A date with the past..

A date with the past..!

Tomorrow I will meet faces long forgotten..

The Friends..The enemies.. The bullies.. The buffoons… The snobs..

I’ll be hugged and pulled back to the past..

We will share what we were, those days.

We will also celebrate what we have become..

But most of all I will meet her.

After a long long time..

A tall skinny girl wearing a starched cotton sari and a white coat. Her huge eyes are lined with kajal.. There is a huge red bindhi on her forehead..

She is walking into the medical college with wonder and pride..

She is to become a doc..!

I can see her rushing from one lecture hall to the next. Chatting and giggling with her friends

Sharing the lower half of a female body with five others.. To cut open , dissect and study the human body, in and out..

Making friends with a bag of bones, the grinning skull given permanent space on her study table.. and wondering if the whole set belongs to the same person..

Recording the action potentials on a rotating drum as the pithed frog convulses desperately..

There she is.. walking to the hostel in the hot sun, blushing as she hears the cat calls from the Male House Surgeon’s quarters..

Sitting and reading in the hostel verandah late into the night..

Walking into the ward and examining a patient.. Embarrassed as the rest of the ward sits and watches her..

Watching the autopsy of a nine year old.. And running out of the autopsy room to retch her guts out..

Walking alone through the dark, sleeping ward to a patient gasping his last breath. Then waiting for ten minutes after the pupils are fully dialated and fixed.. to be sure.. before certifying the death..

Watching the bloodshed and trauma of a normal delivery for the first time and wanting to see mom immediately..

Walking out of the medical college thinking that she owns the medical field only to realize that she has to start from the scratch. Carve out her own path..

That only experience will teach her that the patient’s trust is the greatest compliment and her greatest responsibility.. That the way she talks to the patient is as important as the drugs she prescribes..

That she has to fix her priorities. Find out her own definition of success..

Her own definition of happiness..

I will hug and kiss that skinny girl with the huge bindhi..

I will hug her tight and pat her on her back..

Tell her to move ahead with smiles..

With hope in her heart and love in her soul..

Counting her blessing..

With grit, perseverance and wisdom..

With the confidence that..

Whatever happens she will emerge a winner..!