It was my first day in Medical collage and I was feeling great . Let me introduce myself .I am Hari Chopra ,I am 16 year old and after passing my 12th exams ,I got selected in combined premedical exams .
As if to shock us deliberately we were ushered in dissection hall of anatomy. It was a big hall with 16 dissection tables with round stools around the tables. It had marble flooring and was adequately lit.
One is supposed to sit alphabetically and there are normally 8-12 students on one table. I was allotted table number five . I strolled towards my table and sat at one of the stools put all around the table. I was just trying to make myself comfortable and looking at students sitting on my table when door of dissection hall was pushed open and a trolley was pushed in. A sudden hush settled in the hall and hall was filled with a stench which cannot be described. It is a mixed stench of dead bodies and formalin. Formalin is used to preserve the dead bodies. The Trolley was laden with 5-6 cadavers lying on top of each other and was pushed by a lab assistant we later came to know as Kalu . He dumped the bodies one on each table and now I had a naked dead body lying not a feet away from me.
Though we knew that to become Doctors you are supposed to dissect the cadavers to learn Anatomy of body parts but nothing can prepare you for the shock you get on seeing the cadavers lying naked in front of you. I forced myself to look at the cadaver .It was male and must have died young. I looked at my table fellows ,most of them were avoiding to look at the cadaver and were looking at other things in hall. On my right was seated HP, short for Harpal and on my left was Hansa Gupta. Harkirat singh ,only sikh on the table was sitting across the cadaver. Henna was other girl on table sitting on extreme left and there were three more students Harish Malik, Hariom Sharma and Harry on the table.
We were just trying to ease our breathing a little ,which was not a easy task with all the acrid smell of formalin and dead bodies ,the door to dissection hall was pushed open again and Kalu rolled in another trolley laden with cadavers for the remaining tables . With him entered a middle age person with a French beard and walking with the help of stick. He introduced himself as Dr Bajpai ,our demonstrator and told us the rules of dissection hall . He said that we will be starting with dissection of upper limbs ,then will go to dissection of lower limb and then onto abdomen, chest ,neck and head in that order. The same cadaver will remain with us all through one and a half years of anatomy . Then he started to teach us the surface anatomy of upper limb.
Two miserable hours passed with difficulty and finally it was lunch time. We had one hour for lunch in which time we were supposed to go to our hostel ,eat lunch and come back in time for post lunch classes. Our hostel was more than a kilometre from college and we were supposed to walk in single file with head down. The significance of this dawned on us later on as when one walks in single file its easier to identify him ,stop him ,pull him out of the file or insult freshers one by one . Also since our heads are down , we had no idea who was insulting or ragging us . So progress to hostel was slow and we had little time for lunch. As food was not like what we had been eating at home for last 16 years ,it was unpalatable and with the picture of cadaver coming to our mind frequently ,lunch was a tepid affair on day one.
As the miserable day passed and evening descended ,we took a sigh of relief . we were trying to absorb ourselves in Gray’s anatomy ,the seniors descended on us and sessions after sessions of ragging started which ended well after midnight .When finally we hit the bed even the roar of lions would not have disturbed us.
Few days later time came to test our skills with scalpels and scissors when the dissection of cadaver started .I was sitting on right side of cadaver and so I got to dissect right upper limb. Since we wore no gloves while dissection ,the smell would not go even after many hand washes. To eat lunch with this kind of smell from your hand was a effort and had to be overcome to fill your tummy. I got a lot to dissect because on both my sides were girls who were afraid of doing the dissection.
Within a month we were used to the cadavers and the environment in the anatomy hall .Now all the students talked freely with each other. Cadaver was even convenient place to hide candy rappers as there was no dustbin in hall and you were not supposed to eat candy in hall ,in the first place.
PART-2
Due to menace of ragging the first year students or fresher’s as we were called were housed in separate hostel called “ family planning” hostel .It was about 100 yards(considered safe distance by college administration though I would recommend 100kilometers) away from junior boys hostel and senior boys hostel. Though we were safe here comparatively ,still ragging happened especially in night. There were 100 boys living in 50 odd rooms on ground and first floor . So one shared the room with his partner. My partner was Prakash Kulkarni aka PK ,a NRI student in desi avtar .He had his schooling in Nairobi and had been living in UK before he gave entrance exams for medical college. We hit it off first day despite opposite nature and lifestyle. For example I liked to get up early and study and sleep early and he would sleep late and study late in night. I was not careful where I kept my things and he had fixed place for every article. I preferred to complete the work first and relax later and he would relax till the end and do things at the last moment. Then there was difference in food habits as I was totally vegetarian and loved typical Indian food and he liked non vegetarian and other fancy stuff. Still we hit it off on first day and had a great friendship going in few days.
