Barefoot on a Gravel Path to Nowhere

“I wish I’m in law school instead”

Me, to anyone who would listen

At the start of the year, and me uncharacteristically happy studying some dead guy's armpit. Snitched from Perry.

A year ago, I was this invincible boy walking into adulthood, responsibility, and the first of many difficult steps into the white coat of a healer. I packed myself to India – to Manipal to learn the noblest of arts. I can do this, I was sure. Heck, I can do anything.

A year later, I feel anything but invincible. My shell of confidence now sports a thousand tiny leaky punctures. I feel exhausted – but yet the road goes on and on.

No wall was built greater than self-doubt.

In the course of my first year in Manipal, I have become increasingly more introverted and desensitized. I cared less about what happen outside my bricks of medical textbooks. I coveted good grades and strove to stay in the upper third of the class. I sleep nightly with a plastic bag of genuine human bones stowed under my bed. A guy hanged himself from his ceiling fan a few rooms away from my hostel room and I did not lose a single second of sleep over that. Being badgered daily by beggars no older than toddlers as I journeyed between lectures and meals had extinguished my ability to sympathise and pity. Bodies and organs of dead men upset me no more than cuts of beef on a butcher’s slab, thanks to the two-hour dissection sessions we attended everyday, first thing in the morning.

In short, I no longer give a sh!t. Doctors aren’t angels in white coats. Doctors are automatons – cold, calculative; more circuit-boards than heart.

During our last dissection class (because I am incurably lame). Snitched from Ezyana (middle)

I questioned my motives. Why am I here? I seek respect and prestige. I seek the security of a profession whose members are in high demand and are adequately paid. I seek fulfillment for being able to trudge through the treacherous mires of medical school, internship, and eventual practice.

I seek a lot things and none of them benefits anyone outside the scope of me. I am nothing but a pernicious, selfish prick, and I'm ashamed of that.

In less than ten days, I will have to fly back to the drudgery that is med school with an immediate start on second year subjects. I’ll admit that the urge of not returning rests seductively on my mind. It’s four more hard years of grueling training, and it gets a lot harder after graduation. Also from the tales I’ve heard, marital bliss is not something doctors can usually have – doctors make notoriously bad husbands and fathers. From where I am standing right now, the road seems to be paved with sh!t.

I need to find some meaning in this job. I really do.


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