Chapter 14

My birthday on October 10 was going to be in the middle of the first terminal exams. The

notice on the bulletin board said that theory exams for the four subjects were to be held four days in a row- Monday through Thursday, something that left most of us petrified. So much had been

covered in each subject that it was impossible to even flip through every page of the

topics covered in a single night. Much, therefore, depended on one’s efforts through the

term, and the attention one paid during the lectures. I, for one, lagged both ways. The

practicals were thankfully scheduled with a day’s gap after the theory, starting Saturday,

giving me some respite. My birthday was to fall on the day of the last theory paper -

PSM, and I was not able to decide if it would be better for me if no one remembered the

occasion. I wanted it both ways: I wanted people to remember my birthday and show that

they cared; and I wanted them to forget it so that I could escape from treating them.

Rekha’s bash had not been duplicated, even by the day scholars, and a high-tea at Kalyan

after the afternoon session at the college had come to be the trademark birthday gala.

Birthdays had been discussed on several instances in our batch, and people were often

analyzed for their idiosyncrasies and other traits according to their zodiac signs. I was

often addressed as ‘that Libran’ by my batch-mates, especially by the girls. I don’t know

if it was because they caught a ray of Libran charm in me or because I reminded them of

the typical Libran ambiguity about everything under the sun.

We had more than a month to prepare for the exams and though everyone knew this was

coming, no one cared two hoots about it until the official notice was put up. I had to start

by ascertaining the depth (or superficiality) of my knowledge in each subject. In the end,

I deduced that I needed to read from the first word if I ever hoped to see myself through.

My performance in the sporadic oral tests in the past few months had not been worth

writing home about. Therefore, I saw the coming exams as my chance to salvage some

pride. And I vowed to give it my best shot, Kedar et. al. notwithstanding.

The change was tangible. Our room ceased to be the lively little den that it had gotten to

be, of late. The guffaws went missing and the screams, squeals and catcalls turned silent.

Achal’s quips and Sunil’s nonstop chatter were conspicuous by their absence. The

neighboring engineering guys stopped coming over for casual gossip. Gone were the

long, lazy dinners; as were the extended tea sessions at Manjunath’s. Newspapers were

not read, TV was not watched, movies were not discussed and girls were forgotten.

Table-lamps were procured and alarm clocks tallied and wound often. It was like every

man for himself and all three of us buried ourselves in books like never before. The

occasional chat among us would invariably be brief, to the point, and in considerate

whispers; like, asking to be woken up at a particular time, or if the clock had been wound

properly. Achal preferred to grind away late into the nights, while Sunil and I slept early

to start an early day: sometimes as early as three a.m.. Many times, Achal slept only after

waking us up. Getting up with great difficulty, we would envy seeing Achal retiring after

a night’s slog. Each time this happened I vowed to study by the night, with Achal, but

this never happened. A visit to the library was the most extravagant excursion we could

afford, and we often shuttled between the room and the library to fight monotony.

Lecture halls were constantly filled with sleepy faces and the practicals were attended

more often to make sure that the examiners recognized our faces during the exams. There

were journals to be completed and assignments to be finished. If the toil for first terminal

exams were any indication of the times to come, we shuddered to think of our plight

during the final exams.

A week went by and we were happy with the way things were going. The slogging did

not exactly exhilarate us, but we were constantly filled up with a miniscule bit of triumph

each day for winning over a few more pages of a Guyton or a Chaurasia.

As I returned hurriedly from the mess after a quick dinner, one evening, I was intercepted

in the lobby by the hostel servant, Panicker, more fondly known as Pani. He said

someone wanted to see me in the common room.

“Bug off, Pani,” I said, “I got exams, and I am not seeing anyone right now.”

“It is Kedar saab,” said Pani; and I froze.

I paused for a while and slowly retraced my steps a few feet behind, to reach the common

room door. It was closed and I looked at Pani again. With a strong wave of his hand he

urged me to push the door and enter. He had his orders and was not going to budge from

where he stood till I went inside.

I pushed open the door and loud music from the television filled my ears. I entered and

moved towards the TV set that faced me. Chairs had been placed facing the TV set and I

noticed that only one chair was occupied in the entire room - by Kedar. The light shone

from behind me and as I walked in, my shadow lengthened to surpass him. Getting the

cue, he picked up the remote and quickly turned off the TV. The sudden silence brought a

weird eeriness to the room. I stood there with a sense of stubbornness, ready to face the

mighty Kedar. I was happy with myself for not letting his terror hinder my studies at all.

