3.8
The DNB Detour
A fair failure, and lessons
I sat for the DNB exam once, in the early years at Sevagram, when I still carried the quiet ambition of collecting another qualification—partly for growth, partly because in medicine we are trained to believe that more degrees automatically make us better doctors.
I did not clear it.
There was no tragedy in it. No heroic struggle. Just a plain failure, filed away like an unsatisfactory lab report.
What stayed with me was not the disappointment, but the way the system worked. The DNB was meant to be a national, uniform, merit-based examination—an equaliser in a country where colleges differed wildly in resources and reputation. In principle, it sounded like a good idea. In practice, it felt like an exam designed by people who had forgotten what it means to be a young doctor.
The syllabus was vast and the pattern unpredictable. Some questions tested knowledge. Others tested memory. A few tested luck. The evaluation, too, had a certain mystery. You could write a sensible answer and still be unsure whether it would be rewarded or punished for not matching an examiner’s preferred phrasing.
I remember walking out of the hall thinking, not “I was treated unfairly,” but “This is a strange way to judge a doctor.”
I was not angry. Mostly, I was amused at my own seriousness. I had imagined the exam as a ladder. It turned out to be a small detour.
Back in Sevagram, the wards were waiting. Patients did not ask whether I had passed DNB. They asked whether I would come when they were breathless, whether I would explain the illness in simple words, whether I would stay a little longer when the family looked frightened.
So I went back to what I knew best—work.
Over time, I also realised something slightly uncomfortable: examinations do not always select the best doctors. They often select the best exam-takers. The overlap is real, but it is not perfect.
Failing the DNB did not diminish my life. It simply reminded me that medicine has many ways of humbling you—and that not every setback deserves a speech.
It deserved a shrug, and a return to the ward.