The irony of vacations in medical colleges is more than I can bear. No matter how generous or how magnanimous or how utterly, impossibly, graciously large-hearted they seem on the surface, you can always smell the rotten stench of underhandedness beneath it all. Oh sure, they tell you it’s spring, the season of love, hope and joy and since the confines of a medical university can or should or do NOT seem appropriate for any of the above three, they smilingly tell you to go take a week off and wash off all the gruel and grime of this modern, convenient euphemism for plain old donkey-work. So no worries, right? You’re a Kemcolian, the crème de la crème of the nation, (God knows one of these days those words will be spoken out loud one time too many and then someone is going to get killed…or badly beaten up) what’s it to you if you have a Head and Neck stage, a Biochemistry test, a Physio tutorial, an Embryo+Histo king-size, super-combo, lying in wait at the other side of this disgustingly deceptive rainbow? You’ve already gone half mad. Why stop now when we can help you make it a permanent arrangement? Oh and happy vacation bacho! Enjoy!

So since chicanery breeds chicanery and since Murphy’s Law holds spookily true (in academics atleast) this year too, like last year, the April vacation sprouted wings of its own and sped away, leaving behind a trail of broken promises, unfinished, too-idealistic-to-be-followed time-tables…oh and the brightest, most beautiful golden and green and periwinkle blue coloured day-dreams, lovingly wrought out in the drugged, quiescent April afternoons.

But this first week of April hasn’t been entirely wasted. Not by a long shot. Among other things, it has been great fun watching the news. (And no! Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza doing salsa together is NOT news. It’s slap-stick hogwash being spewed about by a couple of dunderheads) You know, you’re an odd Pakistani if you’re not aware of the changes April has brought to the Constitution of Pakistan. You’re an even odder Pakistani if you’re not aware of who Mian Raza Rabbani is. For myself, I just want some ethereal Pegasus to transport me to Islamabad so I can go meet him, shake him by the hand and tell him, ‘You sir, are a wonderful, wonderful man!’

If words were people and people were words, I’d like Mr. Rabbani to have ‘charismatic’. That’s how I’m programmed, you see. It’s a default setting. Words don’t make much sense to me unless I forge out a living, breathing effigy from the meaning they seemingly convey to me. And believe me, Mr. Rabbani, with his thoughtful head of silver hair, his resounding voice, his eagle-eye eyebrow raiser (which, I’m sure could quell the rowdiest toofan-e-badtameezi we normally see at KE events) and his sheer, unfettered aura of authority has just earned him the title of my ‘Hero for April 2010’ (pretentious much?) I change heroes every month. Makes for a motivationally inspired living.

So I ask you, when such momentous, fate-changing, valiant, earth-shattering decisions are being taken by such handsome, enigmatic men, who remind you of your grandfathers, who’s got the time/ energy/ lack of taste for such unromantic vapidities as the functional components of the twelve cranial nerves?

But we all know that symbolic changes like replacing older names of provinces with er… awkward sounding newer ones don’t mean much unless what’s been written on paper is put into action. I don’t understand political jargon. I don’t even know the difference between a federation and a confederation. For me, the return of power to the people after 30 years simply means lesser hours of loadshedding so I don’t have to strain my already exophthalmosed eyes under the flickering UPS light. It means lesser strikes on Mall Road so I can reach home early and go to sleep…errr to wake up with a refreshed mind so I can study, yeah? It means people like our maid’s son, who lost their jobs in the recent thread industry fiasco would be compensated.

And for once discarding all bitter cynicism, let’s admit that perhaps in this world atleast there are no happy endings. There'd always be loopholes and eye-sores to tackle. So while we’re here, let’s make do with these ‘delicious ambiguities’ as Gilder Racher puts it in a fit of absolute, facile optimism. Let’s really believe for once that a positive change can and will come to this great land of ours… for if Robert Langdon can be allowed to hope after Dan’s Brown’s most recent fiasco, surely if the message of hope can still be borne as an epilogue to that disaster of a book, we aren’t all that gone to the dogs, right?