This amateurish article (typos and all) was published in some unsophisticated Dow publication in 1988. It is not necessarily entirely autobiographical. It is largely a lament about the frequent shutdowns Dow was subjected to through intramural and city-wide violence. The Class of 1987 didn’t graduate till 1989. Students used to go at each other with axes, laathis and subsequently AK-47s. This was the Zia era. And then, in 1988, they built the wall. Which prompted this article. Read it if you have absolutely nothing better to do.
SNA
NOTES FROM ACROSS THE WALL
By Syed Nadeem Ahsan (Dowite 1989)
Like most of his fellow sufferers, Dale Dehalvi, our hero, was born in the early-to-mid 60s. That’s when the “Pill” hit the scene (1960), Hemingway killed himself (1961), JFK was assassinated and Zeiss-Ikon introduced the first 35mm SLR with auto exposure (1963); part of the bunch that followed the “baby boom” generation. He knows of the days gone by, of Dhyan Chand and Mohammad Ali, of Norma Jeane and hippie-love, and wonders why his seventh reincarnation had to occur when it did. Dale lives on, condemned but not reconciled, to witness the birth of a new brand of Islam where the man with a goatee and turban decrees that a man without a beard – or a woman without a chadder – is a lecherous heathen worthy of hell in both worlds. Living in the days of such monstrosities as David Bowie, the blasphemous Madonna, AIDS, the Hudood Ordinance, the African famine, Zia and the rampant rise of a pastime called ‘chasing the dragon’, Dale dreams of better days.
Dale remembers his initiation at Pow Wow Medical College. A fresh lot of intermediates troop in, ready for the admission interviews. They greet old friends from school who’ve also made it. Dale’s surprised to see some of the bozos who now stand on the threshold of becoming potential healers. Hell why not, it’s a free country and equal opportunity for all they say, even if some of the all happen to be advanced meat-heads. The interviews are unusual in the sense that all that the interviewers are interested in inquiring from the interviewees are the pronouns by which they and their respective padres are known by.
First day in college. Dale remembers the almost palpable excitement. The boys, in boisterous bands, attempt to make an early impression on everyone and some succeed in making utter chumps of themselves. Dale watches, aloof but amused, as the girls strut by, preening their feathers while the boys quite churlishly set about the task of compiling their lists of girls worth the bother. The criteria for selection, though at times lewd, are interesting. Dale recalls the instant admiration that is generated if a boy manages to strike it off with an attractive girl. And he remembers his first lecture. The whole pre-clinical teaching section welcomes this newly arrived batch of innocents and wastes little time in transforming the euphoria into boredom and eventual alarm as (what should have been) the class of 87, faces some of the teachers who would be imparting their time hallowed — or rather age worn — bits of knowledge, of the basic medical sciences.
The first two years in college, though not entirely eventful, are nonetheless quite memorable. Dale recalls the evolution of class characters nicknamed thus: “Wild Cape Buffalo”, the Lizards majora and minora, the Cows big and small, Thumbelina, the Scaffolding, the Horny Paleface, the Asshole, the Iceberg, Smiley and Gulabo to name a few. Some benign, others positively abrasive, but most quite entertaining.
Memories of grotesquely mutilated cadavers reeking of formalin and the man called Macabre-uddin, who along with his cronies sold all salvageable viscera to remorseless students, still send shudders down his spine as Dale remembers the endless hours of meticulously trying to master human anatomy, spent, as he was to discover later, mostly in vain.
Class Get-Togethers, arranged to alleviate the monotony of day to day existence, are big social events. Dale remembers the “Crystalline Roundup” when everyone showed up in their most formal threads only to be subjected to the endless croak of class crooners. Class Picnics, going to the lovely beaches on the Arabian Sea coast, armed with live bands are innovative albeit anaemic attempts by young people to enjoy themselves. The idea of a great time is for splendidly over-attired girls and boys to sit under the blazing sun in segregated bands and munch on greasy chow from paper boxes, while listening to some sordidly insipid sound emanating from the make-shift platform on which amateurish musicians blast our their own humorously contorted versions of popular tunes.
The First Prof Exams in PWMC, an experience Dale will not forget in any degree of hurry. Midnight revelations about what questions would be the next afternoon are a great help, not to mention the novel and at times downright brilliant methods of cheating that are widely employed. But the blatantly militaristic attitude of some of the examinees takes all the fun out of good honest to god cheating, by their unabashed intimidation of the invigilating staff, whose primary concern is to keep vigil over the safety of their own necks.
The results are announced, everyone’s passed! Now comes the crucial moment in the life of every student of PWMC. The question of the hour is who to make a clinical group with. Hilarious scenes are witnessed as boys go around sheepishly inviting girls of their choice to join their respective clinical batches, who in turn, in the hope of landing more desirable boys, keep everyone hanging in mid-air till the last moment. The juggling and jostling goes on till the names are finally submitted, the end result leaving, in most cases, everything to be desired.
The students of PWMC are irrevocably divided into three factions, the leftist REDS, the ultra-rightist GREENS and the spineless centrist YELLOWS who in spite of being in majority have been systematically battered into becoming a body of gutless and blind shrimps who can be led to slither in any direction – and at times in all six! And it is in First year that Dale first hears about the much revered “Academic Council” of the college; a gathering of eminent academicians who alone can do nothing and together can decide that nothing could be done about the sorry state of affairs prevalent at the ‘elite’ institution. All sorts of committees and sub-committees come into existence in PWMC, bringing to mind Blake’s definition of one; “the unready appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary”. The dictator’s government, to suppress student participation in politics, bans Student Unions, a measure taken allegedly to bring order to the strife torn educational institutions of Pakistan. The effects of this hopelessly retrogressive step become apparent immediately as students protest and the administration fails to run the show with any semblance of efficiency.
It’s been six years already since Dale joined PWMC and just having made it to Final Year he anticipates a good year before he can claim his degree. The reasons for the five year course being so painfully protracted need not be delved into, for fear of sounding tiresomely tiresome. Suffice it to say that the college was till recently, as ever, closed. This time to allow the unhindered erection of the already infamous wall separating the college from the hospital. The idea behind this latest act of stupidity being that should another bomb explode in Karachi (and it will if the president is to be trusted), the rulers may be able to have their publicity photos taken with the victims lying in the hospital without having to contend with the students who have made such hypocritical gestures very difficult to perform in the past.
Dale Dehalvi, our hero and eternal optimist, believes that the rot can yet be halted. If only the men in power could get their heads unstuck from the sand and attempt to take the rampaging bull by the balls (or is it horns?), things might be different. The reduction in the number of seats in medical colleges and the beefing up of administrative power are attempts in the right direction, the results of which remain to be seen.
So, Dale sits by, twiddles his thumb…and then some more…and remembers…
“…so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale”.
(Shakespeare, AS YOU LIKE IT)
