At our class reunion in 2014, we spoke of a classmate who had been a star in school—the kind teachers held up like a warning: Study like him, or suffer like the rest. In First MBBS, he fell short on attendance and the college did not allow him to sit for the exam. That one decision flattened him, and after that something in him seemed to loosen. In internal tests he began scoring seven or eight out of fifty—marks that looked less like failure and more like surrender.
He tried again and again, but the first year would not let him through. After five attempts, the college asked him to leave. He stepped out of medicine and settled somewhere else, carrying a quiet defeat that none of us quite knew how to speak about. That is what First MBBS could do: it was not merely an examination, it was a gate, and once it shut, it did not open easily.
In November 1974, all 204 of us sat for it.
By then, Suhas and I were well settled into the routine described in the previous chapter — the flat at Hanuman Nagar, Parasnath’s cooking, Ulhas’s newspaper ban, the slate and chalk, the bathroom recitations. November arrived, and the exams came like a storm you could see from far away—and still not feel prepared for.
***
We passed in the first attempt, and the relief was physical, sitting in the chest, warm and steady. But the results were harsh: nearly a quarter of the class did not cross the line. I entered the anatomy viva with dread and came out barely intact—107 out of 200.
We held our teachers in awe: Dr P. N. Dubey, Dr Gawhale, Navgirti madam. And then there was Dr P. N. Vaishwanar—the physiology professor with the temperament of a thundercloud. He insisted we read Samson Wright, a book that felt written for boys who spoke English at breakfast, while most of us had grown up on Marathi. If he sensed you had relied on Chandi Charan Chatterjee, his face changed. His anger was not theatrical; it was personal—like a man who had caught you cheating in a matter of faith.
So we learnt to keep our books in pairs: Gray with Cunningham, Kadasne with Gray, Samson Wright with Chatterjee, Harper’s Biochemistry beside whatever simplified text we could afford. We lived with these contradictions the way students always do—trying to look serious while simply trying to survive.
Among us was Abhimanyu Kapgate, the son of a farmer from Khandala, twenty-five kilometres from Bhandara. In anatomy, he did something close to unbelievable: he scored 303 out of 400 and took honours, something that happened once in a hundred cases. The examiners came at him like a fast-bowling attack. They tried everything—obscure arteries, nerve pathways, fetal maturation, insertions no sane person should remember at nineteen—but Kapgate stayed calm and answered as if the body had been drawn inside him.
Years later, on his birthday, I wrote on Facebook that he walked through muddy paddy fields with the same ease with which he once walked through the dissection hall. He went back to village life, practised medicine in Navegaon in Bhandara district, farmed wheat and cotton, and cared for people who had little money but endless need. He was the only one among us to take honours in Anatomy and still stop at MBBS—not out of lack of ability, but out of contentment. For him, that degree was not a stepping stone; it was enough.
Weeks passed before results were declared. When the news finally came, smiles appeared and refused to leave. Jayant Pande stood first in the class, taking honours in both Anatomy and Physiology. Kapgate followed with honours in Anatomy. Sharad Jaitly distinguished himself in Physiology and Biochemistry.
Passing First MBBS did more than move us into second year. It gave us confidence—the quiet belief that we might endure what lay ahead—and for a brief while, before the next syllabus rose like another wall, life felt light again.