The Missile Man comes to CMC!!

Ok what I’m about to say is pretty cool. There was this huge (I mean it…)function at my college today... Now guess who the chief guest was…………Dr A P J Abdul Kalam!!!!

He launched the new project from Institute of palliative Medicine (in association with cmc students and the city police…cool huh).Titled SREE it stands for Support Rehabilitation Education Empowerment is a landmark achievement in palliative medicine (which means giving treatment directed at relief from pain for terminally ill patients..)It’s also the first such program that incorporates the participation of the police force, something the City Police Commissioner was very pleased to point out today. But the person who stole the show today was no doubt our beloved former pres! I mean he still runs about with the zeal of youth. No wonder people throng to see him…some people can just ooze off energy with their charisma. He even teased us during the interactive session…. ‘Are you all tired?’, ‘you are hungry?’

After the speeches we had an interactive session, which we had to unfortunately cut short due to the shortage of time. Students had pooled in 300+ questions (I think) of which only 11 were selected but only 4 could be presented! But Dr Abdul Kalam sir took care of those few questions with such ingenuity. The questions ranged across various topics: dreams, the space program etc etc. While answering he always asked about the students: asked them what their ambition in life was as a doctor (which he ingrained into us as erasing pain), which field they wished to specialize in (Preventive care!), what is your mission (you will find out the genetic cause for heightened cardiac problems in India)….and so on!

I should probably say the other ideals he introduced through his keynote address. He made us say aloud the following

• If God is with me, no one can be against me
•  I will work with integrity and succeed with integrity-He mentioned a case where a young doctor admitted to committing a mistake in surgery and damaging a patient’s artery. He went on to ask us how many of us would grow up to be able to claim our shortcomings and mistakes (a few hands came up at this point).
• A Medical Oath-this one was pretty long. I couldn’t take it down.

Another aspect of the event was the extensive security measures. We had to go through that big metal detector thing (I’m still not sure what its called J ),had to get frisked, had to leave our mobiles outside(those few tech-free hours were actually quite relieving… but I kind of felt like a goose stuck on an island-I’m not even sure what that means!) and had to have invitation passes and ID cards. I managed to get a volunteer pass only much later on! Thankfully the security people didn’t bother too much at the compering desk… (Yeah I was there to compere.. J..There were two of us. I’m sooo grateful to my friends for calling me!)) .But we had to write down name and details etc and only a selected group were allowed onstage. The saddest part was we couldn’t get his bday gift sanctioned by the security (yeah it was Dr Abdul Kalam’s birthday today).We gave a huge card instead.

Ah...next order of business: the media! There were hordes of these guys!Like I said..huge function!!

All in all, it was a momentous occasion for CMC. I’m just glad we were all there to witness it.