frogs and the future

Frogs and the future
He had become a renowned surgeon, and one day, over a glass of beer, he said,
“did you know I failed twice during my undergraduate—once in physiology and then in OG (obstetrics and Gynaecology)?”
40 years ago boys were not interested in OG. The entire department, labour room and outpatient were avoided as far as possible. Most of them had only a minimum working knowledge of the female anatomy and its function. (They knew just enough to shout PMS during class arguments.). A few men who wanted to take up OG as a speciality in later life kept their interests very secretive. There was a tendency to consider them voyeurs .
“What happened?”
“Bloody woman examiner! Looked down her nose at me and asked me to lock the forceps. No matter how hard I tried I could not. Do you know I saw her in Chennai recently. I went up to her and asked if she remembered me.”
“Did she?”
“Yes. Actually said that she thought my knowledge had improved as I now had two children!”
I looked at him “how did you fail physiology?”
“They gave us a bloody frog. Told us to kill it ourselves for the practical. They killed the frogs for the girls though! I thought I would just give it a little shock before I killed it. It jumped out of the window. “
I said, “didn’t you ask for another frog?”
“I did, but the examiner had seen what I did. He asked me to leave and gave me zero.”
Dr. Gita Mathai
The writer is a paediatrician with a family practice at Vellore.
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