Thank you, 'sir'.

There are 2 glasses of water. 'A' has a round worm, 'B' has a hook worm. You HAVE to drink one of it. Which one would it be and why?

I was ironing out the creases on the golden foil wrapping the Dairy milk chocolate bar which had a vintage car embossed on it. Tickets for the evening show of TZP were bought. Money was credited into the ATM for shopping. Bus ticket to home was booked. Aunts were going to be around. The tree was waiting to get decked up. I was far too distracted and fidgety. Studying for theory viva was out of question. So when the last examiner for the Community Medicine exam shot the above question at me, I shot back a blank look. He should ask me about Maternal mortality or Tuberculosis or Sanitation I thought. Without much thought I said, "B. Mangalore is endemic for Filariasis. Everybody takes a yearly prophylactic dose of DEC. So no harm will be caused."

There was an awkward silence. Filariasis is caused by mosquito bites. And in the first place he said something about hook worms. The mode of transmission for round worms is faeco oral and that of hook worms is transcutaneous. Thus the latter could not cause infection by ingestion whereas the former could. B was right but my explanation was ridiculous. Deserved derision. I realised my mistake soon and as I was about to correct myself, I knew that the damage was done.

I had somehow successfully fulfilled the champion's criteria. For what? I understood towards the end.

Fine, ridicule me. Then, ask me more questions. But no. Next 5 minutes were spent hovering around the same subject. Then a series of non medical questions followed about who I am, what my parents are, etc. The next subject related question was about barrier methods of contraception. List. Mechanism of insertion of female condom. Answer. Difference between diaphragms and female condoms. Answer. Oh, you are better informed about these than the worms.

How will you classify male condoms? The only 'classification' I could think of was lubricated and non lubricated. Come on, you can do better than that. What about scented and non scented? By that time I had stopped talking. For everything that he said, I kept quiet. Vanilla, strawberry, peach, chocolate.. What do you think about these flavours? What is the use of dotted condoms? What about musical condoms? I'm very surprised that you are not aware of it. (Stress on you.) You Mangalore-Manipal girls..

I tried my best to show no emotion on my face. I could not let him succeed.

As I walked out of his cabin, a bunch of my batchmates waiting for their turns crackled with the usual How was it? How did it go?? Very good, I said and left.

I locked myself up for a while to catch some breath. My face looked like a beetroot. My mother had once told me that when an examiner starts asking about condoms, he usually just wants to put you down. I called her up, exploded and gave vent to my pent up feelings. We decided to forget the incident and just pity him for his incapacity to be mature and appropriate.

Even if you are agitated enough to slap right across the face hard enough to make the nose bleed, one has to end up just swallowing everything. Some people think that they are demigods. Not very wrong in thinking so.