Todays Random Truth Toro is a food orgasm. That is all.

The Campus Of Blinding Lights I thought that the anticipation for the results of our first internal exam would be palpable. I had visions of our daily routine being replaced by tense apprehension. The happy-go-lucky attitude of my batch was now going to be replaced by the constant questioning of why we were here. Nope. None of those things happened. It was like we had never even had an exam. I continued to sleep in class, eat miniscule amounts of inedible gruel, lose weight, and be a constant source of laughs for my fellow batchmates. I thought it would have taken longer to get into a semi-regular routine at this place. But with me not even being cognizant of the fact, routine had settled in. I wasn't conscious of it. I just noticed it one not-so-fine morning. I woke up and got out of my bed to the tune of C.J. Lewis' "Sweets For My Sweet". I opened the door and stepped out of my cell. I took a few minutes to survey the scene. Across the way I saw Mike holding a bathroom mug in one hand and brushing his teeth with the other. What little hair he had left due to the constant poisoning of his scalp by hard water was sticking up in a pathetic afro that suggested that maybe he should wear a nightcap. Next door, Ajit's door was closed as usual. Ajit had a frequent habit of missing class due to a variety of ailments and infirmities. A popular one was the diarrhea. But since I had it so often, it became more and more difficult to justify missing a class for the odd case of loose motion (fobspeak for diarrhea). Other popular choices were migraines, stomach aches, and the clap. On the opposite side of me was Anil The Crazed. Since he was now a house surgeon (fobspeak for intern), he was never really around. This was quite the blessing because I pretty much couldn't stand the son of a bitch. He tried to dissect my forearm, after all. The early morning hour before class was a bustle of activity. Guys were up early to pilfer the one copy of the local newspaper appropriately titled, "The Hindu". Every morning the local thumbies (plural fobspeak for drones) brought a big canister of coffee for our enjoyment. Thumbies were like the little local gnomes who performed menial tasks for the average stipend of 5 rupees a day. Kathy Lee aint got nothing on sweatshop labor. Sadly, you had to wake up really early to enjoy a cup of joe. Once those fumes of freshly brewed java hit the air, it was like lions to the slaughter. The canister held about 2 gallons (give or take) of the brown brew for about 300 hostelites. Since I've forgotten high school math, I'm not going to break that down. Suffice is to say that there wasn't enough for everybody, especially since Mike had this huge glass beer mug which carried a liter of whatever fluid he sought fit. So every morning, he would fill that son of a bitch up twice before taking his morning dump. Some people require certain things to get the bowel moving. Mike required a buttload of coffee. Several doors down from Mike, Tolstoy was in his room reading his anatomy. No surprise there. Even though he was obviously a brilliant guy, Tolstoy never came off as a nerd. He was very adventurous. He told me of his frequent "tours" of places I had never even heard of. One of those trips reminded me of a scene straight out of "Stand By Me" when the boys are walking on the train tracks over the bridge and almost die because lo and behold, a train is coming. I had a great deal of respect for Tolstoy in that regard. Another reason I respected Tolstoy was because of his prowess at the game of chess. I got to play him twice before I started thinking better of wasting my time and his. The first time I played him, he beat me in two moves. The second time he beat me, he didn't even move any of his pieces. He actually REMEMBERED every single move in his head and the positions of each piece. That match lasted about 2 minutes longer than our first one, but only because he had to go to the bathroom in the middle of it. Now, everyone was used to the daily grind. I even developed a routine in the mess. Each day at lunch, I filled up my metal tray with rice, yogurt, and pappadam. After securing a seat at a table, I crunched the pappadam into little shards and mixed them with the rice and yogurt. After getting a nice little goulash going, I ate one or two fingerfulls before pushing the tray away. Lord knows I tried to eat more, but I just couldn't stand it. So after 2 mouthfuls of the stuff, I picked up the tray, walked it over to the dish bin, threw it in, freaked out about seeing a woman with a cleft lip and palate, washed my hands, and went back to the academic block where I spent my time taking power naps until the afternoon session started. On this particular day, my nap session was delayed by observing a group of my batchmates standing in front of a bulletin board on the third floor near the dissection hall. "Hey guys, what's all the commotion?" I asked to no one in particular. Nisha was one of the crowd and answered, "Our internal exam marks are posted." "So how did you do?" "I did ok, I guess. I got a 46." This gave me hope. An NRI getting a passing score on the very first internal exam was a rare occurence indeed. Maybe I had passed as well. Lord knows that essay on the median nerve was straight butter. I admit, tho, that the rest of my written exam had left something to be desired. But maybe I made up for it on the multiple choice questions. I made my way to the front of the group and peered at the list. Next to my name was the number "22". Oh shit! I had gotten 22 on the MCQ's! But as I was looking for other numbers to add to this, I found none. Apparently, I got 22 on the entire exam. Since I was the type of person who never really panicked, I searched for the scores of like-minded individuals (i.e the NRI's). The one thing I can say after gazing at their scores was at least I was the best of the worst. I won't get into specifics here but Ajit and Mike didn't do too hot. Abi passed. Lekha got the best score of 59 out of the NRI's. Big Red and Manju both failed, but failed admirably. I didn't know whether to feel upset or disappointed or anything. Apparently, quite a few members of the local clan had failed as well. But they seemed to be taking it fairly well. "Hey, Da! Did you get the crackers?" I overheard one local asking Tolstoy. "Yes, tonight we will kuddy (kah-dee) thrash!" My curiosity was now piqued and I decided to ask Tolstoy about this verbal exchange, "Hey Tolstoy. Why are you guys so excited about crackers?" "Tonight is the Festival of Lights." "No shit! Where?" "All over India, Da. It is called Deepavali (I guess north Indians call it Diwali). We light crackers and watch them explode." I was not familiar with the combustible properties of saltines. Did Indian saltines have gun powder as one of their key ingredients? "Hey Tolstoy, what's the big deal about setting a cracker on fire? Why not just eat them with cheese? Maybe if you had graham crackers you could make s'mores." "I am not following you." "Crackers man! Why would you set something on fire that you're going to eat anyway?" "We do not eat these crackers! We light them and they fly through the air and then explode." Suddenly, it dawned on me that Tolstoy and I were not speaking the same language. Damn those local English colloquialisms! Tolstoy was referring to what we