Lone Traveler

 

When one steps into med school in first year, it feels like being in a forest of unknown faces. While some people are lucky enough to find some of their known faces in this crowd, not all have such luck. Slowly introduction begins, followed by exchange of phone numbers. Before we know it we are divided into a couple of huge groups. Study groups form, as in first year everyone is motivated and reading all the standard textbooks seems like a status symbol.

However, the funniest part about these groups is that, seldom do they remain intact. As the so called “friends” show their true faces, hearts are broken, trust is shattered and phone numbers are blocked or archived. The study groups then fall at the bottom of your contact list waiting to create a surge of nostalgia before being permanently deleted. Sometimes it is about two friends liking the same person, at other times it is about inferiority or superiority complex based on the all-important, “Mb results.” After all, not many people have the openness to accept that the friend you used to teach and help before exams ended up scoring more than you.

But humans are social beings after all, and hence they form new groups again, smaller ones this time. These new friends initially seem so much better than the seemingly toxic groups you left behind. The initial few days are spent in discussing the ‘red flags’ of the people you left behind, or who decided to leave you behind. But soon, even the new group seems only slightly different from the old one as new ‘red flags’ are discovered. Actually, knowing a person is like viewing a slide under a microscope, the closer and more magnified view you get, the more pathologies you are likely to find. Finally, when they decide to enter ‘khep groups’ in final year without telling others the decision to label them as selfish, self-centered ‘batchmates’ seems only too easy.

At the end it is only you and your closest friend(s) who decide to stay, and accept your ‘red flags’ as they are. The others reduce to people you say “Hello” to in corridors or who ask for pdfs before Final MB. Though we have many friends to start with, by the end of Final year, we are essentially solo travelers, left with colleagues or batchmates, not friends. Some people become so much like strangers that one is even scared to ask, “Hey we were best buddies once. Remember?” A small voice inside us says, “Leave it. They probably do not remember.”

This is probably what makes final MB tougher, as one cannot turn to others for support, everyone has to fight their own battles. Does this mean that people stop helping each other? Definitely not. They still provide crash courses to each other outside exam halls, ask doubts, roast that one examiner who kept asking questions like “What do you think was the relation between Bailey and Love?” But that’s all. Thus, when at night you are alone in your study room at home, or your hostel room and the syllabus seem too tough, too big and the exam too near, you tend to call up your mother only to hear that small, “Everything will be fine tomorrow, sleep now.”

Photo courtesy- Shuvojyoti Rakshit

Someone once rightly commented, “If after MBBS you end up being in touch with even six of your college friends, it is great.” Movies like “Chhichhore” or “3 idiots” give us utopian ideas about college friendships but no one prepares us for the harsh reality. So, when reality strikes the heart protests a little, “This was not how it was supposed to be. Where did I go wrong?” The answer to this question is nowhere to be found. Maybe it is a part of adulting to be able to suck it up and move on after someone leaves. But is it the right thing to be expected from a person- to leave or to be happily left? How can we trust anyone then? God knows.