Chapter 02

Most of the first evening at the hostel was spent on setting up the room. Though Achal

and Sunil talked mostly among themselves, they were considerate and tried to involve me

in their conversations. It was soon evident that they both had had better lives than me.

Sunil was about 5'8", fair and plump. His chubby body was, perhaps, a result of years of

parental pampering. His pleasant, round face with straight, black hair neatly combed in a

side parting, gave him a cherubic look. A happy, buxom Punjabi, I decided. His face

vaguely resembled that of a young Sunil Dutt. Achal was taller- almost six feet, slightly

tanned, and muscular. He had high cheekbones, a sharp, chiseled nose and short, curly

hair. A kind of guy who would easily impress the girls. The bastard, I thought.

The next day was going to be the first real day at the college- lectures,

schedules - the works. So we all went to bed straight after dinner. I had mine at the mess

while Achal and Sunil binged on the delicacies packed for them by their moms. They

offered to share their meals with me but since I did not find the offer very sincere, I politely

declined.

College started sharp at nine and the whole class was in the lecture hall much

before time. The cacophony was deafening and though I sat next to Brij on the last but

one row, we could hardly talk to each other, even when we spoke in raised voices. I told

Brij about hostel and my roommates, both of whom were sitting in the

second row from the front.

“Arrogant Rosarites?” asked Brij when I finished describing them.

“Not really, they seem to be nice.”

As the chatter in the hall died down, everyone noticed a plump man on the

podium with a bunch of papers - a rather large bunch of papers. “Good morning,

children.” Children? Instinctively, I ran my fingers through the sparse, virgin sprout

on my chin.

“Good morning, sir,” chanted everyone in chorus, copying his tone.

“I am Dr. SV Jivani, tutor in anatomy. I have with me your schedule for the first MBBS

course. This includes lecture schedules for all the four subjects you’ll be studying. Also

included are the schedules for the vivas and the term exams in each subject. Am I clear?”

He didn’t exactly wait for an answer and started distributing the schedule. “Pass this on,

please,” he said, thumping the bunch in front of the nearest student, before marching out

of the hall.

For the next ten minutes, everyone discussed the schedule and the chatter got

littered with oohs, aahs and the odd squeal from the girls. Obviously, this was an MBBS

course schedule, not a lowly 12th class one.

At that moment, Dr. Beena Mehta barged into the lecture hall with a peon tagging

along. Everyone stood up and she gestured for us to sit down. The peon left after cleaning

up the blackboard and arranging things on the table. For the next ten minutes she gave us

a brief introduction to physiology and why its study was important.

“Physiology is the study of the functioning of the human body. It is about how the

various systems in our body function in co-ordination with each other: The respiratory

system, the cardio-vascular system, the blood, the renal system, and so on. First, we shall

start with the physiology of blood."

Blood, first. How exciting, I thought, like First blood?

Thereafter, for one full hour, she spoke on the production and composition of

blood, the various types of cells in it and their importance. Most of the students, including yours

truly, tried to take notes but couldn’t keep pace with Dr. Mehta’s rapid talk. We then tried

to listen and grasp her lecture but we couldn’t make much of that either. The first lecture in the Medical College went over the heads and left most of us dizzy. Dr. Mehta seemed to guess our

plight. She had been teaching for years, after all. "It is better to pay attention and try to

understand what I say in class," she said, "There is no need for you to write every word

that I utter. You might experience difficulty in following the lectures initially, but if you

keep reading your books, you'll be able to comprehend faster. That'll be all for today."

She threw away the chalk carelessly on the table and left. There was a collective groan

from the students. I'm sure most of them vowed to open up Guyton's physiology asap.

The next lecture was Anatomy. Some of the students were stretching and

yawning, when Professor Chaube entered with a shuffling gait. He was a short man, 58

years old, but looked older with his silver hair, wrinkled face, bow-legs and all. He wore

thick glasses through which his eyes appeared enormous. His stained teeth and tanned

lips betrayed years of smoking.

“Anatomy is often simply defined as the science concerned with the study of the

structure of biological organisms. Indeed, such a definition is typical of most

dictionaries. The term anatomy itself has a Greek origin that means "to cut up" or "to

dissect,” said Professor Chaube, or, seemed to say. It was not that Gagan and Parul hadn’t

warned us about his slurred speech, but I’m sure no one could make out anything of what

Chaube just spoke. For the next one hour, Prof Chaube did what he had done all his life-

He gave a long, monotonous and absolutely boring lecture. It was amazing that most of

us were still awake when Chaube's verbal assault ended. I sketched his

caricatures to stay awake and Brij appreciated my effort. On waking up, that is.

"At least you did something constructive," he said, stretching himself.

No one knew when Chaube left, not that anyone really cared.

