Dr. Shyla Learns to Read the Dead
Shyla graduated from BMC with flying colours and now was called by everyone as Dr. Shyla. By this time Bangalore had begun its transformation. IT parks were rising at Whitefield and Electronic City. The BTS had become BMTC, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation, and the buses were newer, though still crowded. Autorickshaws now ran on meters, in theory. Many more two-wheelers on the roads and cars too.
She had, during her internship year, had discovered forensic pathology.
It happened during a medico-legal case posting, a mandatory rotation for all medical students, where she had accompanied the senior resident to a post-mortem on a young man found dead under unclear circumstances. She had expected to feel revulsion. What she felt instead was the electric pull of a question demanding an answer, what happened here?
The senior forensic pathologist, a composed man named Dr. Anand, had shown her how the body told its own story. The position of lividity, the pooling of blood after death, that told you whether a body had been moved. The petechial haemorrhages in the eyes that whispered of asphyxiation. The subtle but distinct marks on the wrists.
“The body does not lie,” Dr. Anand told her. “The body cannot lie. People lie. Evidence can be planted, tampered with, misread. But the body, if you listen carefully enough, will always tell you the truth.”
It was the most important sentence Shyla had heard since her mother said the mind was the greatest mystery. And just like that, a career revealed itself. She started asking Dr. Anand more questions on how to get where he was and what courses and where she should study. Dr. Anand was pleasantly surprised that a girl was so much interested in forensic pathology, as he had never seen a woman colleague being a forensic pathologist before. In his short interaction with her during the case, he had assessed that she was a really smart doctor and he was more than happy to help her with all her questions.
Once she made up her mind, she talked to her parents, who could no longer refuse, as she did become a doctor as per their wish and she really seemed interested in the field of forensics. So, her parents wished her the best and told her that they’ll support her in any field she chooses.
She completed her MD in Forensic Medicine from AIIMS Delhi, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the country’s apex medical institution, and then a two-year fellowship in advanced forensic pathology. She was thirty years old when she joined the central pool of forensic specialists maintained by the Ministry of Home Affairs, available for deployment on high-priority cases.
Delhi became her city. She rented a small flat in Saket, drove a second-hand Maruti car to work, and spent her days in the company of the dead, reading their last testimonies with care and precision and the particular kind of empathy that forensic medicine demands, not sentimentality, but justice.
She thought of Radha sometimes. Wondered where she was. Whether she had cracked the UPSC. Whether she still kept a diary under her mattress. Shyla had assumed that Radha, even if she had cleared UPSC, might have chosen IAS, which is the administrative services, as per her father’s wish. Shyla had totally lost touch with Radha and hadn’t seen her in years.
For Shyla, The Dream Pact lived in her bookshelf, still tucked inside And Then There Were None and more importantly, she was literally living the dream now.