MBBS-1

3 subjects. 6 papers. 9 days.

They told us it wouldn't be easy. They didn't tell us it would be this hard.

I walked out of college on the 22nd of July with a crisp hall-ticket tucked inside my bag, a motivational speech playing inside of my head. Yes, I was to appear for my 1st year Medical Examinations in less than 24 hours. Exams are challenging. I like them more because they are insightful, show you where you stand. This however was my pre-Med School ideology and I knew so little.

Rule #1 for clearing Med Exams: Kick sleep of out of the window and stack up on caffeine. Time is of the essence and you need to make sacrifices to buy it. Need to perfect the art of optimizing every passing hour and making it productive. The body wont like it. It'll begin to shut down your cognizance and each fibre will demand rest. Brew coffee, splash water, shut the drama and restart.

I've worked for 20 hours each day, for 10 days straight now. A simple voice saying 'fight, you're stronger than this.'

I had successfully coped with sleep issues for the first two papers- Biochemistry 1 and 2.

But if it was meant to be easy, it would not be called life.

It began as a little swelling in my otic canal. Before I knew, I was taken down by migraine followed by a ear ache that seemed to be ripping holes through my ear drum. Anatomy paper 1 one was sure to spell doom. The pain never subsided, and after handing out my answersheet for the day, I thought I was to collapse. Funnily, I couldn't even make time to visit the the doctor. I simply popped an antibiotic and smothered my ear with Soframycin. It was time for paper 2.

Antibiotics induce sleep. Don't we all know that? So yes, my second paper was to go down the drain too!

The anibiotic did what it was supposed to do, it relieved me of the pain. I just wont be able to guage the collateral damage I've suffered until I have my results in my hand.

Now with the pain subsided and my normal nocturnal cycle re-established, I had every reason to look forward to my favourite subject- Physiology.

Paper 1 was smooth as silk. A decent question paper, one that I did justice to. I think I smiled in response to a question paper for the first time. "Omg there was SO much to write! It just went on and on and on!"

There. I jinxed it. Life went "Aww, let's get your hand some rest sweety."

At 12:30am that night, I fractured my right wrist.

Hit it into a door bolt while making it out of my mom's room in utter darkness. Couldn't even yelp.

I decided it wouldn't be so bad and dismissed it...until I picked up a pencil to mark out an important line.

I could barely hold it.

The next two hours saw me sitting with ice-packs in one hand and a book in another. Desperately trying to train my hand into dexterity. Blue, swollen hands aren't the best of omens.

By 5 in the morning though, the ice seemed to have brought down the swelling. The pain only aggravated with forceful movements. I could just barely hold on to a pen.

Then Life belted out another joke.

Q. No 1: "Define Pain. Describe the pathway for pain sensation with a neat diagram."

Was I to laugh or cry or what?

I finished the entire exam. Still amazes me how, because even now my hand appears bruised. Because even now, this post is a left hand type out.

The last 10 days have left me fuzzled. I have bean bags beneath my eyes that could easily lodge a sleeping baby. My sleep cycles have been thrown haywire and the night seems to have lost it's sleep inducing effects.

But I feel relieved. I know that when I finally fall asleep, I will not have amino acids, livers and brains floating in my dreams.

Exams are challenging. They show you where you stand. And Iam glad with where I do. Irrespective of the outcome of these examinations, Iam proud of all that I achieved- even before I entered the exam hall each day.

3 subjects. 6 papers. 9 days. DONE.

*yawn*

Nida Fatima, aged 19.

"OMG you're nineteen! That's big! You should celebrate, got any plans for tonight?"
"Uhmmm, 2 minute silence maybe?"

That came out spontaneously, at the drop of a hat. Why did everybody sound so excited about my 'last teen year' when I frankly couldn't care less? Birthdays are meant for people who believe their life is worth celebrating. Mine deserves a 2 minute silence. I've dealt with more losses than triumphs, have had more of scars than therapy and I've fought more than my 1.5kg brain weight could endure. I do not see year nineteen being an improvement over that either. So yes, I put my head down and stay shut for 2 minutes, in remembrance of the Nida that once was. The Nida that was loved. The Nida that was butchered to a cause unknown.