Americans call fireworks. They had a whole arsenal of these "crackers" at their disposal. There were bottle rockets, regular firecrackers, these loud ones called "goondas", and even sparklers. Apparently, Deepavali was quite an occasion to let loose. The whole city sounded like it was in the midst of a bombing by the U.N. Crackers were going off left, right, and center. It was a new experience for me, being the ignorant Indian that I was. I had no idea up until this point what Deepavali was. I was now experiencing an emotion that I hadn't felt in quite some time: Excitement! I couldn't wait to get out of class and go blow shit up. Luckily, the rainy season was still winding down so there were plenty of toads around as well. I'm sure you know what that meant. First things first. The countdown began at dusk. The sky was peppered with the smoky whisps of the entrails of expired bottle rockets. The sulfuric essence of the expired crackers and goondas wafted in the air like an evanescent spectre, a stealthy remembrancer of the merriment of the occasion. Several male students set up a launching pad outside the men's hostel. These crude mechanisms were fabricated by stacking flat rocks to form a sort of base to shoot the rockets at an angle (as I slowly panned in the direction the rockets were aimed) right....towards....the girls hostel! This was an ingenious way to use the festive holiday as a way to flirt with their sisteren. Night had fallen and the onslaught began. Bottle rocket after bottle rocket were launched in the direction of the edifice that was the ladies' hostel. More often than not, the projectiles lacked the necessary combustatory fuel required for such a distance. But, every now and again a dying rocket shell would smack against the concrete, eliciting a "Whoop!" and cheers from the members of the male fraternity. I surveyed the scene and chuckled to myself. The guys here had their ways of amusing themselves. They weren't robots. It slowly was occurring to me that even though I did not understand their methods of mayhem or amusement, I did understand the reaction. The laughter. The camaraderie. These were definitely emotions common to a lot of "herd" activities in America. I found it suddenly easier to join in the melee. Abi, Mike, Ajit, and myself joined in the chaos. We lit bottle rockets, rolls of crackers that sounded like machine gun fire, and many a goonda. Abi was in the process of lighting one particular goonda when the fuse went out. He gingerly stepped closer to the bomb to take a closer look. He tapped it with his foot and jumped back. No response. He moved closer and stepped on it. BOOM! Abi was now engulfed in a plume of smoke. "Abi! Dude, are you alright?" I screamed into the gray effluvium. "Hack, cough etc. Well, I guess that wasn't a dud," said Abi as he walked out of the smoke coughing and holding his ears. Those goondas were loud sons of bitches. Second things second. Now came the time to torture the amphibous residents of the men's hostel courtyard. There were plenty of candidates. I sought out the plumpest, juiciest toad and began the hunt for my unfortunate prey. After perusing the local selection, tossing aside youthful looking toads for more wisened, grizzled veterans, I found my guinea toad. I flicked it in the head to render it unconscious. Abi handed me a goonda, hopefully one that wouldn't explode if I stepped on it, and let me go to work. I stripped the fuse of the goonda so that it would burn faster. I didn't want to give my victim the false hope that escape would be possible. I placed the goonda on the ground and on top of it, I placed the toad with its ass positioned directly above the meat of the bomb. The four of us started our countdown. After about 10 seconds or so, the toad appeared to wake up and I could have sworn a look of abject horror crossed its eyes. The toad knew. In the next instant, toad and goonda went up in a conflagration of acrid, gray fumes. The toad didn't fly nearly as well as possible had I punted it, but flew it did. In a near vertical parabola, it did a few somersaults and flips before landing on the pavement with a dull THUD. We moved closer to the creature and saw that it was futilely trying to escape our wrath by maneuvering its only useful limb, its right front leg. Considering we blew the toad's ass off, I was surprised that it didn't shit itself. I decided to put Kermit out of his misery and gave him one last punt into oblivion. "Godspeed, Kermit!" I shouted as its fragmented body was swallowed up by the blue-black canvas of the night. Several moments later, Anil The Faker, who was carrying a large object obscured by a blanket, walked to the center of the basketball court for a better view of the ladies hostel. From this vantage point, the gateway to said prison was plainly visible. The gate was receded for the Deepavali celebrations in their own courtyard, which consisted of dark brown Indian girls with coconut-oily hair frolicking around in their nighties and twirling sparklers. Anil The Faker lay the shrouded article on the ground. He painstakingly unfolded the dirty, worn blanket to reveal a 3-foot long cardboard tube. On one side of the tube was a self-fashioned shoulder holdster with a handle for the trigger hand. Opposite this and a bit closer to the end of the tube was an orifice through which bottle rockets could be placed and lit and subsequently fired. It was a BAZOOKA! He took it out of the blanket, stood up, and lifted it above his head, as a playful gesture to the women of the hostel as well as to members of the men's hostel. "Watch this!" the bazooka begged to shout. Anil The Faker assumed the position while Binu placed a bottle rocket in the chamber. He struck a fragile wax-made match and lit the fuse. 3...2.....1.5.......1.25...1....FIRE!!!! The rocket flew straight towards the entrance of the ladies' hostel. I never thought that reubenesque women in long nighties could be so agile. He fired multiple rockets at not only the ladies' hostel but also the watchman's toolshed right outside the perimeter fence. In this ramshackle garrison was seated an old man of about 60. He had a long gray mustache that followed the curves and contours of his jowls and merged with Dolomite-like sideburns. His outfit consisted of shit-brown official-issue shirt and slacks with his very own cap! He was The Watchman! He struck fear into the hearts of millions.....of rats scurrying in the crevices and nooks of the bastille! The sound of his footsteps were enough to strike trepidation in the souls of his enemies, the stray dogs who ran rampant throughout the campus. Yes, you did not want to fuck with The Watchman! The constant barrage of rockets woke The Watchman from his slumber. He got out of his vertical coffin and had a gander at what was going on. The screeches and shouts of the inhabitants of the ladies' refuge caused a great panic in The Watchman. He jumped on his bicycle, The Watch-cycle, and prepared to accost us. "Day! Nyaan Principle report pannerra! (Hey! I'm going to tell the principle!)" "Podah, Myrray!