MIDDLE
Hard Onions

a recent write-up about lady hardinge medical college brought back memories of the alma mater. dr sushila nayyar, an old girl of the college, always came to our freshers' festivities and inspired us to be hardonians, not hard onions. every year we fondly and faithfully laughed at the oft-repeated joke. she recalled tasting chutneys and pickles from all over india, as the students came from all over the country and abroad.doctor in the house was screened for freshers every year and she sometimes sat through that too. when dr nayyar passed away in wardha where she taught at the medical college, there was just a passing mention somewhere in the inside pages of the papers. but that was as she would have wished. no fuss. often when on night duty in the wards, i came across her alone, bending over a patient. she had come to visit her cook or dhobi's wife and this was while she was health minister. she never wished to disturb anyone. in fact, we heard that she had helped the electrician who attended her residence, to study medicine and qualify. dr nayyar was gandhiji's physician too. in the 1960s we still wore saris a lot, and our hair was expected to be up in a chignon at college. legend was that dr som bhatia, our microbiology professor, carried a pair of scissors in her pocket, ready to snip hanging plaits. no lady godivas here please, we were warned. talking of saris, we students were experts in scaling the tall college gates in our saris when returning from a late night film show at connaught place. the watchman often slept through the racket we made at the gate. empathetic soul that he was, he never bothered about our late night passes. one night when we had all scrambled over and were silently running to the hostel, we heard a plaintive wail. my friend, kiran's sari had got stuck and she was still on the other side. giggling madly, we helped hoist her up. she is now a senior practitioner with the nhs in england. as an alumnus recalled, we were a pampered lot. unlike the earlier times, when students went to lahore to take their exams, we wrote ours in delhi university, in rooms with sand strewn on the floor to keep cool in the hot summer months. we were served khichdi for breakfast. bearers from our hostel mess used to serve us orange squash during the papers. so the hardinge girls were quite popular to write exams with. we frequented the sardarji's teashop on panchkuin road at the hospital gate. the heavenly chai, samosas and gulab jamuns when one was dog-tired after ward duties are unforgettable. on one occasion we found a fly in lieu of a pista inside a gulab jamun. definitely not on the list of approved eateries for medicos. but we survived. per ardua ad astra — through difficulties to the stars, was the college motto. while many of us did not reach astral heights, let it not be said that it was for want of trying.