Becoming a doctor, at last

HOW long does it take to become a doctor? A medical degree spans four years, but my granny took a lifetime to become a doctor.

Granny’s mother passed away when she was still an infant. The memories of her mother slowly blurred away, but the only thing that she never forgot about her mother was her dream. Her mother had dreamt that she would become a doctor some day.

Her father remarried and her stepmother didn’t accept her in the house. She lived a solitary life in hostels. Many teary tribulations of life came her way, but she grew up aspiring to become a doctor each day of her life. She overcame each obstacle and tried hard, but due to meagre resources, the nearest the motherless daughter could come to realising the dream was to become a biologist.

She reassured herself that although she couldn’t become a doctor, she would marry one for sure. But her life partner turned out to be an advocate. Again, she reassured herself that she could still fulfil her mother’s dream by making her children doctors. Her mother’s last dream became her daughter’s first. But when the time came, the daughter missed the cut-off by just two marks, even after dropping a year. And the dream remained unfulfilled.

Her son got so scared seeing the arduous teary struggles of his mother and his elder sister that he didn’t even dare to take the medical route.

She patiently waited for her children to attain marriageable age, assuring herself that she would find suitable doctor matches for them, but alas, they too were not destined to wed doctors.

When she held her first grandchild, me, for the first time in her hands, I didn’t know that somewhere deep inside her heart, her dream had rekindled. But soon, I too had dashed her hopes by fainting twice, just at the sight of a tiny drop of blood on my finger.

She couldn’t wait anymore. Although she was old and weary, having long retired from her job, yet she was determined to fulfil her mother’s dream. She started to study acupressure. With failing eyesight, she read medical books, and burnt the midnight oil.

After many laborious years, she opened an acupressure clinic at her house, in her mother’s name. We would pityingly watch her sitting on a low stool at the feet of the patients, applying pressure on their foot nerves with her wrinkled hands and a smile on her face. And every time someone called her ‘Doctor Sahiba’, priceless tears of joy used to well up in her old eyes, knowing that a daughter had finally fulfilled her mother’s dream.