(Get lost, pubic hair!)" we simultaneously screamed as more rockets were fired in his general direction, scaring him and causing him to lose balance and fall off his tricked-out wheels. Rockets continued to bombard his fallen ass so he ran back into the safety of his one-person shelter fabricated from aluminum sheets and wood. The next victim of our aerial pyrotchnics were the tea thumbies. In the morning, there were coffee thumbies. At night, just for the ladies, there were tea thumbies. The men could purchase their tea at the 24-hour canteen located a few hundred feet from the basketball court. But these women got preferential treatment. It was preferred that they not come out at night. As the thumbies were pushing the canister of tea on a rickety old cart, Anil The Faker aimed the bazooka right at them. Since there wasn't much to speak of in regards to lighting on the basketball court, we were not unlike stealthy assassins marking our prey. Fire One! The rocket honed in on the thumbies, the look of terror in their eyes swelling so much that their sclerae were the size of dinner plates. The rockets hit their mark and started buzzing and discharging at their feet, causing the little gnomes to prance and dance about like they were members of Michael Flatley's troupe. The second rocket was fired and the thumbies made their decision that their livelihoods were more important than chai for those beasts. They threw their hands up in the air, turned tail, and ran screaming like a bunch of dwarf school girls, the bottle rocket in hot pursuit, pardon the pun. The night was a blast, literally. It was so much fun firing rockets at the ladies, watchman, and thumbies. For a single night, we were lords of all creation. For a single night, there was nothing we couldn't do. For a single night, we were free men.

Crusty And The First Internal Inquisition The practice of medicine is an art. Someone told me that once. It takes a lot of studying to become proficient at it. The funny thing is that it's rare to see someone who was efficiently proficient in the discipline . One thing I've always understood is that doctors are not infallible. Shit happens. But to think of the amount of studying required to become imperfect, it always made me wonder about the cost-benefit ratio of attending such an establishment. Maybe I'm making a mistake equating proficiency with excellence. Either way, the gauntlet had various encumbrances to measure our progress at one day being imperfect. One such minor hindrance was the dreaded "internal exam". These little bastards were the equivalent of midterms. Passing a subject required the aptitude to score enough "marks" (fobspeak for points on an exam) on three different disciplines: theory (written) exams, practical exams, and internal assessment. Theory was worth 100 marks, practical was worth 40 marks, and internal assessment was worth 60 marks. In order to pass a subject, one needed to score at least 45 out of 100 on theory, 18 out of 40 on practicals, and whatever balance was required on internals to get 100 out of 200 total possible marks. This system presented a delicate conundrum. It was theoretically possible to score the requisite 100 out of 200 on the entire exam. But if you didn't get the minimum passing marks in EACH section, you would fail the ENTIRE EXAM and have to take it over 6 months later. On the other side of the coin was passing each individual section but coming up short in the total required to pass. Yeah they liked to fuck you in multiple ways. Internal assessment encompassed the evaluation of such trivial things as attendance, behavior, and your scores on various "internal exams", the most important of which were "model examinations" which I will get to later. The marks that were appraised for your (sarcastically making quotation marks with my hands) assessment were pretty subjective. If CDS didn't like you, you were pretty much fucked. There were other teachers/professors who could give you a poor mark too. In physiology, it was the Head of the Department, a man we dubbed "Aquaman" because he looked like he had gills on the side of his face. In biochemistry, it was the illustrious Kartha whose passion for idli (steamed indian bread made with rice flour) was surpassed only by his passion for the Hexose-Monophosphate Shunt. In India, he who had the gold made the rules. The key was to score higher in other portions to make up for their lack of vision. But first things first. Our very first internal exam in anatomy encompassed the upper and lower limbs. It was only a written exam which consisted of 2 essays, 8 short answer questions, and 30 multiple choice. Essays in anatomy included structures like the elbow joint, important nerves and vessels, intrinsic muscles of the hand, etc. Short answers included the flexor retinaculum, a muscle, or an insertion of a muscle etc. Multiple choice could be anything. Our first one was scheduled for sometime in November. People started studying pretty hard for them. I noticed one thing right off the bat. The studying methods were different over there. I'm the type of person who grasps concepts and applies the new information I have gathered to create a new cogent process. In India, a lot of students used a process called "mugging". No, they didn't beat their other classmates for information. They memorized. And memorized. And memorized some more. Then they took a tea break. And then they memorized some more. I found it fascinating because I could pick a local classmate out of a line-up, ask them what it said on page 159 of Chaurasia's Anatomy (text of choice in hell), and they could recite it word for word without looking it up. These people had freakish recall abilities. When I crammed, I could do that as well, but not to the extent the locals took it. To be honest, most of my time was not filled with studying. It was filled with reading novels, talking with my boys, playing basketball, and eating pakora when the opportunity arose. I was like Matthew Modine's character in the movie "Gross Anatomy". I studied when I needed to. And I soon needed to start studying for these first exams. Seeing as how I wasn't very interested in anatomy, I asked some NRI seniors for some suggestions on essay topics and short answer possibilities. Logic dictated that picking the brains of intelligent people would be the way to go. But since the Indian experience was proving to be maddeningly illogical, I figured I'd just ask everyone I could for predictions of what could come on the exam and then make a list of stuff to study. King Surej told me about the brachial plexus. Sounded legit. Sushil suggested the great saphenous vein, the longest and largest superficial vein of the body. Something told me it had a shot. Anil The Long-Limbed suggested the median nerve. I didn't ask the 93 batch NRI's what to study because well, I hated them. So, with a sprinkling of predictions at my disposal, I set about to prepare for the first test. It was hard going in the beginning. I had no idea what to write for essays or short answers. I mean, in English class if the teacher needed an essay on the significance and use of foreshadowing and dramatic irony in Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, I most certainly could oblige. But something gave me the sense that essay questions in medical school were a tad bit different. Since I had no idea what to prepare for, I decided to use the first internal exam as an impromptu litmus test so I would at least be better prepared for the first one. Since our marks were so subjective anyway, I just considered them practice for the big dance that was coming in April. Before you could say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, the