Volume 13 Issues 12 December, 2023
My alarm rings breaking my multitude of thoughts, no more time to read the intricacies, reached my class, went to clinics, presentation of case done, lunch done, then again class. Howsoever I tried, my concentration was punctured by the morning news and my ardent desire to know what, how and why the incident happened.
6:00 A.M. in the morning. Woke up, got ready went downstairs from hostel room , had breakfast from the mess, not so great though, but somehow ingested the food because apparently appetite satiation is more important than pleasure to the taste buds, simultaneously read the queued up events, activities, presentations and study I ought to do today and the daily headlines did serve as punctuations to my head filling up with the day’s plans until one of the headlines finally succeeded to terminate my plans for the day- “ White coats turns red”, “Doctor Murdered”, “Negligence ends the life of a gem”. The next emotion my brain recorded was the sudden sinking of my heart.
My alarm rings breaking my multitude of thoughts, no more time to read the intricacies, reached my class, went to clinics, presentation of case done, lunch done, then again class. Howsoever I tried, my concentration was punctured by the morning news and my ardent desire to know what, how and why the incident happened. Finally, I get time to breathe, cancelled my extracurricular plans (because I needed to somehow sort out my emotions!), I sit and open up the news links which now was shared in almost all clinics and class groups – Dr Vandana Das murdered by an addict which could have been avoided by the law enforcement and regulatory forces.
This somehow might not instigate common people who consistently get to read lengthy articles and reports of injustices, murders and robbery unfolding in our country almost every day but this ended up boiling us medical students to our core. This was not once in a blue moon event. The anger amongst the students and the doctors was an amalgamation of all the bad experiences a doctor is coerced to face while practicing the art of medicine.
After getting successfully through one of the most competitive exams of all times, I felt so called in and elated but incidents like these makes me feel unwanted and doubtful of our choices, forcing us to interrogate the trajectory which led us here. The insecurity pool had just multiplied itself in my mind. I was exploding with the plethora of problems I will have to face – lack of facilities, lack of recognition, politics, hatred and to add salt to the injury how will we safeguard our lives, if the public start to vent their frustration upon us?
The course in which we stumble down many times but somehow keep our grit and confidence integral to stand up again now seems unworthy. Is it worth to dedicate my youth years to MBBS when at the end of the day I will be clueless how to take care of my own breath?
I wish I could envisage a future where we feel safe and are allowed to live a life we are worth living but alas if it does not turn out to be a reality, I strongly feel that our society will have to play for the dearth of doctors because if we don’t get the respect and the recognition for our value , we will take our talents, skills and the result of our hard work to a place where it is valued for it’s worth and where it is not allowed to be corrupted by the affairs around.