The dissection hall was huge, almost covering three-fourths of the entire left wing

on the second floor. Beyond the dissection hall on the floor were the demonstration rooms,

Chaube's office, a small anatomy museum, a store and a staff room. There were two

entrances to the dissection hall, one at each end. Several tall windows on the opposite wall of the hall looked out to the morgue on the ground floor below. The walls of the hall had seven feet

of white ceramic tile skirting and the remaining portions of the walls were oil-painted in light cream. Large flakes of paint peeled off the walls at several places. Ten old-fashioned fans, suspended from the high ceiling with long iron pipes, shook precariously while running at modest speeds. The entire hall was filled with fourteen white ironstone china platforms, each seven feet long and three feet wide, curved on the head end. On those platforms lay fourteen shriveled corpses- bodies of dead men and women, so thinned out that they seemed to be just skin and bones. The pungent smell of formalin filled the air, forcing the students to grimace

and cover their noses with handkerchiefs. We were divided in batches of tens, according

to roll numbers, and each batch was allotted a body. My batch of ten students included

Sunil and Achal. Brij was in another batch. We gathered around the platform on which

lay 'our' body. No one said anything and we all simply stared at the corpse. It was a

woman who must have been around 60 when she died. She lay there like a defaced statue,

naked. Her eyes and mouth were half open and a drop of formalin oozed from one nostril.

She was so emaciated that one could count her bones. Her skin was wrinkled and the

scalp had very sparse, short hair. On her left arm was a small, fading tattoo that read

'Shanti' in Hindi. So our body now had a name - Shanti. She perhaps led a life of a beggar

and no one claimed her body when she died. It was spine chilling to realize that Shanti

must have been, at some point in time, someone's daughter, sister, wife, mother... she

must have had a family.

Jivani Sir was our tutor for the dissections. He came and sat on a chair near the platform

and we encircled him. He was a thickset man of medium height with dark complexion.

Thick, well-oiled hair with mild curls had grown to cover his ears. The sideburns reached

the angle of his jaws. A well-trimmed moustache curved sharply downwards at the

corners of his meaty lips. His shirt was so tight at his bulging paunch that it opened up between buttons to reveal his vest. He wore his pants so high that his belt kissed his rib cage. In all, he

looked like a villain from south-Indian films.

“I hope you all are carrying Cunningham’s Manual, your guide to good dissection.” He

said.

Then what are you here for, smart-ass?

As if he read my mind, he said, “I’m here only to solve your problems if you encounter

any. Otherwise, you’re to follow the steps in the manual and carry on with the dissection.

However, I’ll help you make a start.”

He brought out two sets of scalpels and toothed forceps. He handed one to Achal and

with the other, got ready to start the dissection. He stood and bent over the body and, with

practiced precision, made a neat incision in the middle of the chest. At that moment we

heard a thud. A girl had fainted and slumped. Luckily, she was not hurt but needed to be

brought to by elevating her legs and sprinkling water on her face. “I’m…I’m sorry,” she

said, embarrassed, as she regained consciousness.

Jivani grinned, “I’d have been surprised if this hadn’t happened. This is a regular feature

with the freshers.”

It was almost as if Jivani enjoyed every bit of this. I hated him instantly.

The girl recovered fast and we set off with our dissection. Jivani was quick - skin,

superficial fascia, deep fascia, muscles, cutaneous nerves, arteries and veins. He showed

how each one looked like and instructed us to hunt for various similar structures in the

vicinity. He made sure each that one of us had an open Cunningham’s Manual before he

left, for ‘a pressing work’.

Well, having tea and a smoke at the canteen was ‘pressing’ for him.

The interest in dissection lasted seventeen minutes or so for most of us. At the end of

nineteen, only three of us cared for the butchery. The rest started a slow, but steady chat.

Of course, with the manual open in the laps. It was the first time our batch was together

and so there was a brief, formal introduction session. Pankaj, Arun and Manoj were

schoolmates from Baroda High School. Murli and Kavita were from Nadiad. Priya and

Rekha were from Baroda too but from different schools. I sat next to Priya. She was

about my height, had a pleasant face with a flawless, wheatish complexion, with big,

black eyes that were delicately touched up with kajal. Her straight, shiny hair were tied

up in a ponytail and she wore small, golden earrings. She wore a salwar suit and

repeatedly adjusted her dupatta. Her dress was kind of loose, but I could make out that

she owned a full figure. Needless to say, I found her very attractive. The other guys in the

batch weren’t blind either. Achal and Sunil were already in animated conversation with

her. Achal was more flirtatious of the two and he soon dominated the talk. He made

funny poses and Priya laughed in response. Sunil tried hard to make his presence felt but

fell woefully short of charm. I felt sorry for him. His interest in dissection suddenly got

rekindled and he returned to join the few of us who still dug on Shanti. As my attention

drifted away from Priya and Achal, I suddenly became aware of the din across the hall.

Two tutors sat indifferently at a central table, talking and reading newspapers.

The only quiet people in the hall lay dutifully naked on the dissection tables, fully committed to

medical education, allowing their bodies to be cut open, paving way for the budding doctors…

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