It was chodween ka chaand yester-night. It looks a complete circle tonight as well. It's a circular pore in the sky, the only pore. At the moment, it appears to me as the only communication that we have with the illuminated heavens behind the dark night. The city stands still mostly because I cannot perceive anything as the electrons wouldn't cease the cease to flow. K.E.S.C rules!
The word 'perceive' takes me back to the anatomy dissection hall where each week I would sit in the front row almost definitely at one of the ends. My head would wobble at the mercy of gravity and my sternocleidomastoids because I would step into slumber every now and then. In recurring periods of less than ten seconds I would catch words tumbling down the crack between her permanently stretched in a smile lips.
"Perceive beta, you must perceive, believe it, draw a picture."
"Doctor sahiba, would you like to explain to the class the two origins of vagina?" She called out to my wobbling head.
"Um, aaaa.. yes ma'am," it took me the longest five seconds to perceive the situation,"the sinovaginal plate or nodes or I think they are called the bulbs, I think, and the other, umm, the other, it's the, the ureteric bud."
"The Ureteric BUD?"
"Yes." I confirmed confidently this time.
"How many structures arise from this ureteric bud, doctor sahiba."
"Umm there is the ureters, collecting system of the permanent kidneys, major, minor calyces, renal pelvis..."
"Yes and vagina?"
"Ummm, no. I mean, yes. I think."
"Doctor sahiba, do you know what gives rise to the uterus?"
"The paramesonephric ducts."
"And the vagina?"
"The paramesonephric, of course, my bad!" I slapped my forehead flat with my sweaty palms.
"And not the mesonephric ducts, mind you," she emphasized with bulging her eyes out in absolute circles.
"And not the mesonephric ducts, ma'am, because the ureteric bud is an outgrowth of the mesonephric duct. I am sorry."
It was one of those experiences that not only highlighted the importance of snoozing in class but also almost exclusively taught me to perceive. Her words never slipped through her lips and hit the ground ever again during the remaining few classes we had left. Before they could bounce away, I'd pull them and draw myself the developing structures of a floating fetus. New structures were formed and the old ones caught up as the fetus silently floated in the hall, followed me to the library, trailed across the roads of Karachi behind me and bumped into people's head and they never could perceive it.
It floated very much like the moon tonight. Suspended by nothing, shining, a connection to the heavens. At the end of first professional year of medicine it was like the chodween ka chaand. Just the way all of us are, chodween ka chaand, at birth. We then grow only to regress like the chodween ka chaand.
Circadian rhythms and clocks, orbits and rotations. Telomeres and senescence, shadows and vacuum. Initiation and termination. They are pretty much the constants: Determined and calculated. Their prevalence was discovered to be engineered and programmed. Though, man would interject. Whether for good or for evil depends upon how he perceives them.
The word 'perceive' takes me back to the anatomy dissection hall where each week I would sit in the front row almost definitely at one of the ends. My head would wobble at the mercy of gravity and my sternocleidomastoids because I would step into slumber every now and then. In recurring periods of less than ten seconds I would catch words tumbling down the crack between her permanently stretched in a smile lips.
"Perceive beta, you must perceive, believe it, draw a picture."
"Doctor sahiba, would you like to explain to the class the two origins of vagina?" She called out to my wobbling head.
"Um, aaaa.. yes ma'am," it took me the longest five seconds to perceive the situation,"the sinovaginal plate or nodes or I think they are called the bulbs, I think, and the other, umm, the other, it's the, the ureteric bud."
"The Ureteric BUD?"
"Yes." I confirmed confidently this time.
"How many structures arise from this ureteric bud, doctor sahiba."
"Umm there is the ureters, collecting system of the permanent kidneys, major, minor calyces, renal pelvis..."
"Yes and vagina?"
"Ummm, no. I mean, yes. I think."
"Doctor sahiba, do you know what gives rise to the uterus?"
"The paramesonephric ducts."
"And the vagina?"
"The paramesonephric, of course, my bad!" I slapped my forehead flat with my sweaty palms.
"And not the mesonephric ducts, mind you," she emphasized with bulging her eyes out in absolute circles.
"And not the mesonephric ducts, ma'am, because the ureteric bud is an outgrowth of the mesonephric duct. I am sorry."
It was one of those experiences that not only highlighted the importance of snoozing in class but also almost exclusively taught me to perceive. Her words never slipped through her lips and hit the ground ever again during the remaining few classes we had left. Before they could bounce away, I'd pull them and draw myself the developing structures of a floating fetus. New structures were formed and the old ones caught up as the fetus silently floated in the hall, followed me to the library, trailed across the roads of Karachi behind me and bumped into people's head and they never could perceive it.
It floated very much like the moon tonight. Suspended by nothing, shining, a connection to the heavens. At the end of first professional year of medicine it was like the chodween ka chaand. Just the way all of us are, chodween ka chaand, at birth. We then grow only to regress like the chodween ka chaand.
Circadian rhythms and clocks, orbits and rotations. Telomeres and senescence, shadows and vacuum. Initiation and termination. They are pretty much the constants: Determined and calculated. Their prevalence was discovered to be engineered and programmed. Though, man would interject. Whether for good or for evil depends upon how he perceives them.
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