Life of a Dental PG Student

Have you ever found yourself feeling lucky when you made someone smile? Then you must’ve felt luckier when you made someone laugh. On the contrary, imagine the reverse when you become the laughing stock for a group of people.

This is the story of Manideepa Rather, it is her present life.

When she took admission last year as a post graduate student in a dental college, Mani knew little about the consequences of this action. She was 32 years old and a single woman. After all, she wanted to establish her career first. Seeing her parents in a pathetic marriage, all she wanted was to establish herself as a good dentist. She thought the first few days of post graduation would be about exploring a new world! Exploring new people, novel dimensions to the subject, meeting the professors. Her first day of college was pretty normal until she met her batchmate who joined 2 days late. A girl 7 years younger than her, her co-PG. She was pretty and appeared to be some big daddy’s daughter who got a management quota seat. Her batch was completed by another PG trainee, a boy. Right from the beginning Mani faced a lot of bullying in her department. When it came to her batch mates, all they could talk was ‘so tell us your real age, and why aren’t you married yet? Do you have a boyfriend? Or did you break up? Are you heartbroken? Why on earth have you come to study so late?’ These two mostly talked to each other and never really included Mani in their conversation. They often cited the striking age difference between them as the prime reason for their lack of communication.

Her seniors discriminated between them too. The earliest impression that her seniors made seeing her age was- she’s a stuck-up feminist and a staunch supporter of a certain political party with strict religious beliefs as she avoided eating meat. They treated her other two batch mates quite well, greeted them when they entered the department in the morning; they chatted and got along so well. She was the one left behind in spite of all her efforts. The worst part was, whenever senior PGs from other departments would pass from the corridor, her seniors would ask them to come and sit for a chat and they’d introduce their new juniors -except Manideepa. This sudden isolation first surprised her, and then she started to crumble from within and slipped into an immense sadness. The effect was so much so that even after college hours, she would keep thinking about college only and she’d find herself mourning until she went to college the next day and the cycle would repeat. Even off days like Sundays, she would spend weeping and keep thinking ‘Seriously why am I so old and if I’m so old why did I choose to study again?’ She forgot to see herself in the mirror because she thought at 32, her skin had probably wrinkled and hair turned all grey, though this ball of negativity was thrown at her by her current surrounding.

Earlier she never thought this way. Infact, she was a fairly good looking girl. During her undergraduation not only was she a good student, but she also had a decent queue of admirers, and the queue also included girls who looked upto her and tried but failed to match up to her glamour. In a blink of an eye, she had forgotten it all as she didn’t value herself anymore - she had lost her confidence. About 5 months passed, her sister tried to cheer her up but it didn’t work. During this period she met with PG students from other departments. Talking to them revealed something more disturbing. There was a girl called Sharmila who claimed to have faced extortion from one of the professors! At first Mani couldn’t believe her ears but it was true indeed. Every week one of the PG students had to be ready with cash to treat the professor and the rest of the PG students. This made Mani feel lucky that at least she didn't belong to this department! How would she have paid this extra money? Anyway, the fees were so high and dental PG students in her private college were unpaid labourers in reality. But during any college inspections, they had to say that they received stipend every month!