go with my name.

My obsessive-about-etymology friend reminds me that the origin of the word doctor lies in the Latin 'Doktore' which is a rather generic term for a teacher. Our foremost purpose is to teach patients about their health and so on.

It does feel rather fantastic to earn the epithet, it actually wud've felt just as fantastic to earn any other graduate degree. However, this does feel like a milestone along a longer journey and as our professor cheerily reminded me on facebook today, "In medicine, what we learn the very first year is that the first degree isn't the last, and that there never comes a day when you shut all your books and put them away. We must remain eternal students."

Which is all very true in more than a Gandhian sense. We learn as if we live forever and live as if we have a whole storehouse of tomorrows.

Which brings me to the next bit. My seniors remind me of the dangers of postponing 'life' in order to make studying a priority. It is important to give time to one's own self and stop and do all those things that make one happy if one is to avoid a total burn-out.

How anyone ever manages to make the time is a mystery to me. But I suppose somebody will end up teaching me time management one of these days.

Now, it is post-graduation that everyone will obsess about and work themselves to exhaustion for. That's as good a goal as any, I guess. Let's see how well this year treats me.

Right now, I'm just soaking in the reflected glory of this unnaturally revered degree. And the fact that my school friends got me a T-shirt emblazoned with the words, "What's up, doc?" Atleast they were confident about my result, which is more than what I cud say about my state of nerves.

All's well that ends well, tho. And never have I been more grateful for the faith that these others have chosen to invest in me. I shall never forget it. And I shall require more along this rather long journey. Well, whaddya know? It is a 'A journey ends; a journey begins' kinda post after all. :D Wud never have guessed it starting off! But today I'm allowed. ;)

Subah ho gayi, mamu!

In the big run-up to my Final Final Final exams, we've been visiting our wards for what must be the absolute last time before we finish our degrees. Needless to say my entire batch has turned into Supreme Worrywarts and have been thronging the wards, taking cases feverishly, eliciting signs, jotting down findings.

All this has rather irritated the patients, who provide the aforementioned cases to the point of great anger. And one patient, such as the one I was examining today afternoon, to the verge of hypochondria. This poor man, fancy case of Peripheral Vascular Disease, had been examined by atleast 50 people since morning. He asked me if something was seriously wrong with him, was that why he was receiving so much attention.

I told him that all the people examining him were merely students getting some practice before the big exam day and that what he had was the condition we were likely to be asked in our examination. He looked a little flattered when I said this and a little put out by the fact that my batchmates were doctors-in-training and not doctors.

In the very first year of our clinical rotations, an exceptionally brilliant professor had clearly instructed us to let the patients continue to labour under the illusion of being treated by doctors. Or else they won't "co-operate with you guys if you tell them you're just students".

And while this may be true with some, I've found the advice of a more senior and more considerate doctor more useful. "Try to be as honest but as reassuring as you possibly can. Do not forget that that is live human flesh underneath your fingers." and "Every individual has the first right of control to his body, you as his physician only come a distant second."

I've always told the patients I deal with that I am a student and that I require their help for my study. And not one single person has ever refused. Except for I think a woman suffering from a bout of fever. But that's a lot more kindness than I wud show if I were ill.

Today, watching my batchmates auscultating chests while excitedly discussing murmurs made me wonder how we'll ever learn how to balance the affect of our excitement against the solemn bedside manner that we are expected to adopt.

I dont think I wud be right to be flippant, but I also dont think I'll ever manage to look cheerless. I wonder if people really prefer poker-faced, stoic doctors over smiling, cheerful ones becoz they believe their special conditions deserve more serious consideration.

I dont really believe I'll ever be able to pull the poker-face off. So I've given up trying. I think I'll likely end up being a doctor of the Munnabhai persuasion. :D

"He that saves one life, saves mankind entire."

So, finally my prelim examinations end on a happy note, considering that I have successfully and with a rather substantial margin, passed all my practical examinations and also hopefully, my theoretical examinations as well. This exam has taken a lot out of me, I havent slept more than three hours a day for the last, well, two weeks. And I have realised that sleep-deprivation only initially clouds your mind, but brings a strange serenity afterwards. I felt that pretty much every day these last six days but well, not constantly. My mind seems to return to its natural state of turmoil as soon as it is free from the stress of relentless reading.

So while my tired eyes are screaming for me to shut them, I must empty my mind again of thoughts and since this blog has served that purpose well in the past, I can trust that it shall do so again.

