You were a topper in the twelfth board exams. You were the State's top rank holder. The Chief Minister, himself, garlanded you on the stage and asked you, “What do you want to do next?”

“I want to be a doctor,” you said. He made sure you got a seat in the best medical college in the state. He made sure you got the books, hostel accommodation, food and everything else for free.

“Just study,” he had said, “and be a good doctor to those poor villagers in your hometown.” The Chief Minister was your hero. He had made sure all your dreams come true. However, they did not like it. You had realised that from the very first day you entered college. They asked you to run around the college in your undergarments; you refused. They slapped you, kicked you and spit on you. Before they could pull off your clothes, the teacher had intervened.

“Stop guys,” she said and patted those fellows on the back. Were they only as vicious as her pet dog barking at the postman? She did not give a second glance at you. Your lips are torn and your cheeks are coloured with the dark pink impression of long fingers. She did not care.

Later, that night, you see the dark blood clots on your chest and thighs. They had borne the fury of the kicking feet. Your balls are blue and swollen—their hands had squeezed them tight till you wondered whether they would burst—and that was the easiest day of college. What followed was worse.

You are too ashamed to share the abuse. Only you call it abuse; everyone else says it’s just good-natured ragging to prepare you for the outside world. Even if you ignore the bleeding anus and burnt pubic hair, how are you to discount the torn textbooks, ink-splattered assignments and torn clothing? You are living this life at the charity of others and have no money to replace these luxuries. They—these rich kids—know that too and that’s what breaks your heart.

It is six months now—six months of torture, rape, tears, burns, fasts, blood and cadavers—and you have had enough. You walk up to the top; the terrace on the tenth floor is cool and pleasant unlike the hot and sticky campus below. You look down once; you can’t stop yourself from naming the order in which your bones would break—phalanges, calcaneus, talus, fibula, tibia, patella, femur, coccyx, pubic bone—and you remember the hours you spent on your anatomy assignment that went missing half an hour before submission. You had failed that examination. You have failed in life. The Chief Minister’s face creeps into your head. You wish you could tell him sorry but there was no time now.