The Basic Radical

She noticed beads of sweat forming on his forehead as his trembling hands struggled to steady the test tube over the bunsen burner. The tube filled up with a reddish brown gas and let out a pungent odor. As the hour progressed more tubes filled up with the mixture dissolved in distilled water and varying concentrations of hydrochloric acid. He was a smart, hard working kid who was expected to become a doctor like his father and his grandfather. His grades were always exemplary and there was little doubt that he would ace the secondary school exams and be admitted to BJ Medical College, one of the most reputable institutions in the state. However competition to get into medicine was fierce, with a fraction of a percentage point determining who got in and who didn’t. This practical exam in chemistry could either make or break the deal, so it was rather unfortunate that he had ended up with the most difficult experiment of the lot, finding the basic radical. She had had the students memorize the steps and run through the experiment several times during the school year, but most didn’t manage to complete it in time, and many who did got the answer wrong. He would find it, she assured herself. He would get it right. Teaching was not her first choice, nor her second nor her third. She wanted to be a doctor, a cardiovascular surgeon or a gynecologist or even a general practitioner. She loved the sciences, especially biology, the way cells produced energy, the way genes replicated and mutated, the way her brain effortlessly recalled memories from her childhood but couldn’t remember what she had for breakfast yesterday. Just endlessly fascinating stuff. To make a career out of it and help people along the way, what could be better? But her mother would have none of it. No one wants to marry a woman more educated than him, she’d say. It’s a woman’s duty, her responsibility to take care of her own family, she’d say. How many women doctors do we have in the community she had asked. None. She had pleaded with her father, who had always encouraged her to pursue her dreams. Yes, beta, but we live in the real world. By the time you are done with medical school you will be twenty four, twenty five something, then they will send you off to some remote village to train, all alone, God knows where. What will people say? So she did what everyone else in her family did, got a Bachelor’s degree in Science and married the man her parents had arranged for her. She remembered how disappointed she was when she first saw her husband. He was short and pudgy, balding and had a perpetual frown on his face. He’s a good boy her mother had insisted, an only son, who would inherit the hardware store his family owned. He will keep you happy, his mother had assured her. And he had. When she told him she was getting bored sitting at home, he’d take her to the shop and let her help with the books. When she said she’d like to go back to school to pursue her masters, despite his parent’s objections, he had supported her. She had wonderful memories of him dropping her off to college every morning on their lime green Vespa. Sitting behind him, holding him by his waist, leaning into him ever so slightly, her pastel colored rida flapping around her, as the sputtering scooter let of black and white puffs of smoke. Shortly after completing her master’s degree they had their first child, a wonderful bubbly boy and a year later a colicy girl who kept her up all night. She loved her children but when they grew up and went to school staying at home with her in-laws drove her crazy so she enrolled in a BEd course with the hope of becoming a Biology teacher. She remembered her husband pointing out an advertisement for a Chemistry teacher in the Poona Herald. It’s still a science he had said smiling as he sipped his morning chai. And here she was, nine years later, in a chemistry lab, hoping and praying that her star student would pull through and finish the experiment successfully. She wondered if becoming a doctor was really his passion or was he just going through the motions to fulfill his own family obligations. A silly thought she concluded, why wouldn’t he want to be one.
The bell rang and the students handed in their answer sheets. She flipped through the papers and found the one with his distinctive neat handwriting. She glanced up and saw him just about to exit the lab looking back at her. He smiled nervously. She nodded and smiled back.