After gruelling day at college and more gruelling evenings at hostel due to ragging ,we had little time to know each other but human can become used to any situation. So despite all the problems we slowly started to become used to situation and relaxed ourselves a bit. Sundays were good . It was mandatory to eat out as the mess was closed on Sunday evening. On first Sunday we went for a movie and later had dinner in city.
As I came to know more students of my class ,I realised that it was a motley crowed and have come from different background and different socioeconomic status. Lot of non-social activities go on in each hostel which I became aware of slowly. There was room number G-16 where Ajeet and Khare lived, This room has earned the reputation of being the room where there was “AKHAND JUA” or uninterrupted gambling going on. You can go any time and join the gambling and can walk out any time. The game was teen patti or flash. I and my room partner PK had no interest in gambling ,so we kept ourselves away from G16. My room was G-1 ,the biggest room in hostel and many students felt envy due to this fact. Ajeet was a bright student from Lucknow ,who had been wrongly paired with Khare. Then there was room number G14 which had earned notoriety for supply of recreational drugs. Most of the times Gopal and RK (Rajkamal) could supply any drug to you like Bhang, charas, Dexa(Uppers) or Metha(Downers) and many more. Since I and my partner PK was not into drug scene, we gave this room a wide birth. I have never played flash or teenpatti in my life and never intented to do so but fate had something else in store for me.
It was 7 Pm on Friday in August and me and PK were busy completing our anatomy practical copy ,when door of our room burst open and Ajeet entered .His face was drawn and it looked he had cried also. We offered him tea and listened to his story. In nutshell ,he was living in pure hell .His room was always full of gamblers, he had no privacy, Could not study ,could not sleep . The reason for today plight was that he had been cheated of his money which his family has sent to him for buying books. So now he had no money , no books ,no place to sleep or study. In nutshell he was living in pure hell ,his life has been turned on its head and his dreams of joining medical college lay shattered.
After listening to his story we advised him to immediately report the matter to warden and get his room changed but Ajeet was not ready to wait even one day ,or go back to his room even for a moment. Ultimately we offered him that he could move into our room till alternate arrangement are made, which Ajeet agreed happily.
We had to go with him to collect his luggage and his bed as he would not go alone. Ultimately by 9pm Ajeet had settled in our room and now G1 had 3 students. Then there was question of 5000/rupees which have been cheated from Ajeet. We listened to his story late into the night and got some clue how the cheating has been done. Many type of scams were being carried out in G16 –
1.Dealing from both sides of card deck.
2.You hid 1 or 2 aces and later on change the cards.
3.Set the cards so as to get better cards called card sharpening
4.Playing in collusion or as team
As I had no experience of gambling PK and Ajeet started to teach me the basics of flash or teenpatti. I caught on the concept fast. We would play mock gambling where Ajeet ended up winning most of the times. Then we started to plan to play as a team. We decided on set of codes and gestures to follow and soon we mastered the art of gambling in pairs or triples.
The time had come to test our new acquired skill. We decided to test it first after 12 midnight on Saturday ,as we thought that players at that hour will be tired and will not notice our antiques. So we reached in G16 and announced that we want to gamble. There were 6-7 students in room at that hour and everybody seemed happy by our presence ,thinking us to be novice ,who could be deprived of their cash easily. We settled down and the game started at20 minutes past midnight. Slowly we started winning and within an hour the smiles were wiped out from players faces. We called it quits at 2 AM and came to our room G1 and counted the loot. We had won more than 1000/rupees the first day or rather night. We repeated our journey to infamous gambling room after break of few days and this time showed no mercy on anybody and won almost 3000/ within an hour. Now the news started to spread in hostel about our winning but still no body had a clue how we were doing it. Players became cautious but we still managed to win 1600 Rs next time, thus wiping out the loss of Ajeet . After giving him Rs 5000/ we still had money left for partying and movie. Ajeet life came on track and we became very close friend and despite warden offering him new room he liked it in G1 and we lived in G1 till we cleared our first professional.
After that we would go to G16 once a while ,win some money and party .This kept on going till we were in Family planning hostel . Khare obviously could not clear the first professional and was left behind and we lost track of him.
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