“Doctor”,
“Engineer”, “Cricketer”,“Engineer”, “rich”,“Bigger” (!),“astronaut”,
“cosmonaut” (The cold war was very much on those days)“Fire-engine driver”,
“Policeman” (I suppose that should be ‘police-person’ in this age of gender
equality, but in those uncomplicated days none of the girl students were
particularly interested in this
particular profession anyway)……..more or less standard answers you would expect
from any bunch of eight year olds, even now.
I believe that
when it comes to the ‘“What do you want to become when you grow up?”most of us grow up with vague, very attractive, mostly unachievable dreams of being some kind
of celebrity in the future – successful
film star, captain of the Indian cricket team who is part-time captain of the
football team, who is part-time boyfriend to the latest pretty young thing in
Bollywood also, prime minister of a
non-coalition government, etc. etc….simple
and clear concepts. Later at a certain
age when your abstract thinking skills are more developed (i.e ‘you see the
light’) you bring down your expectations and start thinking more realistically.
This is the first ‘eureka’ moment .Now you start thinking on the lines of the
standard job-sets – doctor ,engineer ,lawyer etc. etc. You gradually realize
that you (or your parents J)
have a preference for one of these standard job types and you work towards
‘becoming’ a doctor or engineer or whatever…..
If you are
really lucky sometimes you have that second ‘eureka’ moment in life, when you
realize what is that you have a real
passion for. It might come before or after you venture into one of the more
mundane ‘standard’ jobs .Unfortunately out
of the lucky few who experience this great moment, fewer still have the guts to
throw caution to the winds and take flight with their dreams.
Now if you’re
thinking you’re in for a bit of the Arindam Chaudury- ‘discover the diamond in you’ thing or some similar crazy pep psychology thing.....don’t worry…the
idea was only to get it across to you that I too had at least one of these ‘eureka’
moments’. The defining moment was around the tenth grade when I had to
reluctantly visit a dermatologist for a very neglected , very scratchy ,very
ugly fungal infection in an
unmentionable area. I had to wait a couple of hours before I could meet a certain Dr B . I being
me, divided the time judiciously to
ogle at 1) The sleak and shiny Mercedes
idling away in the garage of his palatial
home cum consulting space 2) More importantly at the impressive line of not
–so-bad looking female patients waiting in the reception area. Finally when my
turn came, the good doctor took 2 minutes and 200 bucks , gave me a list of
medicines, and asked me to come back
after two weeks ( I assume with another
200 bucks, though it was not mentioned explicitly in his prescription).Anyhow I
luckily got better much before the 2 weeks periods, and so skipped a review. However
now I knew what to do with my life -
Merc + 200bucks for a 2 minute consult + loads of female patients (many of them
pimply maybe, but female all the same) + (best part) I get to
treat my own ugly fungal infections by
myself –Eureka!!! I wanted to be a
dermatologist – the small problem was
that apparently you needed to graduate in medicine before you get to
specialize in dermatology……………..and with that
began a rather interesting journey which saw me catapulted into the
hallowed hallways of the Government Medical College , Trivandrum.
I was recently
going through an old poll – year 2000 vintage on our batch e-groups site, which
was basically something vaguely on the
lines of ‘which specialty would you opt for’. We were of course freshly out of
our internship ….full time into what we medicos label adoringly as ‘entrance
thoyilalism’ (for non-doctors and non-mallus: ‘Thoyilali’ means ‘worker’ or
‘employee’ in Malayalam. This wonderful period entails full time employment
involving extensive ‘re-roting’ of all the bulky, highly detested text-books
right from day 1 of medical school. The objective is to score well enough in
the post-graduate entrance exams so that in time you can get some kind of
specialization and add the hallowed MD/MS suffix somewhere behind the not so
much hallowed MBBS alone thing)
Interestingly about 50% of the responders to
this pre-historic poll actually did end up doing what they wanted to do……at
least in terms of choosing their specialty. Some of them did absolutely
fantastic U-turns though…..I know one guy who insisted that he would never be a
surgeon coz of some vague tremor while holding surgical instruments. The guy is
now a hot-shot surgeon. Another close
friend changed courses around four times to finally reach a stage where he is
one of the best in his field.
However when it
comes to having long term, specific goals, I can think of two extreme cases in
our class.
The first guy
happened to be sitting right next to me on the first day of our MBBS course.
That was when the deceivingly maternal looking Dr Glorine Gnanathankam, HOD,
Physiology entered the classroom flashing a disarming smile (the ‘maternal’ image got pretty well
shredded after our first couple of exams when a lot of us were initiated into one of the
fundamentals of medical education…no study, no marks!) The good lady asked the
eager crowd of freshers the ‘what do you want to be in the future’ thing. I
was actually expecting people to come up
with stupid Ms World kinda answers –
“Start a charity hospital”, “Serve rural India”….and other such obvious
hogwash. All of a sudden the spectacled, moustached, fidgety, Tam- Bram guy
next to me jumps up over eagerly and shouts “Neurosurgeon!!”
Duh?! Dude…first
day of class and you’ve managed to award
yourself ‘overeager nerd of the year’. I was trying to pull him down so that
the damage could be controlled, but if I remember right he also simply had to
explain the why’s and the wherefore’s about his ambitions too. Anyway I think not many believed him of course at that time,
but 20 years down the line Dr Gopalakrishan CV happens to be a proud and successful
neurosurgeon……..at present in Canada for some kind of hi-fi post-doc
fellowship.
At the other
extreme is a guy who I believe spent a lot of time getting confused (and
successfully confusing others too!) over
the broader question of whether to go for a medical specialty or a surgical
specialty (He was confused about a lot of things in general I suppose…right
from girlfriends to specialties)…and finally at the end of it all the guy ends
up as one of the CAT toppers and goes into IIM Ahmedabad. The last time I met
him he was not talking in English or Malayalam, but pure unadulterated ‘Financialese’…….all about
stock options, recession-proofing, fiscal deficits and what not. I obviously
didn’t understand the language, but what I did understand that in the near
future when we poor souls who stayed on with the Hippocratic oath thing, will
be thinking about upgrading our old cars, he is going to be thinking of
upgrading his private yacht. Hari G at present happens to be minting money at a
very senior post in a famous multinational private equity company.
On the whole I
suppose most of us ended up kind of happy, doing what we wanted to do. I don’t
have a specific count but I think there are virtually all clinical and
non-clinical specialties represented in our batch and almost everybody seems to
be doing quite well in his/her chosen field. Basically it means that during the
upcoming reunion any medical problem cropping up should not be an issue –
whether it is itchy rashes or hemorrhoids. So ultimately as goes the famous
statement –“If people could make
penicillin out of stale bread, we could surely make something out of ourselves”