No, I didn't fight heroic battles and I'm sure as hell incapable of doing that. My losses were self-borne and my scars, self inflicted. God created man in a mould of perfection and all things nice. Negativity was the ingredient we added on our own. We garnished ourselves with morbidity, leaving behind a dish we dare not taste. For all those medals and trophies in my cupboard, those laminated certificate albums and those monthly pay cheques, I feel as under-accomplished as a scrap of torn paper. A scrap torn from a sheet that was once whole. Does any of this account for a celebration?


~But I'll find repose in new ways, though I haven't slept in two days.
'Cause cold nostalgia chills me to the bone.~
This, I shall. I'll find my repose, I'll find my way out of it. Just as I am incapable of heroism, I am incapable of giving up. And this spirit was born out of a promise that a Book made to me:
"Surely with difficulty is ease, with difficulty surely is ease" [94: 5,6]
A comforter like no other.

I will be 23 days into year 19 when I sit for my first year Medical Examinations. Hardwork has never intimidated me, and challenges like these give me a real kick. So I am going to channel all my energies into doing what almost hundred people asked me to do: "Make your last teen year count!"
I am leaving my losses far behind in order to plunge myself for bigger gains. Wouldn't want to take that leap of faith with my feet tied with ropes of regret. Science has a beautiful way of teaching us that. If the heart goes into failure, little structures placed in our blood vessels take up responsibilty for setting it right. When that fails, miraculous tiny molecules of hormones take charge. When they go down, the kidneys play their final stroke and viola! That fist-sized heart is pumping gaily again!
Giving up was not an option our bodies gave us. So much happens inside of us just to get that one breath in perfect timing. And to think we never realize it!

My last teen will not be a fantasy. It'll be the way life is meant to be. I will lose, I may win and year 20 will come along in the blink of an eyelid.
But then one person came along and told me "Friends are like flowers, they brighten your day."
As long as life allows me to brighten up someone's day, I shall keep going. As long as life hands out such trivial joys and simple pleasures, I shall keep going.

Blow the horn, the war is on.

Today I feel the urge to blog. Not the need, not the intention but just the urge.

I am typing this with zero knowledge of what my next word will be, or the structure of the next sentence that will follow. This time, my whims take lead and my limbic system controls the reigns.

Fight. Fight it out. Fight it to the end. These mottoes seem to be driving the course of my life for quite some time now. Oh yes and not to forget: This is a fight that needs to be fought alone.

Yeah, particularly the last one.

They will not stand by you. They will all disperse like little ants. They will walk out on you mid-battle. Then it is just you, your sword and your shield against a battalion. Fight bro, stick it out till the end. In fact, you are the only one person who will not ‘give handle’ to yourself. Every other damn person will.

                                                              “Et tu, Brute?”

It’s overwhelming. That sword will bend and the shield will succumb. People will fail you, your soldiers will die and your ammunition will run out. However, the show has to go on, and its time to fight bare-fisted. Clench your fists and grit your teeth, in full knowledge that your only solution is brute force.

                                            “Be not like dumb, driven cattle;

                                                   Be the hero in the strife.”

It is not about who stands in the opponents court. It is just about what is at stake. Sometimes, the game is played You vs. You- and one side HAS to lose. You could be your own nemesis, your own undoing.

 The essence of the matter is that your reasons will change, your armies will change, your stratagem, your battlefields, your prize…every thing will change. But the fight? Yes, that will go on. The fight against the mucus in your respiratory tract when you struggled on your first breath will become a fight on your deathbed against your last breath. Your main strife will be what lies in the middle of those two. So blow the horns, the war is on. Make it count!

PS: Wow. I let go, and this is what stumbled out of the closet. This is an unaltered article, completely free from pre-meditated ideas, typed out in roughly 20 minutes.

The Table of Truth

Today looked like just another drowsy mid-summer afternoon. I lay rolled up on the couch, listlessly hopping from one channel to another, staring blankly at the television screen. I had almost dozed off as the countdown began: "Movie resumes in 4...3...2...1..."
Then I jolted upright.

8 questions, 8 tasks, 21 crores. No contact with outsiders, no quitting mid-game, and no messing with the rules. What rules? Just one: if you lie, you die.
Sounded like a fair deal. So what if you couldn't quit? How bad could the truth get?

Real bad.