first set of exams were upon us. The penultimate night had arrived and Mike, Ajit, and Abi were shitting bricks. Apparently there were probably 10 or more essay topics to cover as well as dozens of short answer possibilities. I wasn't in the mood to pull an all nighter, so I just studied one thing: the median nerve.The other three guys had no idea what to study the night before the first test. Mike was studying the elbow joint. Abi was studying the breast (made total sense if you ask me). Ajit was studying the femoral vein. I walked into Mike's room at around midnight to assess the preparations of our party. "Hey Mike, what did you study?" "Oh man, Bobby, I studied as much as I could. I finished about 5 of the essay topics and 10 of the short answers. What did you read?" "Eh, I read about the median nerve." "And what else?" "That's it." "That's it?" "Yeah." "So out of 10 to 15 possible essays you've read ONE." "Your estimate sounds correct." Mike gave me an aporetic look that counted as a smirk in my book. He shook his head from side to side, rolled his eyes, and dropped his nose back on page 159 of Chaurasia. Ajit was having an even worse time of it studying for the exam. He read about half as many essays and short notes as Mike had. I wasn't particularly inclined to study all that stuff when we would be tested on it again anyway. I left my friends to their devices and went to sleep. I like to think that I had dreams of a better place. At 7 am, my wind-up alarm clock went off (concession to the frequent power outages in the area). As per my usual daily ritual, I turned it off, got out of bed, scratched my balls, applied toothpaste to my Oral-B, and corralled my red bathroom mug. The rim and upper portion of the mug had been baptized by a grimy rim of salts and deposits that were present in the bathing water. I strolled on down to the bathroom to go about my business. The best part about the bathroom I used in the morning (along with several other guys I might add) was that the toilet was top-notch, even though it was a commode in the ground. One's rectum could expel a turd the size of the Titanic and not worry about it getting clogged. I sometimes noticed, rather unfortunately I might add, that toilets got clogged. The surest sign of a clogged toilet was to assess the degree of closure of the bathroom door. If the door was fully closed, odds were that there was someone using it at the moment. Confirmation came by observing a lungi draped over the door frame. If the door was partly open, leaving a sinister gap in between, chances were that that toilet was now clogged. Of course, the only way to assess the degree of outlet obstruction was to open the door and check. More often than not, if I came across a partly open bathroom door, I expected the worst. The worst comprised of turds floating out of the toilet and onto the bathroom floor, with the water level rising each time one tried to flush it. But on this morning, there were no surprises of that variety. As I pulled down my boxers and assumed the position, I thought about any other important things I should know about the median nerve. I came up with mnemonics for the relations, the course, and the muscles supplied by said nerve. As I was pondering the multitude of ways to answer, I reached over to the tap to turn on the water for my filthy mug. Consternation took a hold of my muscles of facial expression. There was no Adam's ale being expressed from the faucet. I now had no real way to clean my ass. And the worst part about it was that I had diarrhea. This was not your garden variety intestinal infection. I was genuinely a bit nervous about my first exam and had a bowel movement that has since been dubbed by medical students in India as the so-called "nervous diarrhea". The stress and anxiety causes your shit to somehow liquefy and come out in a semi-powerful stream with one or two squirts thrown in for good measure. For a minute, I supposed that I could have just tried the next stall over. I half squatted and half scurried to the next available water source in the bathroom, clenching my cheeks to make sure no gooey brown paste would be dripping down my legs. The faucet didn't work. Now was the time to panic. I didn't have any more toilet paper from my stash of survival necessities because Anil The Crazed confiscated and burned them. The next possible solution to enter my problem-solving center was to use my boxer shorts as toilet paper for 1 quick wipe. I pondered it for a second or two or three and decided against it. The final analysis of the situation provided a dastardly resolution. I pulled up my boxers and stood up. I clenched my cheeks as hard as I could and ran to the next bathroom, 6 doors down the corridor. I pulled down my boxers, squatted, made the sign of the cross, and turned on the faucet. Eureka! It was not my destiny to have a pasty, crusty ass for the rest of the day. I happily cleaned my anal verge, including the taint (movement and friction might have dislodged some doodie) and washed myself thoroughly afterwards. I went back to my room, took off the now tainted boxers and threw them out my barred window. With enough adventure for one morning, I proceeded next door to Ajit's room. Mike and Ajit were sitting at his desk doing some last minute ruminations. "Hey, Bobby," Ajit said, "Are you ready?" "Yeah I think so. You guys ever had one of those nervous shits that come out all diarrhea-like?" Both of them dropped their books and looked intently at me with glances of bewilderment. "What the hell are you talking about?" said Mike. "Man, I just had to go for my morning shit and it all came out like diarrhea." "Yeah welcome to India," Ajit said. "Well, that's not even the worst of it." "What do you mean?" "When I was done with the poo part, I turned on the faucet and no water came out." "WHAT?" cried Ajit as he scrunched his face up like he just took a bite out of the world's largest lemon, "Oh man, that's CRUSTY!" And with those four words, I was now dubbed "Crusty, Centurion of the Ivory Throne That Must Be Squatted Upon". In a place where Murphy's Law was omnipresent, it figured that on the morning of our first exam I would have excrement issues. Mike and Ajit had a big, bellowing laugh at my expense for yet another time and we continued to small-talk, nervously watching the clock to strike 8 am, the start of the exam. At a quarter to 8, we got dressed in our prison issues and collected our books and writing instruments. I mentioned before that Ajit was a big "Top Gun" fan. He decided we needed some "mood music" to inspire us or some shit like that. He painstakingly selected a tape from his vast collection and put it in his boom box. Suddenly, the theme to the movie by Steve Stevens and Harold Faltermeyer started playing. If you've seen "Top Gun" you know the music I'm talking about. It's the music that's used in the slow motion scenes whenever they're walking towards or away from their F-14 Tomcats. Listening this brought on a new wave of apprehension and nausea that I never knew I had. It felt like we were going into the final battle and we were totally underprepared. I looked at Mike and breathlessly pleaded, "We studied, right? Are we ready? What are we gonna do?" Mike slapped me upside the head and told me to calm myself. It was just the first internal. He rationalized that as long as we showed improvement over the