I first saw you on-stage at the
public speech contest held at Vythiri when you were a high school student. I
was a contestant at the versification contest at one of the off-stage venues,
and my contest finished two hours later than expected, so you were half way
done when I reached the main stage where you were speaking. The essence of the topic
of your extemporatory speech, I later understood, was “Science and
Superstitions”.
You were average in height, with
slender build and narrow shoulders. You wore steel-rimmed spectacles whose
refraction partially concealed the glow in your eyes. You were unconcerned
about the heat of the media lights, the height of the podium you were standing
on,the echoing of your voice from the huge microphones and the five hundred or
more pairs of eyes which were watching you, measuring your every word,
expression and movement.
Words seemed to flow from you
effortlessly. “Science has reached to a point where the complexities of the
Universe could be shredded into mathematical equations. Science has proved it
that snakes cannot milk cows, that enchantings cannot cure diseases,that wine
cannot be made out of water. Science proves facts beyond doubt. In science, every
new breakthrough opens door to many new breakthroughs.”
Silence. Followed by a huge applause.
“Science should be the most powerful tool with which the educated youth
should fight superstitions”.
You paused to let the audience reflect upon the statement.
“And we all are here, just in time to revolutionize the world with
rational thoughts”. You ended.
You walked away from the
stage before the audience could stop the huge applause. And that was the first
time I saw you. I’d never forget the way you probed the audience, as if sending
a message directly to me. I wanted to give you a handshake. But you happened
to be so inaccessible to me at that time that I didn’t even attempt to meet you
in person let alone giving a handshake.
On the next day evening,
when the prizes were being distributed, I carefully listened to the list of
winners to find out if you were one. Your name was announced twice, as the
first place holder of the extemporatory speech and debate. A teacher from your
school received the prize on your behalf, as you had already departed from
Vythiri by then. You were to represent Kerala state in the National Contest
to be held during next month.
Your name was Arun Prayag.
Long after, I accidentally saw your profile while scrolling
through dozens of friend suggestions offered by facebook. I am not someone who likes going through the facebook profiles of random people, but
there was something that made me to click on your name impulsively. It was the
familiarity associated with your name or it was the gleam in your eyes that
made me feel like you are probing my eyes: I am not sure which of these made me look into your profile. I discovered from your profile that you are my
senior at college, and suddenly realised that you were the debater I saw at
Vythiri four years back. I quickly scanned through the list of current students
on the medical college’s website and found that you are now pursuing the compulsory
rotating internship at the hospital attached to the medical college. You would
have been posted in any of the twenty departments in the hospital, each of
which is further broken down into three to six units. It was near impossible to
find out where you were, unless I ask for information from one of your batch mates.
I went through
the posts on your facebook wall and found that you were quite active there. You had
posted statuses, links and comments about irrational governmental policies, emerging diseases and healthcare tips. You also had also shared anecdotes from your life as an intern. All these sounded very much like you, confirming my suspicion that you were indeed the debater I once
looked up with respect. I overcame the urge to send you a friend request,
fearing that you might not accept my friendship because you do not know me in
person.
In the following days, I looked
for you while I passed through the
corridor from one ward to another, among the team of doctors that conducted morning rounds around patients lying down on mats in the verandah . You were expected to be the one without the
white coat, kneeling down on the floor mat of the patient, wearing the
stethoscope round your neck, explaining the details of the patient to the small
group of white-coat-wearing senior doctors and jotting down the orders on the
case record. You were not to be seen in any group of doctors I saw. You were never to be seen at any of the community events at
college which made me think if you had shrunk to medical books the way many of the medicos have done. You were not to be seen at the
entrance coaching institute like the many interns who choose to devote their
weekends to study for the post-graduate entrance exams. You were not seen in
the coffee-station where doctors, medics and nurses hung out after their ward
rounds to gossip over a cup of coffee. You seemed to be literally non-existent.
Eventually I stopped looking for you and forgot about you altogether.
---------------------------------------
It was a particularly busy
day in the Outpatient department. In addition to the interns, medical students
were also asked to help out the consulting physicians by examining the patients
and explaining the findings. Names of people were being called out through the
microphone every once in a while. People who were impatiently waiting for their
turn had started to encroach into the cubicles of doctors to find out when
their turn would arrive. The Outpatient tickets were being stalked on the
physician’s desks from time to time by the green-uniformed nursing assistant.
It was half past one in the afternoon when the queue in the OP thinned, when
medical students were let go. I sighed in relief when I was finally released
from work. Being too tired and hungry, I
walked my way to the coffee station anticipating to have some light snack
before going to the lecture class which would start in 30 minutes.
The coffee station had glass-shelves,
which displayed fried snacks of various shades of brown and different shapes – round, triangular or doughnut shaped. As it was late in the afternoon, there were not many people
hanging out at the coffee-station. I bought a coffee and idli-vada, and sat
down on one of the empty seats close to the entrance. After some time, a man
sat down on the seat directly opposite to me, despite several other eating tables
being vacant. I quickly looked up, and found that it was you.
“Netha, right?”
“Yes”, I replied. I was
surprised that you knew my name.
“And you are Arun”, I
said. You looked amused and all the more surprised to be recognized. You were amazed to learn from me later that I remember you from the high school public
speech contest at Vythiri.
We talked. You told me that you know me from the organization I am volunteering at. That you had also
joined the same organization a few months back. That your busy schedule at the
hospital is keeping you from spending more time on volunteering. That you have
moved from public speaking to digital writing. That you are planning to launch
a digital magazine about medicine and health in Malayalam language. That you
are reading Albert Camus’s ‘The Stranger’ and is thoroughly enjoying it. That
you aspire to become a physician-scientist. That you had won the third place for
the debate contest at the National level after winning at Vythiri. That you
feel like it has been ages since you made your last public speech. That you are posted at a community health centre in a village close by, which justified your absence from the hospital.
I felt as if you were my acquaintance
for a long time, though that was the first time we met. Our talk continued for
a long time even after we finished
drinking the coffee. I had to interrupt and wind up our conversation to reach
in time for the afternoon lecture class. We parted after promising to keep in
touch with each other.
When I checked my facebook
account that evening, I found that you had dropped a friend request.