Possibly the 8 easiest questions ever, with the toughest of answers. Because the truth, my friends, ticks off a dormant time bomb of emotions. Wipes away years of grime from a past long forgotten. The past that travels a full circle and greets you with vengeance.
The 8 tasks- some easy, some disturbing, some life threatening. Each one of them intimately tied with  a shameful history. A history of the past decade, of a contemptible youth and a trail of disgraceful events.

To quit meant having to lose an arm. To continue, meant having to lose ones life, ones love, and everything interim. But 21 crores could change all of that, couldn't it?
So it went deeper into the gutter. Money- that was prime. And so wrecking another man's property, making a carnal exhibition of ones wife and holding a gun to someones back became the rightful thing to do. Money lay at the end of virtue.

We act without considering repercussions. We believe in living 'in the moment' and forget how the next moment is going to return fire. Then there is one slight brush with the past, one chance meeting with a face from the bygones, and life crumbles down. A stage is reached where regret and repentance holds no meaning. The stage where the cash stood, smiling an ingratiating smile.

"You shoot him, or I shoot your wife."
Shoot, and then the money will flow.
Shoot, and bid goodbye to your past.

A dam bursts open somewhere within, and in an overwhelming wave of self-reproach, the trigger is pulled.


I sat stunned, stone cold. Did I see what I just saw?
A series of instances flash through my mind. All the things I had done and gotten away with.The circle would definitely be complete someday. The boomerang I threw would trace it's path back to me. Would I ever have to pull the trigger as the last means of escape? An extremely uncomfortable scenario to envision, but not one to be ruled out.

I had seen arrogance turn to helplessness. I had seen pride transform into shame. I had seen the perfect mix of realism with surrealism.
I had seen it all, on Table No. 21.

 

With that, I switched the television off.

Caged Yearnings

"It's my life. It's now or never. It's my life. I ain't gonna live forever. I just wanna live while I'm alive. It's my LIFE."

BonJovi came so close to summarizing the story of my existence! Yes, this is a life I was blessed with. It's mine. And just because you know how much you mean to me, do not deceive yourself into thinking you can manipulate my life, in any possible way.But yet again, that has been happening to me at every crossroad of life. SOCIETY has dominated and ruled over every major decision of my life. PEOPLE began to believe they could take over a girl's life. A girl too weak to write the chapters in the book of her life. Why weak? Beacuse she's small. Merely a teen. Lively, enthusiastic...unaware of the "big bad world" out there.Which begs the question, "Was I born blind? Or did God substitute my brain with vacuum? "I've seen the world. It's dark, dismal. Not a soul I know is genuinely pleased with where he/she stands. And the people I see who smile their outwardly smiles, are already dead within.They tell me they've tackled life. That they've had glorious, fulfilling lives. They tell me they're happy. Happy beacuse they stuck to custom. The tried and tested formula of untangling the mess that started taking shape while we lay floating in amniotic fluid.

"Follow what your ancestors did, you'll never go wrong," they tell me.

"Am I a sheep?" I ask in return.

It's true, for a human community, we have an undesirably large number of sheep. I have my aspirations. A girl of the present times, I know precisely what I need to live a life that agrees with my version of "happy." People I know (including me) have been controlled by those who believe they have the right to dictate. A majority succumbed. No one stood up and stuck their neck out. No one stomped their foot and took a firm stance against the society. And when I finally muster the courage and tell the world "this is what I want," they pull me down like a treacherous bog.

"I'm going to be a Doctor"

*applause*

"I wish to be a Journalist"

*verbal bashing*

"What will you earn? How will you feed yourself? Who will ever marry you? Will you ever get settled? It's against what we've thought you. Don't you see? Become a doctor, you'll have a SAFE life. "Safe? Do you need more articles in the newspaper to know depression makes one suicidal?

The society, is nothing but a crowd. A crowd of such anguished souls lost in the maze of life. Such negativity in their DNA that if someone wakes from that slumber and points towards the light, they reject him outright. It would disappoint Charles Darwin to know that it is a part of their genetic sequence now, to resist change, even if it is for the better. Because custom has staled them. Destroyed the power of independent thought. Like zombies, they wander. Aimlessly, groping in the dark.So is it justified, for this...crowd, to steer somebody else's life over to their side? Personally, I neither know, nor care. Because I've had enough of people, I'm through with it. Call me names, disown me, do what you want, you mean NOTHING to me. You are just another face in a sea of other faces.

