No Longer BekarAnand Philip's Blog

This is a letter i wrote to a friend after my final year MBBS exams, I had just failed the exam. dated late 2006

Right after I finished my theory exams I made plans for what to do with the extra six months I was sure to get. Surgery was bad, pediatrics was impossible and I knew there was no way someone could read my paper and give me 50%. Then I forgot about the plans temporarily because I had practicals. They went astonishingly well. I know full well I did not know enough even on the day of the exam, particularly in orthopedics. But I passed. pediatrics , the scary one, went without much trouble. I passed that too. So I celebrated, since they were over, and buried the worry of the results. Just looking forward to the well deserved break, I took off.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Became chubby, went to Gwalior, blogged and what not. All his time the results were the last thought on my mind. Then time for the break was over, and I was to go back.

That was a terrible thought.

They wanted us to join internship even before the results were out.!!! What if I failed? I wont, they told me, I told myself. So we went through orientation with grumbling, expressed our opinion, got lucky. Then we waited and waited.

Somewhere along the line I began to hope.

It might have been during my holidays because I was drunk on pleasure, or it might have been the in Vellore, among the cold and impersonal concrete monuments and warm and special friends.

Hope that somehow the corrector will overlook my Himalayan blunders and black hole sized holes in the fabric of my answers. Hope that I will graduate with my friends. Hope that things will be alright.

That is what causes most hurt, hope.
And love.
Faith I have little, so that did not dig in.

Wonder why of the pantheon of virtues and godly characters mentioned in the scriptures  Paul mentioned only faith hope and love?

They are what has given mankind its happiest moments. They are that which empowered social change, brought about justice and kept peace. Harmony needs hope and love. Service needs love and hope.

They are also behind mankind’s bleakest hours and greatest miseries. Misplaced love, reasonless hope, and blind faith. These have not just caused wars and crusades, but everyday kill the spirits of million of souls world wide.

Our greatest assets are also our greatest weakness and sometimes, enemies.

Ain’t man thoroughly messed up.

You have an assignment pending,it needs to be done in 7 days with an average of 20 pages of writing a day. Sounds easy, right? but then your study material is total crap, and you need at least 3 hours of reading up before you can write each days portion. You are tempted to just copy and paste the whole thing from wikipedia or other relevant site, after all that’s what the people who made your study material did. The tiny twinge of conscience that bothers you can easily be smothered by promising yourself that you will do the next set of modules properly.

Alas, you made a promise to yourself sometime ago, that whatever happens, THIS course you will do for he sake of learning and excellence and not just acquiring the letters after your name or forwarding your career prospects. so, what do you do?

If you care about excellence, then you will quick find out that it comes at a steep price. So  you find yourself asking yourself repeatedly:

Do you care?

Do you dare?

Do I?

After a record 48 hours of travel in 6 days, I am home for my sister’s wedding.

The house, as I expected, has been given a makeover, though by someone with no aesthetic sense, which could be either of my parents. I have caught a bug in my traveling and so have advised Asha, my sister, to stay away from me; last thing she needs is a red nose and cough just before her wedding. The house is not the only thing that’s getting a makeover, dad tells me sis has a strict beauty regimen for each day of the week, printed and posted above her table.  Today was “scrub your face with walnut scrub and then put a multani mitti face- pack” day.

I am used to book-clutter in my house, everyone at home loves to read. We read all the time and anywhere, so typically I am greeted by magazines on the tea-table, books on the chairs around the dining table, books on the staircase along with dads writing paraphernalia and my room, of course has an overflowing almirah, books stacked on the floor, my bed, and my table.

This time though, the tea-table had just, gasp, news paper, the chairs were empty and dads writing papers were neatly arranged on one of the stairs. To make things worse, someone (mom) had managed to arrange all the books in my book almirah, close it, lock it and lose the keys!! What’s more, the remaining books were missing!!! I was told later that they had been filled into cartons and put away into the loft. Even dads office looked clean and orderly, the first time I have seen it like this in about ten years. Looks like mom finally had her way.

Fortunately I had enough books on me to make the room habitable, even if barely so, then I raided dads office and shifted the books he had ordered for me, into my room, so now the room looks normal with multiple open magazines on the bed, my PGDM textbooks and two or three other books on the table, sharing space with dad’s new laptop, and the floor is sufficiently untidy to call it mine. Whew.

Here is some of those unaesthetic changes I talked about; my mom wanted the railings to look like wood, so now they look like zebras in sepia.

To most people I meet, I come across as an unusually nice person. Perhaps courtesy and a nice smile get mistaken for character, or perhaps my most prominent mask is to compensate for what lies beneath.

We all have our personal demons, and I think much of what we put on our faces is either to escape them or to deny them power. For if any of mine were to escape from my mind, and even reach my face, it would be disaster indeed.

For about a week I have been fighting with demons in my head. I woke up one day last week to discover that I could only think awful thoughts and that my ability to look at the bright side of anything was gone. Any attempts at looking at the bright side of the day would lead to a flurry of negative images and thoughts being hurled at me.

So I did what I could to escape; I slept, read comics, watched criminal minds and ate junk food. Slept through days, and nights, missed work, ignored sis though she too is going through bad times, neglected  my writing, and basically did nothing.

Fortunately towards Saturday afternoon the voices seemed to have settled and so I took a chocolate-therapy trip, felt much better. Today  a close friend called and  we both cleared up some bad air, which further enhanced my mood. Worked through the evening, finished the first in my promised series on homosexuality, updated my site, and cleared my Google reader. Later in the night had a much needed heart-to-heart with sis and now as I hit the bed, I feel quiet close to normal. There is something deeply medicinal in hugs.

The demons arent gone, and I know someday they will be back, but I will fight as always, and win.