Those enchanted four and half years

Chapter 6

For the next 4-5 days, the only topic of discussion in college, as well as hostel, was Freshers eve. Whenever we walked in the campus, one or the other girl pointed out some senior guy and whispered, "This was the guy who proposed to me," or, "This guy took my intro for more than 40 min," or, "This guy is my latest crush!"

Simultaneously our syllabus was progressing at a very fast speed. Anatomy had gone beyond general anatomy and reached embryology. Our left hand finger tips were covered with healing pinprick marks as now we had covered measurement of counts of various blood cells. Biochemistry practical was really horrible, as described by Avinash. Our tutor, popularly called 'Zombie', spoke like a robot, and made the boring practical more dull. Our practical was always eventful. I had set a record by breaking at least one test-tube/ cover slip/ pipette per class.

The most fun-filled session used to be dissection. On our table, only I and Savita were interested in dissecting. All others were bookworms. As we were not allowed any other book inside, they would bring the anatomy textbook 'Chaurasia' hidden underneath their aprons and read during dissection while I and Savita would be busy dissecting. Once we had exposed the scheduled structure, they would just take a look, and on top of that, pass some comments on our poor quality of dissection.

The names of various muscles were very hard to remember – PECTORALIS MAJOR, PECTORALIS MINOR, LATTISSIMUS DORSI, STERNOCLEIDOMASTOID, SARTORIUS, QUADRATUS LOMBORUM, ABDUCTOR DIGITI MI NIMI etc etc etc! Dr. Divya would come with a forceps in her hand. She would randomly pick up any muscle from the body and ask us to name it; and we were always confused and would make mistakes. That would give her reason to scold us for not reading. One day, Yash tore the brown cover from his book and made it into a small roll. He placed the roll between the tendons of two fingers of the hand of the cadaver. Savita was busy mugging the names of muscles loudly. He pointed to the paper roll and said, "Savita you have missed this muscle. Its name is Paperallis Rollis." And sure enough, Savita started mugging this name too. By the time she realized that it was just a paper roll, we were all rolling with laughter!

Sufee's cadaver was always in limelight. Every alternate day, they would find some rarest anatomical variation or congenital anomaly in the body, e.g. some vein would have aberrant course, both the kidneys would be on one side, heart would be on the right side. Then the anatomy residents would bring a photographer, who would take snaps of the rare anomalies, and almost all organs would be sent to the anatomy museum.

One day Dr. Divya was teaching us about liver. The abdomen of our cadaver had been dissected open, and she had placed the liver specimen in a tray. She was describing various surfaces of the liver. I was looking at the specimen. My head suddenly felt light, and then my vision was blank. All I could see was dark. I heard ringing in my ears. This must have happened within seconds, and as I regained my consciousness and opened my eyes, I found myself lying on the floor, supported by Savita and Arun, with a big crowd overlooking me. I had fainted! Dr. Divya gave me some glucose water to drink. By then, Dr.Tilak came. He felt my pulse and asked me to get up slowly. I was taken into the side room and made to lie on the bed. My mind was still muddles. "Have you had your lunch?" he asked me. "No Sir...I was getting late...," I muttered. "Never skip meals," he told me. "Don't worry, it must be a simple vasovagal attack, she was empty stomach. You have already given her glucose water. Just make her comfortable, loosen the buttons of her apron and empty the contents of her pocket," Dr.Tilak instructed Dr. Divya. My head was still heavy. I fell asleep. As I woke up half an hour later, I saw Savita sitting at my foot end and Arun and Vivek standing beside were laughing.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Look what treasure they emptied from your pockets, that too in front of Dr.Tilak!" Arun said.