By Piyali Bhattacharya
Med School: the two words that every Desi kid in the States at least considers at some point. I gave up the dream nice and early… my parents realized my talents lay elsewhere when I simultaneously failed honors biology and won the best writer award at my high school in the ninth grade. My brother, though, was a different story.

A jack of all trades, he graduated in May from an Ivy League university with so many medals and honors and awards and secret societies, it would make your head spin. My parents’ favorite joke all summer was that they could spot him from a mile away in the huge crowd of black robes because of all the bling the University had bestowed upon him. And so it was that a few weeks ago, I found myself attending my brother’s White Coat Ceremony in New York, marking the fact that he’s just become a Medical student. No big surprise there, right? After all, he’s the doctor son of a doctor father. In fact, he’s the FIFTH generation of doctors in my family. So when he came home during the winter break of his sophomore year and announced that he would be pre-med, we all looked at him quizzically, wondering if he was trying to tell us something we didn’t already know. It turns out, he was. In addition to being pre-med, he also announced that he would be pursuing a major in English.

While my father (who has a thing or two to say about how Medicine is going in this country) was delighted that his son had found a hobby other than medicine, my grandfather was not. Unfortunately for him, my grandfather had tried and failed to convince each of his grandchildren to go into Medicine. When my brother finally took the bait, my grandfather was thrilled, but equally worried that his concentration on this most important of fields might be hampered by all this “poetry-shoetry” nonsense.

Then came the long speeches: “Oh, how I tried to get you kids to realize that Medicine is the only stable career in this world! What will become of all of you now? We’ll have to get the girls married to doctors… or how will they ever earn a living?”

So that’s what it boiled down to. Either we had to be doctors, or we had to marry doctors. Is this what most Desi-American girls grew up hearing? Is this why so many of us stretch ourselves beyond the limits of our capacity to get into med school?

When I was in college, almost all my Desi-American friends were pre-med. I went to a women’s college, which of course means all of these pre-meds were women. But rarely among these girls did I ever hear an encouraging word about Medicine. I heard several thousand complaints about how difficult bio lab was, how much they had to study because they just couldn’t understand this one concept. More than anything, I heard pangs of longing when they talked about their Anthropology or Dance or Literature classes… very few of them ever came out and said it, but almost all of them made it seem that if they could drop the Bio major to pursue Anthro instead, they would.

So what was stopping them? Was it that if they themselves didn’t become doctors, then the only alternative would be to marry a doctor their parents chose for them? Was it that they had started believing my grandfather’s line about Medicine being the only stable career in this world? Was it that they believed the only way to ease humanity’s suffering was by being a doctor? Or was it simply that they never allowed themselves to dream of anything else, because they knew that any other option wouldn’t be tolerated at home?

I know that I’m probably going to receive scores of emails from many Desi-American women after posting this article, all telling me how Medicine has always been their passion, and how I have demeaned them by suggesting otherwise. And I’m sure that that’s true for most people. That’s certainly what most of my friends would say, if I were to have this chat with them directly. But the question still remains at the back of my mind… how is it that so many of the Desi women I know are so intent on being pre-med in college? Is it possible that an entire race of women from coast to coast of a continent all have the same exact passion for the same exact thing?

Of course, we don’t have to look only to colleges to find this phenomenon growing. We can simply turn on our TVs. Desi-Americans are being cast as doctors on a number of popular TV shows, including Heroes, House, and even E.R., Royal Pains, and Scrubs, the last three of which are shows entirely dedicated to the practice of Medicine, and all of which have cast Desi women specifically. Obviously, the first time I saw Parminder Nagra’s face on E.R., my heart jumped a little for joy. And then I saw Nagra’s interview on The Today Show, in which Matt Lauer asked her if she was happy about the fact that she got to portray a doctor on the show, and therefore finally give the show more credibility for realistically reflecting how many South Asian doctors there are in E.R.s across the country. Nagra didn’t have much of an answer for Lauer, other than mentioning that she didn’t want to discuss issues of race with him, but her discomfort with the question got me thinking about how much art imitates life.

Let me make it clear that I see nothing wrong with women becoming doctors! It is wonderful to see more women who look like me entering a profession that has long been dominated by men. Additionally, I also understand that women aren’t the only ones who maybe feel pressure to go into Medicine… of course I know men who have had similar experiences! But the point is that feminism isn’t just about having women in traditionally male professions, it is about those women wanting to be there. How many of these women or men are going to make excellent physicians if their true passion is sculpture? Or archaeology?

Feminism has now reached the point where young women are becoming doctors in droves, and that’s wonderful. But the flip side of that coin is that where once the son of the house was pressured into going into a field like Medicine, now children of both sexes are apparently feeling such pressures. Have we really progressed if all we have done is stop forcing a certain kind of fantasy on young women, and instead pushed them into another?

I would love to have a discussion about this with anyone who is open to talking about it with me, but as an exercise in self reflection, I’ll leave you with this: Recently, a Desi friend from college who is currently in med school visited me after many months. I asked her how school was going, and what her experience was. She stumbled through an explanation of how hellish her exams had been, and how much she’s going to hate the next few years, but that in the end, it would be worth it. I was incredulous, and couldn’t help but asking what could possibly be worth four miserable years of undergrad, four excruciating years of grad school, and four impossible years of residency? Her eyes welled up as she looked me in the eye for the first time in ten minutes. Slowly, she said “These days, my dad is so proud of me.”

About the author:
Piyali Bhattacharya is an American-born Desi writer who contributes pieces about South Asian American Feminisms to EGO every fortnight.
Please send comments to her at piyali.ego@gmail.com or to EGO at info@egothemag.com