Randomness

 For no reason, that I can think of, I just recalled the last day of my MBBS curriculum today..the last of all the many countless exams that we had given over the duration of 4 yrs during our medical journey. It may be hard for you to understand the post if you are not a medico..so I'll describe in brief, what our academic year is like..before moving on to why I began writing this post.

I had hardly started with the academic year when I found myself staring face to face with an exam at the other end of the fortnight. I forgot the count of exams by the time I was 6 months into the 4 yr long course...All that I can recall is a blur of the nervousness, the tension, the madness, the fear of the unknown, the fear of Murphy's law of medicine..the topic u forget to read out of the 15 odd books will be the one the Examiner will remember to ask, the sleepless nights before every exam and the reminder of the next one all ready to grasp u...in between these exams was packed up our whole life, the moments of fun, longings, bonding between colleagues riding the same boat, gossips, lack of sleep, disappointments, successes & never ending fatigue..

                    And then, there comes the day, about which I mentioned at the beginning of the post..the day of the last exam and when the last exam ended..I returned back..got through the routine of the post examination discussion..got back to my room..fell into senseless sleep from all the accumulated fatigue.

                              And then when I woke up...with mind all alert and geared up to begin the preparation for the next exam...I came face to face with the void...the blank...of no more exam...In that moment, I realized that it's all over (atleast for a year or so till the Post Grad entrance exams begin)..For sometime I laughed at the MBBS monster..that finally I made it alive out of it's clutches, in one piece, in one go...and then the world came crumbling down with the emptiness settling in..I did not know what to do in those few moments, I could not understand what all those 4 years had been about...having surrounded myself with the pseudo heaven of studies, work, college & exams..I forget for a few moments all the plans lying written on a piece of paper, during those hours when I had madly wanted all this to end...I remember crying, trying to understand the emptiness that I was feeling..It was definitely not what I dreamed I would feel when I made it to the biggest day of my life.

                                  Today, I realize that that emptiness was not a void of helplessness...but the emptiness of having found what I had started out for...a state of bliss..a state which can only be achieved, after having, loved, lived and having worked hard for a dream, I had dreamed...Those were the moment of bliss I had earned...bliss that I now know I shall never find again in life, after having entered and seen the grind of professional medicine...that pure feeling of becoming a doctor, the dedication to serve, to heal, the pure exaltation of a child who had dreamt of reaching out to the sky and pulling down the stars and in those few moments..something within the child knew that she had caught her star...something that had given her a few moments of peace, hoping that those moments would help her last through a lifetime of hell....

                                                      Wish I could find that certainity again.