The Way We Were

By Nauman Mufti

We were in final year now. The emphasis had shifted completely to clinical medicine. In Medical and surgical wards we were now taught by the professors themselves. Majority of our teachers were excellent and loved to teach. Some were friendly while others had an intimidating aura about them. During ward rounds, they travelled in an entourage of Registrars, house physicians and medical students. Although terrifying and humiliating at times our clinical education was top notch.

Most of our clinical rotations were at Mayo Hospital. The only exception was that Ob-Gyn rotation which was at Lady Wellington Hospital. For our group, it was the last clinical rotation. To our surprise, our group comprised of both boys and girls. Kamran Hameed, Javed Ajmal, Imran Nazeer, Nasir Javed and others were there along with Zahra Haider, Naghmi Shirin, Mehr-un-Nisa, Raheela Ajmal, Rubina Aslam and others.
I remember that towards the end of our rotation we decided to go to Lahore Fort (Shahi Qila) as a group. We arranged with the bus drivers to take us there. To our dismay, when the day of the trip came there were no sign of any buses. Desperately, I tried to convince Imran Nazeer (the only one in our group who came to college in a car) to make a couple of trips to transport the girls there, but he refused saying that he was not allowed to have any girls in the car. I offered to drive the car but we could not convince him. In the end, all of us walked all the way to Lahore Fort. It was not a bad walk for us boys, however I felt bad for the girls, some of whom were wearing high heels. We were a bit tired by the time we reached the entrance of the majestic fort. We found a good spot close to the entrance and sat down for our picnic. No longer had we sat down when we saw four of our class fellows from another group appear from nowhere. They hovered a few yards away. Was it a coincidence? I know not. After the snacks, we told a few jokes and saw the splendor of Shish Mahal. Then we walked all the way back to KE. Soon after that we were studying for our final professionals.

We started our life at KE, 32 yrs ago, unsure of what lay ahead. We were rowdy during some lectures. However, we hung on every word when the lectures were good or we were intimidated into submission. We studied hard at times while at other times we goofed off. We shared smiles, laughter and sorrows together. Along the way, we made friends. We had class trips where we danced sloppily to English songs and stole pastries from girls. We had small group parties where we celebrated our successes. We shed tears on our failure to pass a sub-substage. We flew kites on Basant together. We lived in hostels, homes and empty places. Just for fun, some of us crashed wedding parties, stole petrol and rashly drove our motor bikes.

We pulled pranks on girls and wrote poems about them. While girls gossiped about boys and gave them funny nicknames. However, it was a taboo then and perhaps even now to admit that some of us fell in love. Mostly the old-fashioned Mir and Momin kind of ‘Ishq’ where the Aashiq could not gather the courage to express his feelings to the girl he loved and chose the cowardly way to suffer silently. I do not know, but maybe the girl in question never had a clue of what was going on. The vice versa could have been true also but again, I have no way of knowing.

Now, after twenty-six years, some of us are professors in academic institutions while others are renowned surgeons, and physicians. A few left medicine to pursue other careers. We are all spread out in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, United Kingdom, Canada, United States and perhaps elsewhere too. Regardless of where we are today and what we do, we all remember the times we spend together at King Edward Medical College in the heart of Lahore, Pakistan. We are all bound together by our memories. Yes, the memories of the way we were.

Memories
Light the corners of my mind
Misty watercolor memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were

Memories
May be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it's the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were

Written by Alan Bergman; Marilyn Bergman and Marvin Hamlisch for the 1975 Movie by the same name and sung by Barbara Streisand.