Maybe I had become thick-skinned, but it was about time.

“Sit down, doc,” he said, in a deep, throaty voice, from his chair.

“What is it, Kedar, I need to study for my exams,” I said calmly, taking a seat beside him.

He turned sharply to face me for the first time since we were together in the room. My

fearlessness had caught him unawares. And I had addressed him by his name for the first

time. There was a pause as he fiddled with the remote for what seemed like ages. Kedar

was not Rambo. Kedar was Kedar, and my heart started hammering relentlessly in my

chest. I was gripped with sudden fright and I fought hard to prevent it from spilling all

over my face.

“First term exams, eh? Anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and….. er, one more, right?”

“Right, and that’s a lot of work,” I said ignoring his attempt to bully me with his ‘knowall’

attitude.

He looked at me in a laid-back manner and sluggishly fished out a thin bundle of

currency notes from his hip pocket. He counted some notes and threw them on my lap.

“What’s this?” I asked, shocked.

“That’s money, stupid,” he said and laughed with much vile.

“I can see that. Why are you giving it to me?” I was getting genuinely angry.

“That’s for the work you did for us. And for the work that you’ll do for us.”

I stood up without touching the money and let the currency notes slip from my lap to the

floor. Mild wind from the fan scattered the loose notes across a few feet.

“I’m not going to do anything illegal for you.” I said.

Kedar gazed at the notes on the floor for a moment and said, waving his hands indolently,

“Sit down, doc, be at ease, sit down.”

The pulse on my temples pounded hard, as I breathed heavily. I stood there for a few

seconds before reclaiming my seat.

“What’s illegal, Ajay?” asked Kedar, in a philosophic tone, bending over to close up on

me.

“Stealing is illegal; not only illegal, it’s immoral.”

“You think that trying to give a painless life to a terminal cancer patient is illegal?”

“No, it’s not; but the way we’re doing it is illegal. You can take your friend to a cancer

surgeon and get him treated. For God’s sake, he needs expert medical treatment, and

you’re sitting here, waiting for him to die?”

“We’ve talked about the circumstances, before.”

“Yes, we did. But I’ve decided to stop stealing injections for you.”

“You think the mighty SSGH will become any poorer by losing some ampoules of a

pain-killing injection?”

“It’s not the question of what or how much. It’s about how.”

“Cut the crap, son!” boomed Kedar, getting up from his seat, “you’re not doing yourself

any good by refusing to co-operate with us.” He held a pointed finger close to my face as

he said the last words before stomping out of the room, banging the door hard on his way

out.

I collected the currency notes that lay strewn all over the place and walked out. On my

way to the room, I met Pani and gave him the money to be returned to Kedar.

I lost a few hours of studies and sleep over the rendezvous with Kedar but that was all.

Before late, I was back to myself; letting only my studies bother me.

The rest of the journey to the first term exams was uneventful for all three of us. If you

can call a botched attempt at smoking as uneventful, that is. Library, college and hostel

remained the only destinations. I skipped my fortnightly trip home and my parents sent

me their best wishes. Sunil’s parents had thoughtfully sent across a large supply of

healthy snacks for us to kill hunger at odd hours. Achal was particularly fond of a

midnight nibble, and on several occasions he disturbed our sleep with his noisy

munching.

The small verandah that was attached to our room was a single, large area that included

the backyard of our neighboring room, too. Thus, every two adjacent rooms had a

common verandah. Our neighbors were three guys from the mechanical engineering

department, a year senior to us. They were quite decent and we often mingled with each

other. Achal fascinated them with fabricated tales of his escapades with girls at Medical

College and the boys from the girl-starved faculty of engineering were left drooling,

much to our amusement.

It was around one am when Achal shook me awake from deep slumber. I got irritated and

cursed him for waking me two hours too early.

“You’re supposed to wake us up at three am, you stupid, it’s only one o’clock right

now!” I said sleepily.

Sunil snored heavily at the moment and Achal rudely woke him up too.

“What nonsense is this, you idiot!” said Sunil angrily, “you know where the snack jar is.

Help yourself, you monster, I’m not hungry.” Said Sunil and turned back to sleep.

Unperturbed by the flurry of insults, Achal said eagerly, “Hey guys, this is not about

food. Get up; I’ve got something really exciting!”

