One last Graduation Day

As a kid in standard One, I was just back from school and searching for my Dad to confirm certain urgent matters, ‘Papa, Papa, have I failed in six subjects?’ I had asked showing him my report card.

It is always safe to get such things verified by your father than getting beaten by your mother.
My father had observed my report card seriously and was thinking something when I had spoken again, ‘Maine aaj apne rickshe ke bachhon ko bahut maara, wo kehte the ki I have failed in six subjects because there are six red lines in my report card. Papa dekho, I have failed in only one subject because double zero to keval ek hi hai. Aur papa dekho I have got hundred out of hundred in Arithmetic’.

My dad had found my hundred marks in Arithmetic to be a good enough reason to overlook every thing else. Gleefully I had signed the report card on my own, where the parents are supposed to sign. Unluckily, the teacher could recognize my beautiful hand writing and my mother had been informed. As usual, mothers are very traditional, so the treatment met by me was also quite conventional.

Anyway to move the story ahead, my parents wanted one of their kids to become a Doctor. As my father wanted my brother to join IIT and my sister was getting one certificate after another in fine arts, I appeared to be parents’ only hope of having a doctor at home. A hope that belied all hopes, for my intellectual capabilities seemed too insufficient if not non existent to sustain 5-8 years of rigorous medical education.

In his humble attempts to help me clear the examinations, my brother would make last minute efforts. But the session would soon come to questions like,
‘Answer de, kya bada hota hai- das ki ek bata das?’ (Which is bigger? 10 or 1/10)
‘Ek bata das(1/10)’, I would reply, ‘It also has a ‘bata das with ek’’, I would argue.
‘Answer kar, Akal badi hoti hai ki bhains?’ my dear brother had once asked. (Which is bigger? Brain or a buffalo)
‘Bhains’, I had replied. ‘Khate peete ghar ki 400 kg ki bhains hi to badi hogi’, I had argued and that had complicated the matters.

But still my parents believed that I had brains, and my mother had hard facts to prove that. She still proudly narrates the story to everyone, of how she discovered that-
‘After having failed to teach him ABCD in months, I had locked him in store one day. He told the complete ABCD from inside the store to come out of it. He had learnt ABCD but was not telling ki maa aur kuchh padhayegi’

After long years of continued debate if I would clear competitive exams or not and get a job or not, one thing was certain- ‘I would not become a doctor’.
But ambitious parents don’t give up hope. All these years my parents kept planning that if none of their kid could become a doctor, they could still marry one of them to a doctor and have a doctor in the family.
But some dreams always remain dream; my brother got married to his IPS batch mate. My parents married my sister to an IAS officer and back their hopes of getting a doctor in family rested upon me. Luckily, let alone finding a suitable doctor, our family soon discovered that it was difficult to find any girl to marry me.

But no regrets, working in a generalist service and handling health matters closely, I was myself gradually becoming an expert in health matters. The block visits and inspections of ‘locked’ health sub centres; diarrheal outbreaks and absent PHC doctors taught me a lot about the condition of health services in our villages. I learnt the difference between idealistic visions in contrast to implementable programs in health care. And then it was the Pulse polio drives and no looking back thereafter.
Looking forward, possibility of working on an alternate and functioning health care system looks possible if some things fall in place. I had to meet some experts on health care in last one week. I had to travel a lot amidst the regular academics, but things still look bright for the future.

And as a philosophy, I believe one should dream big; there might be a few failures but the success is bound to occur. I will give one last example here,
It was Class third and my mother, a professor in university, had accompanied me to my school to collect my report card. The class teacher was scolding my mother before handing over my report card ‘you never come to school for teacher parents meeting, your son doesn’t study, he is always talking and fighting in the class’. Then she had asked me, ‘what is your roll number?’ to locate the report card
‘Roll No 40, teacher. Puneet Yadav, last name in the class’, I had replied trembling.
‘To class mein last hi hoga naa’, she had shouted on my mother while searching for the report card. Once she had found the report class she had discovered that I was first in the class.
My mom was almost in tears by then. She used to send us to school after preparing breakfast and tiffin for the 'interval', used to prepare lunch for everyone and then leave for her college to take 5-6 hours of classes. Almost everyone in our colony used to complain about me. But that day, obviously, my mother was very proud of me and had boasted ‘Mera beta sabse seedha hai, I don’t get time to teach him due to my college, fir bhi ye first aata hai’. But that was not all correct for my academic performance was as evenly distributed as spots on the back of a Dalmatian.

So there are reasons why people make certain choices. I couldn’t become a doctor but may be one day I would get hospitals constructed.

And for once, I am not afraid to invite my parents to attend the Graduation Day at ISB (they didn’t come at IIT or IAS academy), for I haven’t beaten anyone/ fought with anyone in the last one year, so there should be no complaints I hope.