Ordeal of a rural science student

Anirudh Dhanda

All those who ever yearned to become doctors or engineers would have vivid memories of college laboratories and the putrid smells there. And those who were persistent actually made it to medical colleges.

We were a small group of students in a college in rural Punjab. We had to stay back in labs after theory classes and would be the last to walk out of the building. A girl in the science classes was a rarity and hence any chance of a science student having a girlfriend was an impossibility.

Smelling of formalin, we would be tired by the time we exited and walked languidly to the bus stop. Somehow, the smells from the labs clung on to our hands, our clothes and the whole of us. Yet, there was a feeling of pride. We were different from the run-of-the-mill ‘others’. Sometimes, we even had a spring in our steps, thinking of the ‘desh-sewa’ we were preparing ourselves for.

Distance from the college to the bus stop was a good one and the sun glared over our heads during summer. Winter would not be any better. Students from the humanities wing would be basking in the sun chatting animatedly, while we cribbed, feeling incarcerated in the dimly lit, damp, smelly labs.

There were badminton courts just outside our physics lab. One’s heart would be out longing to play some shots when we were in the midst of a boring practical, the result of which was a foregone conclusion. Sound of badminton shots being played would make the exercise of removing parallax, while looking straight down into the mirror, a tough task.

Our teachers also had to stay longer than their fellow lecturers teaching languages, political science, economics, etc. But they could always sit in their chairs, out in the sun, leaving us under the charge of lab assistants. There must be some other teaching methods available today to make learning an interesting activity.

We were fighting the odds. Being in a rural area and having hardly any role models, we started with a heavy load of self-doubt, though that also gave us an excuse to feel okay even if we did not make it. Failure was an accepted norm, and making it to a professional college, an exception, particularly when one was to compete with students in colleges in the cities, Chandigarh being the closest, which had separate classes for students preparing for competitive exams.

We had to travel to Chandigarh for appearing in the entrance tests conducted by different colleges and institutions. Since the test would start early in the morning, we had to travel a day before and stay in a dharamshala for the night. I remember once we spent most of the evening going around in the city, and by the time we finished having dinner at a dhaba, the gate of the dharamshala had been locked for the night. Undeterred, we jumped the gates and slept on the bare cots lying in the verandah.

Things must have changed today, yet the gap between the city and the village remains to be bridged.

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