course of the year, we'd be alright. For us bloody Americans, it was a rite of passage to fail the first internal exam. It just meant we weren't abnormal or anything. The song finally ended and we departed the hostel. On the way to the academic block, we crossed paths with a senior NRI named Pragie. Pragie was from Australia. He's the closest thing I've ever met to an Indian surfer dude. He saw us approaching and stopped. "Hey guys, I know you've got your internal exams today. Just know that you'll be alright and things will be fine. I've been through 'em before and they're just a necessary evil." Now my nervousness had shot through the roof. I wanted to grab Pragie by his lapels and ask him, "HOW DO YOU KNOW THINGS WILL BE FINE? THERE'S NO WAY OF KNOWING! WHY THE HELL DID AJIT HAVE TO PLAY THAT TOP GUN SONG?" Since he was my senior, I thought better of it. I just shook my head at my inevitable fate. We continued on to the dissection hall where our anatomy internal was to be administered. The doors were locked and closed and Beulah Cow, Maheswari, and Vijay Lakshmi were standing outside. They handed each of us a number which was to be our assigned seat. We filtered into the atrium and everyone went to their designated seat. The "tables" used for the exam looked an awful lot like the gurneys that carried cadavers. No expense spared at this institution, no-siree-bob. I got to my assigned seat in the middle of the hall. Seated across from me was Tolstoy. I didn't mention this before but Tolstoy has a brother named Karl Marx. I shit you not. Anyway, he gave me a smile and nod of encouragement. I'm sure he could read the fear on my face. I probably reeked of it. As soon as everyone was situated, the three amigo tutors came down the hall handing out sheets of unlined paper. These sheets carried the moniker "A4 Paper" to the unintiated. They also handed out a single piece of string with each set of sheets. I was curious as to what the string was for. It was too thick to be floss, so I deduced that they didn't have our oral hygiene amongst their top priorities. I picked up the string, twirled it in my fingers, and wordlessly asked Tolstoy what it was for with just a look of my eyes. He picked up his sheets of A4 paper and showed me a hole in each one at the upper left hand corner. He threaded the string through each aperture and then tied them together with a simple bow knot. I guess staples were a bit too much to ask for. I smiled at Tolstoy acknowledging his courteous explanation. Suddenly, an erie quiescence had befallen the populace. The bane of my existence, CDS, had made his grand entrance. He strolled up to the podium and started talking. "This is your first internal assessment. You will have 2 essays, 8 short notes (answer) and 30 multiple choice questions. You have 3 hours to finish the entire exam. If anyone is caught talking they will be expelled from this exam forthwith. DO I MAKE MYSLEF CLEAR?" Like the sheep we were, we all responded in unison, "Sir, Yes Sir!!" Then CDS proceeded to recite the essay questions, "Essay #1: Describe the course, relations, and applied anatomy of the MEDIAN NERVE." BONUS! The one thing I studied was one of the main questions! Yay me! Ajit and Mike gave me a look that translated into something akin to "You lucky son of a bitch!" "Essay #2: Describe the course, relations, and applied anatomy of the Great Saphenous Vein." Ooh. Not as good. I hadn't studied that one so well. But I did know one fact about it. It was the longest and largest superficial vein in the human body. After reciting the 8 short notes, they came to be comprised of questions like the profunda femoris artery, flexor retinaculum, lymph drainage of the breast (something I'm sure Abi nailed), etc. Before we began writing, we did the multiple choice questions. I'm the type of person who picks an answer and never looks at it again. I had a system for this one. I went through all 30 and completed the ones I was sure were correct. In this particular exam, that was 0 out of 30. Then I made a second perusal where I could pick an answer after eliminating 1 or 2 of the options. This took care of about 4 or 5 of them. The remainder were blind guesses. Once that portion was out of the way, it was time to do the written part. Since I had studied the median nerve well, I put most of my effort into that. I decided to finish the other essay first since I didn't know as much about it. My seniors gave me advice on how to write essays for exams a bit. The professors liked lots of diagrams and less words. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. In that case, the picture of my great saphenous vein was worth fifteen words. I drew one large vein that took up the entire side of one A4 sheet. I colored it blue and labeled it as the "great saphenous". Next, I drew a smaller venous structure and likewise colored it blue. I labeled this little bugger as a "regular vein". Underneath both diagrams, I wrote my one sentence that would comprise the entire essay: "The great saphenous vein is the longest and largest superficial vein in the human body." Fifteen words seemed to do it. Next came the median nerve. I totally blasted that essay out of the water, if I did say so myself. I made diagrams of its course from the roots of the brachial plexus down the arm and forearm. The fact that I remember this much about it shows I haven't forgotten EVERYTHING. For the profunda femoris artery, I drew a blood vessel and colored it red. I labeled it as the profunda femoris. That was my short note. I had no idea what it supplied so I didn't go into detail. I kept things simple enough for a neanderthal, which I was probably proving to be in the eyes of the tutors and CDS. By the end of the exam, I had written about 5 pages front-and-back for the entire examination. I thought that seemed like enough. I checked the clock. HOLY SHIT! It was only 10 am! I was done writing what I needed to and didn't dare have the cajones to leave the hall early, not with CDS now the gatekeeper. I glanced up at Tolstoy and saw that he was writing furiously. What the hell could he possibly be writing for so long? The more and more I saw of him, the more I realized he was one smart hombre. Eventually, ennui took over and I felt myself starting to nod off. Practically everyone in the class was still writing even when the cowbell rang at 12 noon. I figured someone had to bring up the rear. After all, what do they call the person who graduates last in his or her medical school class? DOCTOR! At noon, our papers were collected and we were filed out of the hall in one big glob of humanity and suffering. Naturally, everyone wanted to talk about how everyone else did and what not. When I approached the guys, I saw Nisha, Lekha, Manju, and Rajana talking with them. They were discussing how they did, naturally. "Oh man. I did NOT do well. I only knew 3 mcq's!" Ajit said. "I didn't think it was too bad," said Nisha aka Hannibal. "Yeah it was rather easy, I thought," said Lekha aka Murdock. "Yeah it was a bit hard for me," said Rajana aka B.A. aka Big Red Manju just pouted. Our scores would be returned to us within the next couple of weeks. All we had to do now was wait to check out damage control. Since there was no point in fretting over the past, we all headed to the mess to soothe our souls with the potent libation of tea. Now there's one thing that never got old.

