Dr M.C. Gupta, cardiologist, teacher, and unofficial cartoonist of the medical college blackboard, used to greet freshers with a diagnosis that no textbook contained.

“When you boys enter MBBS,” he would say, chalk already squeaking, “you have a big mouth and small eyes.”

On the board appeared a creature that looked like a goldfish that had swallowed a loudspeaker. Two pinprick dots for eyes. A mouth so wide it needed its own roll number. This, he announced, was First Year.

The mouth, he explained, was for three essential functions: announcing that you had topped the entrance, explaining biochemistry to people who had not asked, and asking the anatomy professor whether the cadaver “looked familiar.” The eyes were small because they had not yet seen anything that required them. A dissected frog was still a frog. A failing mark was still “the paper was tough.” Reality had not yet applied for admission.

By third year the diagram changed. Eyes and mouth had reached a tense, democratic equality. The student had now seen a real patient vomit from a height, a professor ask “which nerve?” while holding a structure that looked like wet string, and a roommate who claimed to have finished Guyton. The mouth still worked, but it had learned caution. It said “I think it might be the vagus” instead of “obviously the vagus.” The eyes had begun their career. They were no longer decoration. They were early-warning systems for viva, ward rounds, and the sudden appearance of the dean.

Then came the final year portrait.

Dr Gupta would pause, as if unveiling a masterpiece.

“By the end of fifth year,” he said, “the eyes are like Madhubala. The mouth is like Shetty the villain, who never spoke.”

Madhubala eyes: enormous, tragic, slightly wet, capable of absorbing an entire case sheet, three relatives talking at once, a falling platelet count, and the intern’s silent panic, all in one glance. Eyes that have seen enough to know that “stable” is a diplomatic word and “we’ll see in the morning” is a prayer.

And the mouth: Shetty. The villain who occupied half the screen and one-sixteenth of the dialogue. A thin, disciplined slit. It opened only for “Yes, sir,” “Ryle’s tube in situ,” and “I’ll inform the consultant.” Five years of viva had performed oral surgery. The big mouth of first year had been ligated, debrided, and sent home.

The joke worked because everyone in the hall recognised themselves in the cartoons. First years laughed the loudest, which only proved the first drawing. Final years laughed the quietest, which proved the last.

Dr Gupta never needed a punchline after that. He would dust the chalk off his fingers, look at the class with his own fairly large eyes, and leave the three faces on the board: goldfish, citizen, and silent cinema villain.

The syllabus changed. The blackboard did not. Every batch still entered talking like a public meeting and left watching like Madhubala, speaking like Shetty, and hoping the examiner would not ask them to draw it.