Chapter 10

I returned from the revelry shortly after dinner, excusing myself on account of a headache

that I really had. My roommates were yet to return and they were last spotted shaking a

leg on Rumba ho. The food was unremarkable, at least to me. I tasted some of the

fancy baked dishes for the first time in my life. Out of courtesy, however, I claimed to have had

over-eaten. As I lay on my bed thinking about the evening, I felt a lump in my trouser

pocket. It was the polythene bag that I had forgotten to discard. It had crumpled into a

ball and I slowly straightened it out. ‘Rasiklal and Sons, Provisions and Gift Items,’ read

the label. It was a small, nondescript shop, a little away from our hostel. The elderly

shopkeeper had suggested, in an experienced tone, that a pen-set would be best suited.

Now I wondered what exactly he meant by best suited. Best suited for Rekha or for my

wallet? I had noticed people carrying large packets, probably from Archies or similar

swanky shops. Sunil and Achal had pooled in money to buy her a cool T-shirt. I slept

soon after and dreamt that the elderly shopkeeper from Rasiklal and Sons was at Rekha’s

party, who seemed to stare at me with stony eyes all the time.

My roommates made a loud entry, sometime after eleven, discourteously ignoring

the fact that I was fast asleep. I woke up with a start but stayed put after a slight squirm in

the bed, as they talked and laughed loudly, discussing the bash. Achal even slapped

mercilessly on my back saying something nasty about me being a lazy, sleepy bum, but I

decided against confronting the energized twosome.

“Who was that girl in the blue dress, the tall, fair one with short, boy-cut hair?” asked

Sunil, “she was staring at me all the time and even smiled once.”

“The one who constantly shadowed Rekha’s mother?” exclaimed Achal, “Hey, I thought

she stared at me all the time!”

“No,” said Sunil in a matter-of-fact tone, “she seemed interested in me and I’m going to

find out who she is. I’ll ask Rekha tomorrow.”

“For your kind information, my dear, dear Sunil, we even spoke to each other when you

were busy stuffing yourself,” said Achal. “She’s, Purnima, an Archi student. And she has

promised to see me again pretty soon so would you please lay your hands off her?”

“Like you own her?”

“Yes, I do, do you mind?”

“Fuck off.”

“You fuck off.”

Thankfully, the mindless argument ended there. A little while later, I heard Sunil’s bed

squeak under his weight. There was complete silence after that, save for Achal’s noisy

unwinding that irritated me no end. The bastard prepared hard for everything, even for

retiring for the night. Was he trying to decide what to wear to bed?

‘Purnima’, as it later turned out to be, was in fact Garima, Rekha’s distant cousin and a

B.Com student. For once, I had joined Sunil in laughing boisterously at Achal who went

red in the face, from humiliation or from anger, or both, when he learnt that a girl had

taken him for a smooth ride. “When’s the rendezvous?” asked Sunil, doubling up with

laughter. “Pooorneeemaaaah,” he sang vulgarly, clutching at his stomach.

Achal got up with a jerk and held Sunil’s wrist, giving it a powerful twist until it creaked.

“Ow!” Cried Sunil as he shook his wrist slowly, writhing with pain.

Fortunately for all of us, there was no fracture, but Sunil’s hand had to be

bandaged for a week and Achal had to do all his writing work. I volunteered to help but

Sunil would not let me interfere.

The news of the anatomy viva arrived with rumors of Chaube himself wanting to

conduct the oral exams. This was indeed remarkable, as the last time the veteran

professor himself presided over a trivial test like this was thirteen years ago when he was

still an assistant professor. His failing health had prevented him from bothering himself

with under-graduates, and he restricted himself to being, occasionally, the internal

examiner for the post-graduate exams. Extensively read, Dr. Chaube was one of the most

respected names in the field of anatomy, not only in Gujarat, but all of India. He had

several publications to his credit.

His absent-mindedness, though, was his major handicap and is rumored to have had once appeared in a lecture hall wearing only his vest. He was in the habit of wearing a lab-coat directly over his vest, without an intervening shirt, probably out of intolerance to heat. In the privacy of his office, he would get rid of the lab-coat as well, and sit wearing only a vest! On the fateful day Dr. Chaube had marched out of his chamber, without the lab-coat, straight to the lecture theatre. The students were zapped by Chaube’s forgetfulness, but the bigger shock came from Chaube’s blatant indifference to the lapse in his attire. Undeterred, he simply sent the student, who had fearfully drawn his attention to his incomplete outfit, to fetch the missing piece of apparel from his office!

One positive (or negative) aspect of Chaube conducting the viva was that there

was no point in bothering to prepare for it. Firstly, none of the books would ever have

answers to his bolt-from-the-blue questions; and secondly, the students who thought they

performed exceptionally well got disgraceful marks from him as frequently as did the

laggards receive accolades.

The anatomy viva was to be conducted in the dissection hall, and the

anatomy department was famous (or notorious) for treating with same fervor, any kind of

assessment, be it the first of  many, petty periodic vivas for the juvenile students from I/I,

or the tension-filled, deciding practical exams for the post-graduate students for the

degree of Master of Surgery in Anatomy.

