Working as a PG student in a Hindu Missionary Teaching Hospital in a big metropolitan city was an experience that was unique. The workload was tremendous. The hospital was low on resident staff and the authorities made us work for our degree.

We were made to work in the dual role of a registrar and house surgeon. That way they could save on the payment because we were allocated there by the University and we were receiving our monthly stipend from the university itself. We only received free accommodation and food.

Days are a blur of activities that merge into whole nights spent in the operation theatre. Sleep is a commodity that is rare. Droopy eyed I would finish the emergency OTs and go to the room at six in the morning to have a cup of tea, freshen up, shave, and have breakfast. Go to the wards by seven and have a look at my patients. Boss will arrive by quarter to eight and I must be ready and up to date about each patient.

As soon as my boss (who was also the HOD) has left for his morning tea before going to the outpatient or OT, I have to finish all the paperwork and follow the instructions just given by the boss. There is no time and I must do everything hurriedly but immaculately. Boss is waiting and I must not keep him waiting. No time for lunch. Grab a piece of buttered toast and while munching rush to class. Snoozing in the classroom and getting caught by the teacher. Run back to the hospital for evening rounds. Library work is to be done, but where is the time?

Reading in the OT in between cases and there is a call from the ward. Rush there and there is another call from the Emergency. When to study? Read a page in between cases or while watching over a moribund case in the ward. And all the time the boss is saying, “The way you are studying, you can never pass the exams”. Demoralized after failing to answer all the “causes of surgically correctable hypertension”, I am mentally prepared to immerse myself in the textbooks. But who is to look after my patients? Who is to go to the OT? After having been allowed to operate independently, OT has become an incurable addiction.

There is a false feeling of being indispensable for the smooth running of the hospital. All the patients, nurses, and the junior staff are looking up at me as if I am the virtual boss. Where is my home? A 10 minute bus ride away, but I have not been there for over a month. Mummy is worried but I console her over the telephone. I assure her that her son is now God’s gift to the surgical profession. I forget to mention my boss’s opinion of my academic future. I am at the top of the world.

Recreation? Going to a movie in the night show followed by a sumptuous dinner in a restaurant once may be in one and a half months. The dinner is the main attraction. I request, cajole and beg someone who is on call that day to look after my ward. The world outside the hospital looks so colorful, the air different and I feel like an alien. Going hungry most of the days I can smell and taste my forthcoming meal in the movie hall itself.

Back to the hospital at midnight and suddenly I am plunged into reality. At the entrance corridor, I can listen to my name being paged in the public address system. I rush to the Emergency ward to be greeted by my sour-faced colleagues. A bunch of road traffic accident cases has come and all hands are needed.

Suddenly the days of the Final Exam loom near. I am being excused from my duties to study. Cram 18 to 20 hours a day. Special classes are being held. Boss takes a mock exam where I fail. Could not elicit clinical methods in textbook fashion! But who cares in real life (where you have to see seventy patients in three hours) about textbook fashion clinical methods? The examiners do care, and they appear like demons in mind’s eye. Losing precious sleep in examination phobia.

At last, the big day arrives. The mind is all blank – can’t remember a single thing as I arrive at the examination hall. The words in the question paper look like Greek. As I start writing everything comes back. The theory exam goes fine but the main hurdle was the practicals and oral.

Which long case? What will be the short cases? Would I be able to identify the x-rays or describe the specimens? Heard that one of the external examiners was a real tough guy, fails the candidate at the slightest. The fear factor reaches a peak.

After a grueling 3 days, at last, the exams are over. Back to the hospital for night duty. No relief as we are understaffed. Already one peptic perforation was waiting on the table.