College days!

A few years back, after I had retired from the army, my son presented me with a set of three books by the well known writer, James Herriot. All three books are about his life as a veterinary doctor, the most famous is titled 'All things bright and beautiful'. He wrote about animals in a gentle, wise and humorous way. His deep compassion and love of life shines out in his writings as described in Wikipedia. If you love animals, I strongly recommend  reading his books!

This post is about my early days and my brush with veterinary science as a student. (Yes sir, I was a veterinarian before I joined the army!) But it has nothing to do with the profession itself;you can relax and follow what I was up to, if so inclined. And I do seriously hope, we will still be friends!

In the first place, I joined the veterinary college at Osmania University, Hyderabad because I just could not make it to a medical college. Biology being my main subject, I had no other option in those days. It so happened that we had a wing of medical college right next to our college which was a big problem. Let me explain! In our veterinary college, we had no girls, not even one. On the other hand, this medical college had several which made us acutely conscious of our disadvantage so to speak!

As a result, a few of us bunked our morning classes with some regularity and sat in the university canteen which overlooked the road leading to the medical college just to watch the medical girls walking up to their building. A harmless but painfuL activity you will agree!

On some mornings, we had practical anatomy classes in the open where our teachers had a horse or a bullock depending upon the 'subject', explaining various part of the animal to us, we standing in a semicircle. And invariably, these medical girls would be walking up with their white aprons on their arms, on the road right next to us, completely distracting our gaze and attention from the animal under our observation to themselves, thus affecting our grades. Most unfair, you will agree again!

The two professors most affected by our rather indisciplined behaviour, I still remember their names, were one Dr Reddy and the other, Dr Takkiuddin. (I hope and wish, they are fine wherever they are!). Whenever, they happened to meet us outside the classes, they will unfailingly express their sympathy and concern for our futures. And to be fair to their emotions, we did change our ways and graduated as veterinarians in time. Except one guy by the name Pande;he simply loved the college and the whole works! We understand, he took full 7 years to complete that 4 year course and was elected twice as president of the college students union before he graduated. With full honours I will say!