'Down With The Viva!': Revisiting Published Humor - 1
(Excerpted\from my article published in the Sunday Times of India, 1st July, 1962)
I have an antipathy for any viva voces which go beyond pleasant preliminaries like "How do you do?" and "What is your name?"
What about medical college vivas where they ask all kinds of technical questions? That was what I was in for when my father decided, without any referendum worth the name, that I had what it took to be a doctor. Well, I'll admit I did not always get cold feet at the mere thought of a viva. All that began from my encounter with a sarcastic professor of physiology.
There is a friend of mine who, ever since he developed a faint mistiness above the upper lip has been betting on horses. He has told me about the sinister tendency of any horse on which he has bet his 'all' to bolt in the general direction of the stables shortly before the race starts, presumably on a mission like warning Son of Genghis Khan to keep his dirty paws off Sweet Bathsheba while he - Handsome Cavalier - was away at the races. True it is that I developed a similar tendency to bolt off at a tangent and introduce into the discussion more worldly matters. In my case the escapism started from my first viva with a sarcastic physiology professor, a loud-mouthed character, who threatened to clout me on the head if I was nervous. My teeth chattered. He told me to stop it because the room was shaking too much. His first question was about liver functions. I told him I had a pen-friend in Liverpool. And my diversionary answers to three more questions infuriated him more. He asked a "last chance" question: "Tell me the effects of raised venous pressure." I answered: "Venus de Milo...Venus, the planet. Sir, man will soon be walking on the plains of Venus." He wished I was there and added, "Young man, what you know of physiology is not worth knowing. Out!" There ended my first medical viva.
All I wish to add here is that the professor's premature retirement had nothing to do with me.
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