Batman and Robin........Pandian, That Is You think you know now, but you have no idea. I certainly didn't have a clue. Seconds meandered into minutes which flowed into hours which swirled into days. Being bombarded with knowledge that was futilely being regurgitated by a lowly tutor certainly had a way of slowing the tempo down. I'm the type of person who reads the textbooks, discusses with like-minded individuals, and learns. Class here in Virginia ranged the gamut from stimulating to soporific. Classes in P.S.G. were invariably of the latter variety. Eventually, all classes in India became a duel of the fates. Consciousness lost 9 times out of 10. The one time it did not lose was whenever CDS taught. It was true. The man's hearing was so acute, he could hear a mosquito fart from 100 feet away. Or, so he claimed. Unfortunately for me, on a number of occasions, I had trouble staying awake in the torture chamber that was his lectures. To this day, I am probably the only person that he caught sleeping, TWICE IN 10 MINUTES. Even he was shocked. He didn't know what to say. I think that was the day that he realized that I was average than your smarter bear. When I wasn't being bombarded by his vociferations, I bore the brunt of his quirky sense of humor. I say quirky because I was a fat bastard when I got to India and he took advantage by going "Russel Peters" on me. On one such day, Beulah Cow was taking attendance in dissection when Pandit Dali sauntered in and whisked the attendance register from her. He meticulously perused the roster and started calling out names. "Abilash. Ajit. BOBBY! (They actually called me by my proper name which I can't really stand being called so kindly adjust)" The three of us slowly rose from our stools and straggled to the front of the hall. I was trying to think what the three of us had in common besides good looks, brains, and charisma. Why was CDS calling us up? Surely it couldn't have been to commend us. He thought I was nuts. He thought Abi was a moron. And he thought Ajit was a bit old to be hanging out with punk-ass 18 year-olds. He looked each of us intently in the eyes. I swear it felt like he was burning a hole straight through to the other side. "Where were you three boys yesterday? SPEAK!" By this time in my medschool career, I had learned what to do when confronted with a query like this. "Sir?" I said sheepishly, with my face turned down and my eyes turned up in the puppy-dog style I had perfected. "You were not in dissection yesterday. WHERE WERE YOU?" After subjugating the ringing in my ears I answered, "Sir?" I could see the steam stemming from his external auditory meati. Surely this man had never met a guy who had tested his patience like me. Or maybe I truly puzzled him. I sure don't know what it was. "I will ask you ONE LAST TIME. WHERE WERE YOU." The jig was up, "Sir, my Aunt left yesterday for Australia. I just went to the airport to see her off." (I was quick on my feet, wasn't I?) After the look of incedulity washed from his face, he looked me up and down, squinted his already beady, atheromatous eyes at me and said, "Why didn't you go with her? Don't they take cargo?" I didn't hear Abi and Ajit start bawling. But I glanced askew and saw them with their heads down, lips tightly closed causing the suppressed laughter to make them spit up a little, and their shoulders undulating in a rapid manner. I didn't dare look around for fear of incurring more of satan's wrath. But my senses told me that the joke was successful in terms of a response. I didn't see what was so funny. By this time I had lost 30 pounds in three months. Atkins ain't got shit on giardiasis. But I digress. I never had a problem laughing at myself and the barmy things I've done in my #life. The only things I was sensitive about was my weight. When I left for India, I weighed 220 pounds (100 kilos for those of you keeping score at home). Now I was 190. The big, fat, Bobby slowly started melting away and revealed a long-hidden, somewhat attractive Bobby. That was my issue. I wasn't really fat anymore when he made fun of me. But then I realized that compared to a lot of the beanpoles at college, I was still enormous. That's what you get when you only get to eat chicken hearts, livers, gizzards, and kidneys three times a week. But as long as people got a laugh out of it, I was all good. I soon realized that I had become a sort of quasi-class clown. I rarely did anything on purpose to get attention. My ability to induce giggles was based mostly on fate and impeccable timing. Case in point. Morning lectures were tedious at best. Our three main subjects in first year, first semester were anatomy, biochemistry, and physiology. Morning lectures worked on a three day rotation of said colloquia. One physiology morning, we were being taught the magic of the coagulation cascade (my mnemonic was Foolish People Try Climbing Long Slopes After Christmas Some People Have Fallen) by an associate professor named Gautham. Since aurally the American enunciation of his name sounded like the city, we dubbed him "Batman". Midway through class, as he was detailing an indecipherable algorithm showing the intrinsic and extrinsic pathways of coagulation, I was paid a visit by Mr. Sandman. He brought me a dream. I was seated in the fifth row of the gallery. As you walk into this classroom, you have to take a couple steps up to get to the fifth row. Each step had two rows of benches with attached seats which made the feeling of being trapped omnipresent in the institution. I was seated in the second chair from the center aile. To my right was Robin. He was a rather peculiar fellow with a big nose and a very wannabe British accent which just couldn't hide the fact that he was from anywhere BUT England. As I put my head down to sleep, the last thing I glanced before getting some shuteye was Robin with his head tilted down, furiously transcribing notes from Batman's somniferous ramblings. "YOU! