The Millionth Boon

The Millionth Boon:
The story of how I bagged a medical seat....
Dedicated to my parents, who would have it no other way.
For you dearest mummy and papa, without whom nothing, nothing at all is possible for us.

We, as in my twin and I, were average students. Work hard and reap the rewards. She a genius in music, the piano, and I, in cooking stories. None of the above talents would get us a prestigious job.

Coming from a middle class family, we are the daughters of a highly ambitious engineer and an even more determined home maker.

A very essential point, our parents ambitions began and ended with us in many ways.
We had dreams of becoming doctors.

Dreams which we intended to keep dreams because we were not as confident about ourselves as our parents. That confidence which parents have in their children is important for the children's development of confidence.

We were so not going to land a medical seat with our performance. Average. Sometimes I felt I saw my life as average. Little did I notice the not so average parents I have.

It was in the beginning of tenth standard, when we were 15 years old that my father started planning to take a transfer to a very remote place where the company he worked in was present. It was all talks, according to me. My sister showed interest and even cried at the point when the efforts made by my father were going down the drain.

I never took any interest. Strangely for me, the other three members of my family were raving about leaving a metropolitan and going to that remote place, ready to live in unknown or hostile conditions.

They said it would all be worth if we could get medical seats.

Still, I showed no interest. Not that it lessened my family's enthusiasm as my father once again leapt into efforts to get transferred to that place.

It wasn't a place where people would get into studies and study like crazy for medical, like Kota, Rajisthan, is for engineering.

It was simply a place which had access to more number of medical colleges than other places. Out of those colleges also, one was a government college, few were deemed and the last category, private colleges with government seats.

Our goal was the government college - JIPMER, and we would be satisfied with the private colleges, then would come the deemed colleges. Of course all the colleges were good enough; a medical seat was what we wanted.

We personally proved two well-known quotes right-

'Beggars are not choosers' meaning, get the medical seat, to hell with the college.
'Aim for the moon, land among the stars' aim for JIPMER, don't mind crashing into a private college under a government seat.

In the middle of tenth standard we finally transferred with all we had to the remote place(which is now fast growing) Karaikal.

It wasn't as bad as we expected. A peaceful; life with basics was good. It was slower compared to the speed of Mumbai, but we desperately needed that slowness to study for the new course.

Leaving Mumbai didn't seem saddening at all, because of the hunger for a medical seat.

You might say we were a family of four, crazy after those 'medical seats'. Knowing the four as I do, and being one of them too, I know what it meant to give up a life in a metropolitan and move to a small town, fresh from being a village.

Though I assure you, I know shit about the difficulties my parents would have faced.
For us only a school changed. Some friends. Textbooks. And environment.

It was very difficult at first but my parents carried us through school and high school on their shoulders.

My father used to teach us math, physics and chemistry and mother used to teach us languages and biology.

Luckily for us, we scored well in tenth standard, due to the endless efforts of my parents and because my sister always dragged me to study with her.

High school came and with it the cultural programs and learning the meaning of friendship. In all that mess, we even had our own girl band. It feels so weird and wonderful to think back on those times.

My father enrolled us in 'Brilliant Tutorials' which have courses for various streams. Ours was a correspondence course for medical. It was costly as well as priceless, but our father bought two sets, so we didn't have to share and could study together or individually. Was he trying to leave no stone unturned? If so, he was being damned successful.

We didn't study the material that came on a monthly basis sincerely. Studying it only at the insistence of our mother or for the fear of upsetting our father. (Sorry papa).
Then came the MCQ (multiple choice questions) books of physics, chemistry and biology. Trust me when I say I had never seen thicker books. Those we took interest in because our mother used to sit and ask us questions.

In the final year of high school, we abandoned math and the entrance coaching books altogether and concentrated on our own course material. That was because the state entrance exam counted 50% of marks scored in the board exam and 50% scored in the CENTAC test (entrance test with MCQs and stuff).

The day our last board exam of twelfth standard got over, we sat in the car and got down straight at Pondicherry, the home place of those medical colleges and the best possible crash courses to crack MBBS.