“It better be,” said Sunil, getting up with great difficulty, struggling to keep his puffy

eyes open, “because if it’s not, I’ll give you a sock!”

“Relax, guys, come out here!” Achal pointed towards the verandah.

Sunil and me looked at each other and shook our heads in synchrony. We knew Achal

would not let us sleep till we became an audience to, and applauded, whatever he had to

display. So what if it was in the middle of the night. The guy had this natural ability to be

a pain in the wrong places. He was born with the knack, perhaps. We wearily followed

him to the verandah where a gush of cold wind hit our faces. The atmosphere had become

cool from the bout of rain late last evening. However, a strange, pungent smell tainted

the pleasant aroma of wet, raw earth. Dodging an array of old and discarded furniture,

most of which belonged to the inconsiderate former occupants of the room who had left

the trash behind, we made our way to the area of the verandah that lay exactly behind the

adjacent rooms’ backdoor.

Varun and Anil, two of our neighbors, sat on wooden chairs, reading for their own

forthcoming tests.

“Hi Ajay, how’s life?” chirped Anil, closing a book, “looks like you guys are set to topscore

this time round.” He was fully awake and probably had not slept at all. I could not

decide if this was a taunt from him, because he was aware of my past performances.

“You woke us up at this hour to get an update on our preparations?” snapped Sunil. It

was rare for Sunil to be impolite, but I could understand his annoyance at the moment.

“Relax, guys,” Achal came to Anil’s rescue, “look, I got these!” he gushed with childish

mirth as he whipped out three cigarettes from his shirt pocket.

Now I knew the source of the strange smell: Cigarette smoke!

“Where did you get these? Have you been smoking?” said a visibly shocked Sunil, as I

stood perplexed.

“I haven’t smoked…yet,” said Achal, “but I’ve borrowed these from Varun for exactly

that purpose. Look, we guys have to do a lot of late nights. It’s so difficult to stay awake

at times. This will help in fighting drowsiness, and in staying alert and attentive. It’s a

stimulant, guys, we need it!”

“We don’t need it!” barked Sunil, “We are medical students, guys. We’re supposed to

know all the ill-effects of smoking and we’re expected to preach people against it.”

“All that applies to people who are addicted to this thing, people who smoke ten to

twenty fags a day; we’ll just take a puff or two, that’s all.” Achal defended himself.

“And how do you think addicts get into the habit? No one is a born smoker; every addict

starts with a puff or two and then gets hooked on.”

“C’mon, this is not cocaine or heroin, it’s just a plain and legal cigarette!”

I tried to break the argument. “You smoke regularly, Varun?” I asked.

“No, no, guys! Just once in a while,” said Varun, a bit sheepishly, probably feeling guilty

by now for starting a row.

I’d like to make a confession here. My father never smoked. At least he never smoked in

front of me. Many times he smelt of stale tobacco when he returned form office but I let

that pass. I, on the other hand, relished the second hand smoke that came my way in

trains, buses or other crowded places. On several occasions I longed for a puff myself,

but never got a real chance. Or maybe I was too coy to embark upon such an adventure

all by myself. And I kept secretly waiting for an errant pal who could initiate the risky

process of procuring and smoking a cigarette or a beedi, anything that spewed tobacco

smoke.

So I acted nonchalant and quietly watched the proceedings. Sunil trudged back to the

room and shut the door with a thump. Achal shrugged him off and handed out a cigarette

to me. I held it between the index and middle fingers and it was as if I jumped many

years in a flash; I felt grown up, felt macho. I took time to inspect the mark of manliness

in my hands and smiled within. I did not need a fag to stay awake, but I still longed to

take a deep, filling puff; and ride the world. Achal and Varun quickly held their cigarettes

between their lips and Anil struck a match. I hurriedly dittoed them and carried my face

close to the light. I waited for the combustion to take place quickly since I felt the heat

mounting on my face. As soon as the end of the fag started simmering, I pulled back,

took in a deep puff and followed it up with a deep breath through the nose. The smoke

filled my lungs and they reacted sharply with a violent cough reflex, throwing out the

mixture of obnoxious gases from within. I know not when the cigarette fell off from my

hands because I must have coughed for three to four minutes at a stretch. At the end of it

all, my eyes and nose were watering profusely. My chest ached from the forced exercise

and I felt faint, fatigued. I sat down on a chair and when I regained some senses, I

realized that Achal still held his own cigarette in his hands, unlit.