We( Polisetty and Pasani) visited Dr. Anurag Agrawal’ s Mall road office( not Shimla, near DU, North campus) to interview him. Well, the interview so amazing, we found it difficult to trim the transcript of the recording to synthesize the article, that we almost left it untouched! So, grab a coffee, sit back and relax for a lengthy read!
VP: When did you join AIIMS? Any fond memories?
AA: I joined in‘ 89. The first memory of AIIMS is always the ragging. It looks fond after all those years but wasn’ t fond when it happened! But yeah, there are a lot of other fond memories. The best memories are the all the nighters playing bridge with friends and walking all the way to the Chanakya theater( operational then). So the fond memories that remain aren’ t academic but are the ones of the extra-curricular activities. Unfortunately, I can’ t say that, while doing my MBBS over there, I didn’ t attend much of it! Ours was the time when attendance wasn’ t compulsory. I spent most of my time in the computer facility or my room, learning coding or C ++. We were one of the very few institutions in India which had, back in the 1990s, a computer center where you could sit and program and they had the software. I was lucky that even back then I had my own personal computer. So between having it at AIIMS and having it at home, it wasn’ t that hard.
SP: So did they formally teach all this?
AA: Entirely on your own. The point was that they did not mind medical students coming there. They did not ask why aren’ t you in your classes, or what is it that you’ re doing? There was a person one year junior to me called Ahmed Hashim. He was an even more avid programmer. His mission in life was to make a computer virus. He wanted to make the best possible virus which could destroy everything! And at the end the virus got loose! He had stored it carefully in a disc, people were looking for something else, and they found the disc and put it in. It was thought to be very dramatic, but it got controlled in the end. Nothing much happened. And I liked some subjects like Physiology, pharmacology etc. And because of the non-compulsory attendance, we had the option of not going to the classes. I am not saying it is the right thing or the wrong thing, but I personally liked it.
VP: Sir, do you think that compulsory attendance is necessary?
AA: I think in an institution where you select people for being super-smart in a way, it is obvious to my mind at least that when it comes to didactic teaching, people can probably read faster than they are being taught in class. I always figured that in the amount of time it would take me to wake up, get ready, walk to the class, wait for the teacher to come, give a lecture and go back; in that time I could’ ve read the same area from two different books. Certainly there may be people who may find it tough to cope, who would want somebody to teach them, but not everybody. For me, it would’ ve been a total waste of time if I’ d gone to lectures, in say, the subjects of my interest. The only exception comes to this rule, and this may be politically incorrect but I don’ t really care anymore, is when the person teaching has made primary contributions to the field. I am not talking about publications. Everyone in AIIMS has 200 papers. I am talking about people who do the type of stuff which will one day enter the books, not necessarily today, it may not enter by their name, but it will be part of the material which does. And when those people teach, you can’ t find the stuff anywhere else. And we were lucky, we did have people like that. So if I knew, that this person would tell