The sundry staff of the department had worked overtime to give the butchery a

new look. The doors and windows had deep green, linen curtains that appeared worn out

with parts of them blemished with visible holes, suggesting that they had witnessed

innumerable exams before this one. The humdrum odor of formalin had been

successfully overpowered by a pleasant fragrance from a multitude of simmering incense

sticks tucked in nooks and corners all over the hall. Save for a single cadaver, whose

right upper limb had been fully dissected, the rest of the bodies, including our own

Shanti, had disappeared. A flower vase holding a bunch of fresh daffodils was placed on

the foot-end of the table that held the body. Part of the whole effort must have been a

result of Chaube’s decision to personally conduct the viva.

For the same reason, all of us had taken care to wash, starch and iron our lab-coats.

The whole of our batch was made to sit inside the hall, on chairs placed in one

corner. The usual exuberance was missing and everyone sat in stony silence, as if

attending a funeral. One by one, we were supposed to go to the viva table and offer

ourselves at the altar, in full view of the rest of the bunch. Once finished with the test, the

student was supposed to exit from the far door, without glancing back. As if anyone

would have the heart or the face to do so.

After Sunil and Pankaj, it was my turn. Chaube had spent an exceptionally long

time with Pankaj. Though they sat beyond earshot, their animated gestures suggested that

Chaube was perhaps happy with him.

As soon as I sat at the table, Chaube, without even looking at me, got up and left.

I looked at the peon, who, momentarily mute from paan filled in his mouth, shyly lifted

the little finger of his right hand to indicate that the prof had gone for a leak.

‘Sahab ko prostate ka takleef hai’, he said with a smile after spitting out the paan in the

sink, ‘aur zara jaldi thak jaate hain’.

Oh, yeah, I thought.

Chaube returned after about five minutes, during which time, I considered, twice, picking

up the pencil and filling my own marks on the sheet and exiting quietly from the far door.

The old man probably suffered from Alzheimer’s, too, and wouldn’t remember the

students he’d actually been through with. Perhaps the look on the old Bihari peon’s face

held me back.

Unmindful of my presence, Chaube settled in his chair and pulled out a

newspaper from the roomy pocket of his lab-coat and started reading it, much to my

dismay. I glanced back at my colleagues who shrugged in bewilderment. I looked at the

peon who raised both his hands, like a saint, asking me to be patient. A few minutes

passed and when nothing happened, the peon bent forwards and gently murmured in his

ear.

Chaube took his time to fold the newspaper as scrupulously as he could and laid it

down on the legs of the corpse. He adjusted his specs and scanned my face and stared at my name embroidered on the lab-coat pocket for a few seconds before asking, “Ajay Kumar? Is Kumar your surname?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What kind of surname is this? Is Kumar not supposed to be a middle name, like in..er..

Kishore Kumar Ganguly?”

“I don’t know, sir, I’ve used it as my surname all my life.”

He considered my answer and asked, “Do you think Kumar could be a distortion of the

Hindi word Kumhar, meaning a potter? Were your fore-fathers potters?”

I don’t know, sir, and I couldn’t care less. Could you please get on with the viva?

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You don’t seem to know anything. Sad.”

He paused for a moment before saying, in a dissatisfied tone, “That will be all, you may

leave now.”

Leave? What did my surname, or the lack of my in-depth knowledge about my ancestry,

have anything to do with my Anatomy viva?

The peon returned to my rescue and bent over once again to Chaube’s ears.

“Sahab, abhi bhaiva (viva in Bihari) baki hai.”

Chaube killed his embarrassment, if he felt it at all, by dismissing the peon with a

firm wave of his hand. The peon withdrew, unaffected, probably because he knew his

boss like the back of his hand. I prepared for the worst as I somehow felt that my

examiner was going to be brutal with me. I was right.

Chaube quickly lit a cigarette and took in a deep puff. He was, however,

courteous enough to turn his face away to exhale. But now I think he was perhaps being

chivalrous to the corpse. I might not have meant anything to him. He didn’t say anything

for a while and took in a few more rapid puffs watching in curious anticipation with

squinted eyes, the gradual lengthening chunk of ash at the simmering end of his cigarette.

I think he just stopped short of congratulating himself for the effort. Then he brought the

cigarette right over the cadaver’s arm, and with a mild tap of his index finger, dropped

the centimeter long ash on the dissected limb. He watched it going astray from his target,

owing to the fan breeze, but it didn’t matter to him. “Identify the structure,” he said

listlessly. The piece of ash from the cigarette butt had, thankfully, fragmented and fallen on three

different structures, something that allowed me to choose a structure I knew fairly well

about.

“That’s the Coracobrachialis muscle, sir.” I said confidently.

He bent forward to inspect if a piece of ash had indeed fallen on the muscle, and smiled

at my cleverness. Suddenly, he laughed out loud, coughing violently in the process, and

getting red in the face from congestion. He then paused for breath before going on to grill

me, slowly and pitilessly, with such hair-splitting detail on Coracobrachialis muscle that I

was sorry I took up medicine in the first place.

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