Panduranga Rao

Hello, I'm Pandu.

I'm a doctor.

You might have guessed that because I'm Indian.

But it's particularly relevant to what I'm going to say about belonging.

I finished medical school in 1986.

And like a lot of my classmates, although I graduated and here I was an official doctor, I still felt like an imposter.

I still felt that, no, am I really a doctor?

Do I really deserve to be a doctor?

But, you know, I didn't have the courage to actually face that.

So I had to go looking for a job.

And I lived in a place called Madras, and the job interview was in New Delhi, 1500 miles away, so I took a train.

So being a newly minted doctor, obviously I could travel only by third class in the Indian railways, which is what I took.

sitting among all of the ordinary folks and it was time for lunch and everybody ignored you.

They all took out the lunch boxes and started to eat.

And here I was sitting all alone feeling sorry for myself.

One of the things that the Indian Railway requires when you reserve a ticket is it says specifically, if you're a doctor, please state you're a doctor.

You know, if I were to fill up that form now, I would carefully avoid saying that I'm a doctor, but at that time, since I've newly graduated, I proudly wrote Dr. Pandu.

And in India, they always call you by your first name, Dr. Pandu.

And here I was sitting in the compartment, and suddenly there was this ticket checker who walked down the train

calling out, where's Dr. Pandu?