Different cities, Same goal
They were seventeen when it became real, the separation.
Shyla received admission to Bangalore Medical College for MBBS. BMC was established in 1955, and was the first full-fledged medical college in Bangalore. By the 1980s, it was widely recognized as one of the premier medical institutions in India, famous for its massive patient load and excellent clinical training. Her parents, who had held their breath through her Pre-University years, finally exhaled. Dr. Suresh Krishnamurthy began referring to his daughter as ‘the next doctor in the family’ at dinner parties with a lot of pride.
Radha, meanwhile, had set her eye on a Bachelor of Economics from Presidency College in Chennai, known as a stepping stone towards the UPSC, the gruelling national examination that selected officers for the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service, and other central government services. Getting to Chennai meant leaving Bangalore. Leaving Bangalore meant leaving Shyla.
The evening before Radha’s departure, they sat on the terrace of Kaveri Apartments in the dark, the city spread below them in yellow streetlight and the blue flicker of televisions through curtained windows. Autorickshaws puttered on the road below, those three-wheeled, canopied vehicles that were, and remain, the essential circulatory system of every Indian city. They could hear a neighbour’s pressure cooker whistle three times, then silence.
“Will you write?” Shyla asked.
“Of course I will write. Don’t be dramatic.”
“I am not being dramatic. There is STD. Which costs money and I might not be allowed to call regularly.” STD stands for Subscriber Trunk Dialling. It is a system that lets people call phones in other towns or cities without needing an operator to connect the call.
“We will figure it out. We always figure it out.” Radha pulled her knees up. “Don’t forget to read our dream pact every day.”
Shyla produced the folded paper from her pocket, which she had retrieved it from And Then There Were None specifically for this evening. She unfolded it carefully in the dark and read it aloud, though she had long since memorised every word.
When she finished, there was a long quiet.
“That is still true,” Radha said. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Shyla said. “That is still true. I’m trying to figure out how to do this after my MBBS. I will talk to my professors. If I ask my parents, they’ll only discourage me.”
They sat until the mosquitoes drove them inside. Radha left the next morning, her father driving her to Majestic Bus Stand. Shyla waved from the street until the car turned the corner.
After that, they depended on letters. It was regular in the beginning, then became irregular due to their academic pressures, then infrequent, then rare. Shyla entered the intense tunnel of MBBS, the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, a five-and-a-half-year undergraduate medical degree. The workload was ferocious. Anatomy classes began at six in the morning. Ward rounds lasted until mid-afternoon. Evenings were for studying, which meant evenings were for staying awake. There was no time to relax, there was barely time to sleep.
In Chennai, Radha disappeared into economics and competitive examination preparation with a similar completeness. She joined a study group. She read Laxmikant’s Indian Polity until its spine cracked. This book was the most popular textbook for studying the Indian Constitution, governance, and political system. It was the ultimate “go-to” guide for aspirants taking the UPSC Civil Services and State PCS exams. She made notes in tiny handwriting in blue-covered notebooks that she organised by subject with a colour-coding system she had inherited from the detective fiction habit, evidence in blue, analysis in red, conclusions in green.
With no mobile phones yet in India, they were truly separated. No quick calls. No messages. Just two young women in different cities, carrying the same folded piece of paper, working toward a dream that the world they moved in had not yet recognised as right for girls.
They did not forget each other. But they lost the thread of each other’s days, the way you lose a conversation in a crowded room, not gone, just temporarily beyond reach.