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! ARE YOU SLEEPING IN MY CLASS?" You might as well have painted a red target on my butt. The dense howl from Batman jarred me from my slumber. I was bent over the desk with my arms folded and the left side of my face using my now relatively gangly forearms as a pillow. I was cursing myself for getting caught. I peered up through the corner of my eye and saw Robin giving me a smug look. "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT? I AM TALKING TO YOU! WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING IN MY CLASS?" It suddenly dawned on me, as well as the rest of the class, that I wasn't the subject of Batman's rage. It was an instant with irony on multiple levels; Batman yelling at Robin, Robin getting yelled at for "sleeping" when it was I, right next to him I might add, that was dozing. I guess it dawned on Robin too, because the look on his face said it all. He stood up diffidently, with a look of abject stupefaction on his now smugless mug. "IF YOU EVER SLEEP IN MY CLASS AGAIN, I WILL THROW YOU OUT!" The shouts of Batman were almost superceded by the laughter emanating from my classmates. I looked down at where Mike, Abi, and Ajit were sitting. The expressions on their face let me know that I had made their mundane day one worth remembering. I'm sure Robin hasn't forgotten, either

Zen And The Art Of Desecrating Cricket Every diurnal course of my squalid perseity was utilized conceiving ways to conquer an omnipotent, invisible calumniator: BOREDOM. Let me count the ways.....8 hours a day were taken by classes. They started at 8 am and ended at 4 pm, sometimes 5 if the professors or tutors were feeling particularly irascible. (I noticed that happened a lot. I figured the female professors weren't getting any and the male professors didn't want any) Since I normally sawed logs after midnight, that left me with 8 hours with which to amuse myself. Boy, did I try. A couple of NRI seniors taught me how to cover the wood end of a match with a glob of toothpaste, light it, and flick it towards the ceiling, and watch the conflagration of the paste leave an indelible splotch. I didn't know toothpaste burned black. Another common practice was to sit in my room and stare out the bars. There was a mungo tillage beyond a thistly, dessicant chapparal where I could often observe young Tamilian boys playing the most popular sport in India, cricket. Interesting game, this. Cricket is a sport played with a bat and a ball and two sets of sticks called "wickets". Each set consists of three sticks about the circumference of a broom handle, called "stumps". Between each stump are placed two "bails", which are basically some sort of short stick, I guess. Each wicket is placed 1,890 centimeters apart on a field of red dirt. I would explain further but that's even more than the limited capaciousness of my erudition will allow. Now, cricket is a lot like baseball. For example, cricket has "bowlers" and baseball has "pitchers". Cricket has "batsmen" while baseball has "batters". And of course, cricket has "tea-break" while baseball has the "7th-inning stretch". So you see, cricket should be easy for an American to learn. It didn't look too operose. The bat was a big rectangle as opposed to a conical cylinder utilized in the American pastime. When the bowler did his thing, the ball bounced before being struck. Surely, that would make it easier to hit, right? Each team had nine members. Once all nine were "out" either by catching a fly-ball or the ball hitting the wicket after being bowled, the other team got to bat. There are two types of matches: one-day-internationals, and tests. I'll explain tests because the former is self-explanatory. Test matches lasted anywhere from three to seven DAYS! There are two "innings" in a test match. Each innings consists of one team trying to score as many runs as they can before they get "all out". Once both teams play an innings each, then the second innings start. Repeat. Rinse. Now I know that my attention span for a sporting event tops out at a few hours or so. How anyone could attend one of these tests as a kibitzer was beyond me. But, "When in Rome..." Every day after class, numerous male docents spent some quality pre-study time engaging in India's apparent "national pastime". Basically, it was just like a bunch of guys playing a pickup game of basketball only with a bat, ball, and wickets. I like that word. Wickets. Eventually, I figured I'd try my hand at the sport named after a friggin bug. It looked like fun, after all. But of course, I didn't do things simply just to do them. I had to add my own signature to this competition. The game was played in the central courtyard of one of the hexagons of the hostel. A tennis ball was used instead of a cricket ball because nobody wanted to get injured. That cricket ball was hard as stone! When the game started, I asked if I could play as well. Some of the seniors looked agog at my impetuous pomposity. Lucky for me, there was an NRI senior playing. He had a word with the local seniors and then motioned for me to take a seat. I was to bat next. As I awaited my at-bat, I observed how they were playing the game. Normally, cricket is played in a big stadium with an oval field. If the batsman hits a ball on the ground, he can run between the two wickets. Yeah, they run back and forth a lot in this sport. If the ball reaches the string forming the perimeter of the oval, it counted for 4 runs. If a batsmen hit a ball out of the field like a home run, it counted for 6. Our impromptu coliseum was surrounded by walls on six sides that were five stories high. So basically, if a ball was hit onto one of the upper floors, it counted for 4 runs. If it was hit out of the hostel, it cost you some chafed skin and numerous contusions caused by a rectangular bat. Sometimes, the ball would go underneath the ledge sticking out from the ground floor. That seemed to be good for two back-and-forth sprints. Finally, my opportunity arrived. The senior NRI handed me the bat and walked over to the steps and sat down. I took my place at the wicket(tee hee) and assumed my batter's stance. I awaited the hurl of the ball when I noticed that everyone was staring at me. The bowler was standing there, tossing the felt-covered orb to himself. Soon, I heard snickers. Even sooner, it turned into outright guffaws. I looked over at the NRI and pleaded to him with my eyes for an explanation. He was cognizant of my vicissitude and started to walk over. "Sir, what's wrong? Why's everyone laughing?" "First of