Now, that I am a mere two months away from my final MBBS qualifying examination, I feel as always the deep disquiet that accompanies the insecurity I occasionally feel about the matter of actually being able to treat real patients. I have determined that around three times out of ten I am able to reach a satisfactory diagnosis by a process of thinking that will obviously require great refinement that I hope maturity and experience will supply. I have also studied somewhat sufficiently and trust in myself to be able to devise some kind of method of management most of the time, except in emergency situations where I have found I dont possess enuff calmness to proceed without anxiety.

Today, my professor told me that he thought I was a good student and then he asked me how much I have been scoring these past few years. I told him I had scored 75% exactly in my first year, nearly 73% in my second year and a little more than 71% in third year. He smiled and said, "How much do you expect to score this year?" I replied that I just hoped to pass, which is true. He said something that I'll remember forever, I think. He said something like "Madam, if you score 75%, there is still a deficit of 25% when you're dealing with human life. Isn't that rather a lot?"

I had not thought of this. I replied that there is a certain reasonable expectation of knowledge and skill from a good doctor and I hope to reach that expectation and that is all. He said he agreed that doctors aren't superhuman computers and are bound to make mistakes, but the cost of every mistake is disproportionately high.

He wished me luck for my final examination and I walked out, quite paradoxically anxious, instead of being flooded with end-of-exam relief as I had hoped I wud be.

This was not the only incident that affected me these last several days. On the day of my surgery exam, a lady with a grossly enlarged nodular thyroid, put her warm hand on my arm when I sat down beside her to write her case down. She asked me if she was doing the right thing having the operation done becoz her family discouraged her and this scared her. I assured her that she was, and that the surgery wud help her. I sensed acutely the fear she felt when she pressed her fingers harder into my arm. I held onto her hand while I proceeded to write her case, I only left her side when the resident in charge of the exam told me the time allotted to me was up. I said to myself, I had reassured her effectively but I cannot be certain.

The second time something deeply affecting happened was in the paediatrics examination yesterday morning. Paediatrics is always hard, I find it painful to watch children suffer. It just seems so unfair. This 11 year old girl with a previous history of TB lymphadenitis had developed sudden-onset hemiplegia and motor aphasia. While I questioned her mother about how it started, the mother grew increasingly agitated as she described her ordeal in trying to get her child admitted to the hospital and how it took eleven hours for the process to be completed.

Then as I asked her about the child's development, she told me how her daughter was the most intelligent of her five children. She teared up and told me, "Meri beti kitni achchi hai. Usko aisa kyun hua? Woh abhi baat bhi nahi karti hai. Doctorsaab, woh theek ho jaayegi na?"

This really tore at my heart. I told her to be strong and that the doctors here wud do everything they cud to help her child.

I watched my batchmate who was allotted the same case, interrupt the mother repeatedly to write the history down in a hurry and I realised how easy it is to become so utterly desensitized towards another human being's agony. And how it is also easy to forget that they are human beings at all.

I have tried, all these years, to be as considerate and as kind as I possibly cud. I have watched my father and my own paediatrician interacting with their patients and I hope ardently to be as good as them some day.

I know that my conscience shall hold me forever answerable and responsible if ever I go wrong with anything. And knowing this scares me.

But I am thrilled to think that I shall help to relieve suffering, if only fractionally. I am convinced that I shall always try.

I dont know if these qualities will make me a good physician some day, but the answer is in the attempt.

When I told my best friend about these patients today, she smiled and told me, "You know why they talk with you. Becoz they can sense that you really care."

She is right. I do care. I pray I dont turn jaded or casually cruel or even rude like the few people I have seen who are that way.

At the same time, I cannot give myself over to studies entirely. I must pursue all that I love or I shall become a mean, incomplete person. I can also never ignore the deeper calling that asks me to examine philosophically the matter of suffering and death. I cannot stop myself thinking about it. I hope that I can be rational and useful inspite of it.

Please, please, the powers-that-be, please let me be successful in this much.

I really admired that Talmudic saying that is the title of this post. It was inscribed on the ring that the Jews that Schindler saved, gave to Schindler at the end of the war. I really want to believe in it.

P.S. I just read this back to myself and I think the tone is a little detached. I wonder why that is, becoz I have only sometimes experienced such turbulent emotions before. Perhaps now I shall be able to sleep.