Damn Those Med School Days

I should have quit med school
After the first year
Coming close to it as I did
Dreaming of the combo
Psych, Phil & English Litt.
On offer at nearby Nizam's College
But, damned be destiny
Or was it my own immaturity
And lack of courage
Admiring by then as I did
Mahesh Murthy  who quit engineering
And was in the ad world.

Writing poetry in anatomy dissection hall
I had pretensions to being
A poet and a man of letters
Though what I was mostly at that time
Was one uncomfy with his libido
And somewhat a bit caught up
Between romantic longings
And the pull of renunciation
Reading as I did by then
Jiddu, RK and Ramana
And I later understood
I did not understand them fully then.

Anat, physio and biochem
Didn't stimulate my intellect
And that stimulation I needed
To satisfy my need to know
About myself
And the world around me
But all I got to do
Was listen to uninspiring lecturers
On boring topics
Like blood, urine and enzymes.

Somewhere along the line
As I was busy and caught up
In these dilemmas
I seemed to like a classmate
But lacked the maturity to know
At least at that time
That my being drawn to her
And the seeking of Truth
Need not be at loggerheads
And so that relationship
Never took off
Though now I realize
As far as relationships go
They are not
All that they are cranked up to be
There's so much freedom and innocence
In being alone, that I wonder
How we misread our needs in youth
Or maybe youth has different needs
Than me now with grey hair.

I envied my friends at Nizam's
Who I would meet
Many an evening when I hardly read
Any medical textbooks
Who would talk to me of Plato
And prisoner's dilemma
And made me so agonizingly aware
Of what I was missing.

Med school was one long
Winter of despair
With no spring of hope.

I did break free
From the shackles of medicine
But, those memories have left a scar
And a bad taste in the mouth
So that when I meet these days
My med school buddies
I hardly am amused
But rather positively distressed
Hearing them talk
So fondly of their med school days.