Somehow I don't remember my sister or myself feeling sad about not getting to enjoy the end of school life. I have no idea why. At least I should have been sad because I was apparently uninterested in medical.

My father made his job secondary as he took leave of almost fifty days, going only now and then to check on things and the rest of the time staying with us and our mother at the Park Guest house in Pondicherry.

We gave the entrance test required to enroll in the best medical crash course center- Petit Seminaire, the day after our exams had ended. My father didn't make us give the test of any other coaching.

That evening, four of us sat on the beach, contemplating our next move, concentrating more on the course of action to be taken if we would get selected rather than the negative aspect of it.

Next morning the results were out and we had gotten into the 50 day long crash course. Our dreams had a higher chance of getting realized than I ever thought or rather believed.

There was one more trouble nagging my brain. I had messed up my math paper as had my sister. At least she wrote her French paper properly, I spewed bull shit in that too.

Anyway, we started attending the classes and my sister and I agreed that we had never worked so hard for studies in our entire lives.

It was a new place, new friends, hell lot of competition and no home cooking. The teachers were excellent. They made us want to study and gave us hope.

I feel like a retard when I think about how I could actually do all of it with my heart when I didn't think I wanted a medical seat? Maybe somewhere a cogwheel in my mind had picked up the infectious enthusiasm from my sister, or had been stricken by my parent's efforts. I don't know, and I will probably never know either.

The high school results came. We had done well, but there were some good brains ahead of us too. It brought us down a bit.

Our parents asked us to believe in application of knowledge which would be needed to get through the entrance rather than vomiting mugged up details from textbooks. Of course it was encouraging.

After the 50 days ended we left for our home in Karaikal to prepare for the JIPMER entrance ten days later.

We took the phone numbers of some friends, never thinking that we would stay in touch. At least not till the exams got over. We were all too busy.

At home, our mother used to stick to us like anything continuously asking us questions and helping us study. For some reason I wanted JIPMER very badly. I was insane when it came to that particular college.

The JIPMER entrance went well. I thought I did well. My sister was also fine with her performance. Next- CENTAC.

A week later CENTAC exams were held. It was for two days. The first day was physics and chemistry. That evening, the JIPMER results were announced on the internet.

We didn't make it. Not even the waiting list. Our rank was good. But the general quota was not sufficient to include so many numbers.
It was heart breaking. I cried a lot. Papa said it was because I had really worked hard to get that seat.

In the numbness of that loss, we wrote the next day's entrance - biology.
The next three months were spent at home, enjoying to the core. I have never enjoyed more. It was break form studies. Coming directly after 15 years. No need to worry about school reopening next month or books or any subject. We had no books in hand and only time and time with us. Those were the best days of my life- the summer of 2007.

Then came the CENTAC results. Our result was relatively much better and would very well compensate for the lack of our mugging skills in the board exams.

My father planned and plotted the things we had to do till the counseling. He tried to find our rank and get to know the number of seats. Again the 'quota' problem came up. Still, he went on in his efforts to think of the college which we would get into.
Full of apprehension we reached the counseling center. We went for counseling four times for one purpose. To get the best possible seat and for my sister and me to study in the same college.

Our parents convinced us that they had planned for everything so the fees and the cost of all the things we would need over the years would be taken care of.
My father had started planning for our career when we were five years old.

Twelve years from the day he had first started collecting money for our studies, my father's two daughters stood with the admission letter to a government medical seat, in a private medical college in India.

Our dream had taken wings.
As of now, it has been three years since the day I held the admission letter in my hands. I'm doing MBBS, the toughest educational course according to the Guinness World Book Of records in the same college as my sister.

The efforts to now get a postgraduate seat in the medical field had started two years back. I wonder if we'll make it this time... I wonder if my parents well spin their yarn of miracles for us again this time.

Now who is to say, my parents are not the result of a million good deeds that I should have done in my past life?

Written in gratitude for God, who gave me my parents and who gave me my sister.