"My heart is like an open highway, like Frankie said I did it my way. I just wanna live while I'm alive..."Yes BonJovi, you said it right. It IS my life. It is my novel that is yet to be written. How it ends, I cannot fathom. All I know, is that now, I weild the pen. And I'm moulding my life the way I want it to be. My rules, my ideas, my twists, my turns.The society can go and suck it.

Cheers to Life!

The 'good' is only appreciated in contrast with the 'bad.'
The value of joy can only be measured against pain.
For without these contrasts in life, neither would there be a dawn, nor dusk.
Neither would there be a reason to wake with an aim, nor a moment of introspection before sleep.
Life would be reduced to a stagnant reality, aimless and devoid of growth.

Pain is mandatory for growth, the wise have said. We have been taught into believing that success cannot be tasted by those who haven't been thrown to the dogs in the past. They say life is a mortar and pestle and only those who can take the grind, survive.

I agree, but only partially. We have been a generation of humans obsessed with glorifying pain. Every little hurdle is a reason to groan for, every road-block a reason to slump, every failure a reason to cry.
We're giving up every single second. We make a waste of each breath we take, and rightfully deserve. So occupied we have been with miseries, that the very abstract of happiness has become obsolete. The line of contrast has been smudged beyond recognition and only a grey muck remains.

I hit a phase just like the one described above, only recently.
Situations went off-handle, and I found my maturity levels inadequate of controlling events. After all, we learn from what we experience, we don't carry it from the womb.
Life is a rabid bitch, we've all learnt. I experienced its manifestations first-hand. A twist in the tale, a turn of the tables, a shuffle of the cards...I can give it so many titles! Maybe even the Dementor's Kiss? (to satiate the Harry Potter freak in me!)
So what did I learn out of this particular experience? Like the biological rabies, the bite from this bitch comes with its anecdote as well. That like Dementors from fiction, these demons too can be warded off by a Patronus.

Now, what was the first requisite to cast a successful Patronus?
JOY. HAPPINESS.

As bizarre as it may sound, nothing dries tears faster than a smile.
But how does one exactly conjure a false sense of delight in a seemingly hopeless situation?
I fought it out. With each new morning, I set out to snatch whatever shred of happiness I could find. I struggled against choking tears to plaster a smile across my lips and courage over my face. Wore my favourite colours, smiled at random people, helped out a friend in need, tried every manoeuvre that could keep me occupied on a mental level. When I thought I was going to falter, I told myself that I don't deserve the pain. I gave myself the responsibility of keeping me happy. I made happiness my top priority.

The result amazed me. The tiny tiny bits I was collecting culminated into a beautiful silver Patronus. That smile struggling through tears? It was finally free. Uninhibited. It was somewhere around this time I understood the significance of these very popular lines:

"Dil jo tera baat baat pe ghabraaye, dil pe rakh ke haath use toh phusla le.

 Dil idiot hai pyaar se usko samjhaale"

Theoretically, it may sound bizarre. Practically, it is a major challenge. But the result it will yield, is worth every bit. The point of the matter is, you deserve cheer in the same way you deserve the oxygen you breathe.  Not a force in the world can snatch it away from you. Never, ever, give up the pursuit of happiness.

And if life is a bitch, shrug, and say Bitch Please!

The Unfinished Jigsaw

How often do you hear about the greatest of friendships being blown up in the blink of an eyelid?
How often do you hear about two sisters who get enstranged?
How often do you hear about a girl who hates her best friend?

If you have, I respect you already. If you haven't, you'll hear about it now.
Because what you will read next, is a glimpse of what lies in the innermost chambers of my heart, one of the many factors that still makes me frown despite all the reasons for me to smile. No matter how perfect life seems 'in the moment,' there is always that ONE thing that nags your heart and bursts that short-lived bubble of joy.

Naila. Shireen. Farha.
My Powerpuff girls, my angels.
The people who knew the Nida as she was. The Nida with all her vulnerabilities and fears.
The three people who loved her irrespective of all her flaws.
Naila. Shireen. Farha.
The girls with whom my insecurities were secure with.

