A CHUCKLE A DAY

A railway doctor's encounters with an entity more unpredictable than your mother-in-law's mood swings: the Indian patient

- BY ANJULY MATHAI

There are two reasons why Dr Kumar Nirbhay decided to become a doctor. The first was the Case of the Missing Gene. Both Nirbhay’s elder brother and sister had become engineers, and when he, too, seemed likely to follow after scoring 98 per cent in mathematics for his 10th boards, his mother started feeling the chromosomal deficit. If he, too, became an engineer, what would happen to the diversity of their family’s gene pool? After all, how many engineers did you really need to repair the broken television? Also, in her old age, dentures were a more practical necessity than a desktop, and therefore it was imperative to have a doctor in the family. Hell hath no fury like a matriarch scorned, and so Nirbhay meekly exchanged his microprocessor kit for a stethoscope.

The second reason was rather nasal. It came out during his first year at Grant Medical College in Mumbai. He and three other freshers decided to sneak into the one place that was off-limits to them—the Holy Grail of all things culinary: the Central Canteen. If Amitabh Bachchan is famous for his taste, it is nothing compared with that of the Central Canteen’s biryani. The place was frequented by everyone from final-year legends to professors to visiting deans, but no fresher was allowed into its hallowed portals.