But Chinnah confides to Mariamma that he’s unprepared for the exam. “I’ll tell you the truth. I got into medical school only because my uncle was DME.” The Director of Medical Education controls all the medical school faculty postings and admissions. “Uncle ‘put in a word’ even though I wanted to go to law school. The buggers in the law college don’t work this hard, I tell you.”
In the frantic weeks leading up to the exam she gets a letter addressed in Lenin’s hand but postmarked Sulthan Bathery. He’s in the Wayanad District, he writes, assigned to an ancient achen—a widower, a good and faithful man, but very forgetful. He’s at last freed from the seminary curfew, but he’s in a town that pulls the bedcovers over its head at four thirty in the afternoon. The church groundskeeper, a tribal named Kochu paniyan, is the only person Lenin has to talk to. They’ve become friends. Lenin says he’s still “living the question,” as BeeYay Achen suggested. “But my faith has vanished,” Lenin writes. “During the Eucharist, when Achen lofts the sosaffa to signal the presence of the Holy Spirit, he weeps! The poor man is overcome. Whereas I feel nothing, Mariamma. I’m lost. I don’t know what will become of me. I’m waiting for a sign.”
In the last days leading up to finals everyone in the hostel is glass-eyed, in a delirium of studying. They doze with lights on because collective wisdom says it’s a way to get by with less sleep. A few days before the final, Mariamma dreams that a handsome man leads her to a four-poster bed and traces her profile with his finger. He kisses a spot in front of her ear. “That,” he whispers, “is a ginglymoarthrodial joint.”
She wakes to discover she had fallen asleep on a fibular bone. Its imprint is on her cheek. She doesn’t recall ever hearing the word “ginglymoarthrodial” before. She looks it up and learns that “ginglymo” means hinge, like the joints between the bones of the fingers, while “arthrodial” means sliding, like the joints between adjacent wrist bones. But there’s only one “ginglymoarthrodial” joint, one that both hinges and slides: the TMJ, or temporomandibular joint.
She mentions her dream to Anita, saying, “It’s all because you left the fibula on the bed.”
At breakfast, Mariamma is greeted with kissing sounds in the mess hall; her classmates stroke their ears. Anita isn’t repentant, because her exploration of past exam questions tells her that the TMJ has popped up just once, seventeen years before. Never in the history of any medical school have more students memorized a certain two pages in Gray’s.
At last the big day arrives and they break the seal on the exam. The very first question of the six reads: Describe and illustrate the ankle joint.
Her eyes run down to the other questions. She must describe and illustrate the axillary artery, the facial nerve, the adrenal glands, the humerus, and the development of the notochord.
But the ankle joint? If her dream was a clue, they’d all missed the obvious: the fibula! It was part of the ankle joint. The fact that it dug into her cheek had been a red herring. She feels her classmates staring daggers at her.
The next day, Mariamma and six others compete for the prize exam. After the essay, her assigned dissection is to expose the median nerve as it innervates the hand. She does a decent job, managing not to snap the nerve or its branches.
Chinnah is certain he’s done poorly in the written exam; unless he can miraculously ace the viva voce in a fortnight, he’ll be held back six months. But he has a plan: for the next fourteen days, he’ll eat a kilo of masala-fried fish brains each day and have his cousin, Gundu Mani B.Sc. (failed), read select passages of Gray’s Anatomy to him while he sleeps. Chinnah hopes Gundu’s words will imprint themselves into his memory in a matrix of fish protein. The ladies’ hostel is separate from the men’s (“like the Virgin Islands are separate from the Isle of Man,” as Chinnah says) but from her balcony Mariamma hears Gundu’s chanting, like a priest reciting the Vedas.
Ten days before the viva, she receives a bulky letter from Lenin. She’s hesitant to open it. If he’s the victim of some serious “misunderstanding,” she’d rather not know. But she can’t resist. Lenin says things are better now that he’s stumbled on “Moscow,” otherwise known as Baby’s Tea Shop, which stays open well past midnight and serves tea and liquids stronger than tea. It’s a place where intellectuals gather, many of them with Party leanings. Lenin says he’s learning so much, particularly from Raghu, who is his age, and a bank officer. “Raghu says I’m the third Lenin he has met in Wayanad. He’s met more Stalins than Raghus. More Marxes than Lenins. No Gandhis or Nehrus. This place is the birthplace of communism in Kerala.”
Mariamma tries to study, but her mind comes back to Lenin’s letter. Northern Kerala—previously Malabar—is unlike the rest of Kerala. She never quite understood (till reading his letter) that in Malabar, sixty-five Nambudiri Brahmin landowners, or jenmis, held territories so vast they’d never seen them all. Their tenant farmers were the Nairs and Mappilas, who made huge profits and gave the jenmis their cut. When pepper prices tumbled, the jenmis taxed the tenant farmers and even taxed the tribals—people like Kochu paniyan. That, Lenin says, is why Kerala communism began in Wayanad. “At the seminary, we knew nothing about the real suffering of our own people. Call it communism or whatever you like, but standing up for the rights of the lowest caste appeals to me.”
On the day of the viva, her classmate Druva goes in first. He’s so nervous he trembles. Brijmohan (“Brijee”) Sarkar, the external examiner, points to a cylindrical jar of formalin in which floats a malformed newborn. “Identify the abnormality.” The baby’s swollen head, the size of a basketball, is typical of hydrocephalus, “water in the brain,” a fact Druva knows well. After he names it, it should lead to a discussion of the ventricles and the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid produced in them. In this infant, the exit of fluid is blocked, causing the ventricles, which are normally slit-like cavities in the depths of both hemispheres, to balloon out, pushing up on the surrounding brain. In the unfused, pliant skull of an infant, the head expands. But in an adult, with the bones of the skull fused, the brain would be sandwiched between skull and swollen ventricle and it would lead to unconsciousness. Druva, crippled by anxiety, manages eventually to speak, but the word that escapes his lips is “hydrocele,” and not “hydrocephalus.” He knows at once that he’s fatally misspoken. There’s a world of difference between fluid around the balls and fluid around the brain.
A stunned silence follows his utterance. Before Druva can correct himself, Brijee Sarkar bursts out laughing. It’s contagious, and soon Dr. Pius Mathew, the internal examiner, is also convulsed with laughter. (Chinnah and Mariamma, waiting outside, can only hope these are auspicious noises.) Tears roll down the examiners’ cheeks, and seeing Druva’s expression catalyzes more howls. Each time they try to resume the questioning, they crack up. Finally, Brijee, wiping tears from his eyes, waves Druva out of the room.
Druva bravely asks, “Sir, did I pass, sir?” Pius’s smile lingers, but Brijee’s vanishes.
“Young man, can a hydrocele cause swelling of the head?” Brijee Sarkar says.
“Sir, no, sir, but I—”
“And there you have your answer.”
“What, da?” Chinnah asks as Druva emerges.
“Buggered, that’s what!”
Chinnah is called in. In too short a time, he emerges. He’s followed at once by Dr. Pius.
“Five minutes, Mariamma,” Dr. Pius says, smiling sadly, heading for a bathroom break.
Once Pius is out of earshot, Chinnah says to Mariamma, “It’s B batch: brinjals, and bugger-all for Chinnah and Druva.”