Obliviate

 

Forgetting what one studied is the bane of existence of all medicos. When you read it, it all seems so clear and easy to remember but when you try to recall at the end of the day, it all seems like a blur. This is a known fact though. But what is not known by all is that forgetful med students grow older to become forgetful PGTs and Professors forming departments full of forgetful people.

It almost seems like an absurd dream when you go to the exam hall one morning and find out that the same people who are always fixated on punctuality are late for their favorite job of quietly observing the confused looks on students’ faces as they blankly stare at the question paper trying to diagnose diseases. Your surprise increases manifold when you find that no one in the department actually knows that you are supposed to appear for the exam on that date. There is no question paper ready, and all the professors are busy with their duties of patient care. Finally, after two long hours of waiting and forgetting all you read, when the only thing you can think about is lunch, does your question paper finally arrive. This is followed by another 3 hours of toiling and trying to figure out what to write, when equally confused people around you keep bugging you for answers you yourself don’t know. Ultimately you submit the answer script and rush to the canteen for snatching away whatever lunch leftovers they have before your friends can get there.

But the next thing you know is that you are waking up from a slumber inside the library. After you wake up you cannot help but question yourself, “Was this real?” It won’t feel real for sure. You feel that maybe it was all a crazy dream till you start remembering other details like how you were texting your senior from the exam hall to find out whether this was a common occurrence, how you saw a bunch of rowdy guys playing football with a bottle outside the exam hall, how all of you took forbidden selfies inside the exam hall, made reels and snatched away each other’s books to keep studying out-of-the-box topics which all of you knew was not going to be asked in the exam. You remember how some of you were making plans to leave and not to show up for the exam ultimately. “Did I really imagine all this?” you ask yourself when your sleepy brain cannot differentiate an unimaginable truth from an absurd dream. Everything feels hilariously unreal. “I guess I’ll never know” you accept as you start studying for the next exam.