all, what are you doing?" "I'm standing here waiting for the ball." "Yeah, in a BASEBALL BATTING STANCE! These guys have no idea what the hell you're doing, hence the laughter!" Ah. Now I saw the humor in the situation. I was standing there like Cal Ripken, feet wider than the shoulders, knees bent, hips flexed, coiled like a snake to strike at my prey. The cricket batsmen stance is quite different. Basically, you keep your legs straight, bend at the hip, and lean on your rectangular bat like you've just popped a couple of discs in your vertebral column. Fine. I adjusted my position. With the merriment having died down somewhat, it was time to play ball! The bowler sized me up and smirked. It was obvious to him that I did not realize what I had gotten myself into. He assumed his position and started pitter-pattering his feet like Fred Flinstone when he bowls and chucked the ball. I took a huge swing and totally whiffed. Luckily, the ball bounced high enough that it didn't strike the bails off of the stumps. After a smattering of chuckles, bowler and batsmen were at the ready. Mano a mano. Once again, the ball was hurled. This time, I just wanted to make contact. I stuck the plank out and smacked a grounder that careened towards the crawlspace beneath the groundfloor. I saw my chance and took a dash for the opposite wicket. Before the ball could disappear into the rat-infested darkness, an opponent gathered it up and threw it towards the wicket. I saw how far away I was and made a judgement call. Since the ground was basically made of dirt, I made a decision that was the last I would ever make in the heat of battle of a cricket one-dayer...I SLID HEADFIRST into the wicket. My prodigious cranium rammed right into the three stumps, dislodging their piggybacking bails. I jumped up, dusted myself off and yelled, "Safe!" In a matter of moments, I was surrounded by the local seniors. They had started yelling and screaming about what I just did. They called me a bloody American. They said that their sport had no place for such shenanigans. And finally, they said "Get the fuck off the field!" I was just having a bit of fun. Apparently, I had desecrated their holiest of diversions and had to pay the price. The screams for my head were becoming more aural. Several seniors were staring guinsu knives through me. I figured it was probably a good time to hit the dusty trail. As I started walking away, I heard someone call my name. I turned around and it was the NRI senior. "Hey, my name is Anil." "Hi, sir." "Don't call me "sir". Just Anil." "Ok, Anil." "That was interesting what you just did back there." "I was just having a bit of fun." "Yeah well be careful. These guys hate Americans. Don't do anything to piss them off." "Yeah, I know. I didn't realize locals didn't have a sense of humor." "Probably not American humor. They thought you were mocking them." "No! I wasn't mocking them! I was just trying to add a little of my own flava to the proceedings." "Yeah well, from now on, just stick to basketball." As we continued our colloquy, I found out that Anil was from California and was part of '91 batch. He was pretty tall and blessed with long limbs. If he had an extra set, he would be a human octopus. Therefore, I dubbed him Anil The Long-Limbed. He told me to start coming to the basketball court after class and we could get a game going. He also told me if I ever needed anything to come to his room. He seemed like a really cool guy and one of the few cool NRI seniors I had met so far. The NRI seniors from '93 batch were quite aloof when it came to Abi, me, Mike, and Ajit. They seemed to think that they were better than us and had a very "holier-than-thou" attitude. The main offenders were Binu and Anil The Faker. Binu was from Chicago and looked like Nathan Morris from Boyz II Men. He often experimented with the motif of his facial hair, often coming up with impeccable designs that had such straight, sharp edges. He seemed like he wanted to be in GQ magazine. Anil The Faker was from Queens. He was an attractive fellow who had a peculiar gait. He walked with his backpack on one arm, the opposite arm tucked in his pants pockets, his back arched with excessive lumbar lordosis and thereby an accentuated posterior, and stuck his chest out. I'm just gonna come out and say it. Homeboy walked like a rooster. I didn't really intereact with the '93 NRIs much. They were off studying and besides, I had Mike and Ajit in the hostel to keep me company. Mike was a trip. He cracked a lot of jokes and told me lots of stories of his adventures in Tampa. We often spent lots of time in his bedroom just talking about things like sports, movies, music, and American pop culture. Come ON! O.J. DID IT, PEOPLE! Ajit was an interesting case-study as well. The guy's room was impeccably spic-and-span. A place for everything and everything in its place. His uniforms were arranged by color: white, whiter, and whitest. No one was allowed to wear their chappals (fobspeak for slippers) in his room. Whenever he saw one of the omnifarious insects, he surreptitiously culled one of his chappals and stalked the critter. Once he was locked on, he lightly tapped the insect with the chappal to stun it. Most of the time, it dropped in his hand. Then, he opened the door and threw it out. One of his most interesting quirks, tho, was that he was a Tom Cruise FREAK! He knew every movie that Mr. Cruise was ever in, and practically every line. He told me once about a time when he went to a bar in chicago and started talking to a couple of girls. He then used the line from "Top Gun" about crashing and burning or some shit like that. He ACTUALLY USED THE ENTIRE DIALOGUE! He had so many stories from his college days that I spent hours riveted by his chronicles. I was never going to know what college #life in America was like. Since Ajit graduated from college, his accounts were like a panacea to my forlorn yearnings for a normal college #life. Day after day brought constant reminders of how ABNORMAL #life could be. I mean, over here, the women wore pants and the men wore skirts! People walked oxen instead of dogs! Women had bushier beards than the men! But one of the first and most important lessons I learned in India was that misery indeed loved company.