They were the people whose presence compensated for every deprivation in my life.  I wanted one sibling, God blessed me with three. That is what they meant to me- my sisters.
Although we met in the most unimaginable circumstances, we gelled beautifully.
If one was a confused jackass, the other was a smart ass.
If one was reserved and soft-spoken, the other was an out and out lame ass.
Like all philosophical stories, we faced good times and hard. From rofl moments to crying hard in each other's arms, we had witnessed every flavour of life.
We were checks for the person going astray, we were pillars for those reaching higher.
Together we fell, and together we rose. Against the world and it's discrimination, against narrow-minded people and  their suffocation. We were just beginning to understand the meaning of  'perfect.'
We were four extremes, brought closer by the extremities.
They were the missing links to the jigsaw that my life was. The last pieces that fit perfectly to complete the bigger picture. The final link to my Utopian dreams.

The question thus arises: What went wrong?
Why was the jigsaw shaken up and why did it's pieces go missing?

It happened on the 29th of June, 2012.
A competitive exam that sucked the last ounces of our affection towards each other.
Two of us made it, two of us missed it by a hair's breadth.
Thus came the fall.
Getting into a medical college is the one issue that is so hyped in today's time, that love, friendship and selflessness disappear into the din of frenzy.
I NEVER understood any of that.
I valued friendship beyond everything. I do not know if I was right in doing so, but now I feel I had overrated  the concept of friendship. I'd made them the central pillars of my life, while I was just another brick in their walls.
I miss the two of them. Whats ails me further, is that they do not.
I recall as if happened just yesterday, me walking up to my mom on the day of the results and telling her I wished to swap places with Farha. I wanted her to get through, because Medicine didn't mean as much to me as Farha did. I'd have gone into one of the best colleges in Hyderabad- CBIT- to pursue Biotechnology, a field that always held fascination for me. But being a doctor was Farha's dream. It was the sole aim of her life, and of those around her. It was her mother's long nurtured dream.
Here again, I was wronged. While I was concerning myself with the tragedies (sounds melodramatic? It was.) in the lives of my friends,  there was a whole new storm brewing in the background. And I was at it's epicenter.
While I was being congratulated with niceties and hypocritical pleasantries, I was also being held responsible for the unfortunate circumstances in my friends' life.
It began with a barrage of question posed by disappointed mothers.
"How did she do it and you couldn't?"
"She is the same as you, what then, is different about her?"
"See? Those two are now ahead of you, while you remain plateaued in failure."

That did it. The firewood was there, so was the coal. Now, came the first spark.
Like all wild-fires, this one spread too. I was being blamed!
I no longer recognized the girl who was my sister. The girl who figured in almost EVERY picture I have of my college life. My FarHawtieee.

No more phone calls, no more texts, no more Nimbuzzing....like we'd never met.
I was always told that people change with time. I never believed that until I witnessed it first-hand. Flipping through my notebooks pulls me down into memory lane. My notebooks have become what the Pensieve was to Dumbledore. I loved sketching Farha. Blessed with the daintiest of features, she was my idea of dusky beauty. Then there was me cracking stupid jokes about how I would clone her hair and wear it myself. She was the closest any girl could get to being prefect. Quite the envy in college ;)
This sketch still gets me tripping in laughter! Sitting through a boring Physics lecture and playing match-maker...only to realize, there was no one who could do justice with my girl. So I ended up proposing to her myself. :P

Ahmed Faraz, you give words to my dilemma:
Tum takalluf ko bhi iqlaas samajhte ho Faraz
dost hota nahi har koi haath milaane waala

I spent a miserable birthday in hope she'd come knocking at my door with that radiant smile I was starting to miss. She didn't.
Even the date of my birth seemed to be conspiring against me...1st of July, two days after those wretched results. I went to her, next month, on her birthday and parted by saying "I didn't want anybody else's birthday to suck as much as mine did, so here I am."
She smiled.
The formality with which she spoke with me last, flummoxed me. For in the  past, we had been abuse pelting maniacs. Time is a funny entity, and memories, funnier. They create a limbo right in the middle of reality and leave you to wonder where it is that you actually fit in.
I do not know how to handle situations like these. I therefore choose to resign into muted silence. If I was loved the way I am capable of loving, then my jigsaw shall fit in on it's own and in it's own sweet time.
I still pray, every single day, that her life falls into place. That she tastes the success that is rightfully hers. Most importantly, I pray for a miracle that will bring her back, and us together.