The rain lashed down as I alighted at the dimly-lit Delhi station. I felt a tight nervous knot; what did this strange city hold in its dark folds? The next morning, I went and registered at Hostel 2, Room 11 at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. I was then shepherded to meet the iconic first-ever Director, Dr. B. B. Dixit. Who was to know that the diminutive 16 year-old quaking in his shoes would be his successor in time to come…
At the hostel I was immediately pounced upon by the seniors. I had no earthly inkling that something like ‘ragging’ existed and was flung headlong into an endless vortex of jibes and shaming. The particular med school brand was of distorting medical terms to unimaginable meanings. When I said I’d done ‘Intermediate’ they cackled, ‘ha, so you’ve done interc******, how was it?’. I was named ‘foetus’ because of my puny size. Among other things, I was always called ‘Madrasi’, the ubiquitous term that lumped everybody from the south of India into one despicable breed. Nights were a torture; I’d try to steer clear of the hostel and sleep in the park opposite the faculty quarters.
Classes were another minefield. My Sanskritized Hindi was different from my batchmates’ colloquial lingo. The worst was that some of the lectures were totally incomprehensible. I struggled to catch the Professors’ predominantly Oriya-Bengali accents, dutifully writing ‘bhein’ and ‘bhiscous’ for ‘vein and ‘viscous’, and became the laughing stock! Some of them were downright parochial and echoed the ‘Madrasi’ refrain.
I craved home food and was not able to stomach the mess meals. The searing heat of Delhi began to get to me, and within the month I was miserable enough to want to leave this place where there was no sleep, no food, only hostility.
Looking back, this was perhaps the second most horrific phase of my life. The other one would come long years later when I locked horns with the Union Health Minister of the time!

As told to Priya Sarkar (wife)
(continues tomorrow)