Merit list

It's official: I am privileged. I was born in the right part of the world. Well I knew some of that already, but there was a recent new development.

When I came back from lunch and walked through the hallways of the medical college today, I saw this crowd anxiously examining a huge list on the wall. "It's the merit list" I was told by some of the residents in community medicine. Once the students graduate from high school, they are ranked on the basis of a combination of their marks in high school and an entrance exam for Pre-Med. That "merit list" is then used to decide who gets in the various medical schools of the state. Those with the best rank will be accepted in the best school and as the rank goes down, some will be accepted in other medical schools. But after the top three percent of the list has been accepted, there won't be any opportunity to become a doctor.

The top three percent. Hum. I recalled my own rank at the entrance exam at the end of the one year Pre-Med in France. I was certainly not in the top three percents. So had I been born in Gujarat, India, I would have been forced to make another career decision. I could have become a photographer. To capture the intensity of some special life moments. Like when these young people were trying to read the small print in that immense list on the wall to find out if they had made it in the top three percents of the merit list.