To Be or Not To Be a Doctor

Manjula was naked. The most beautiful girl in the world was lying nude before him. He stared with wonder at her. No picture, no video, no depths of imagination can do justice to the marvel that is the female human body. Billions of years of evolution, thousands of years of civilization, a lifetime of growth had led them to this moment. There was only the tantalizing form before his eyes, the intoxicating sounds in his ears, the fantastic soft skin that had aroused his feelings.

She was prostrate with arousal, helpless with desire. He could be inside her in seconds, thrusting triumphantly, feeling that glorious pussy around him. His cock jerked, a wet spot soaking through to the front of his shorts. No. Not yet.

He knelt between her legs, to get the best possible view. "Run your fingers outside your pussy."

His heart was pounding. Her breath was coming as fast as a sprinter's. "Touch your clit."

She had just enough control to stay quiet, but her sudden gasp was music to his ears.

"Now finger it, the same way you fingered your nipples."

"Oh Tony... oh..."

"Touch yourself. You are free. You do not need a man to give you this. You can have it wherever, whenever you want."

"I want you..." she moaned in Tamil. The deepest feelings come out in one's own language.

"I want you too," he replied, also in Tamil. He could not take much more of this. His hand began to drift to his cock.

"I love you, Tony..." And then her body was shaking, quivering. Her heels stomped on the bed, her ass leaped up and down, her head was rolling, her shoulders shaking. Tony had never witnessed a woman orgasm before — he knew now that what they had in porn were not orgasms. It was like seeing an ocean in storm, but a beautiful ocean, a vastness of energy and feeling and hunger and longing. It was the most powerful expression of human emotion he had ever seen.

"I love you too, Manjula," was all he said, but in English.

Tears were flowing down her face. Tony lay down beside her and took her in his arms again. She held on to him tightly, as if holding on to life itself, fingers clawing at him, breath heaving. His cock prodded into her belly.

She slid down the bed, and he felt his shorts being pulled off.

"Manjula, what are you doing?"

"Shh." She sang more lines from the song to quieten him.

And then her hands were caressing his feet, touching them in the same gentle way he'd touched hers.

A woman's hands are not like a man's. There is a smoothness they possess that no man can match, like comparing marble to asphalt. Tony could not believe the tingles of joy her touch brought him.

"Lie still," she said. "Let me be your servant girl." He felt her lips kiss one foot, then the other. The simple submission of it left him deeply moved.

Manjula had him on his side, allowing her to massage both the front and back of his legs. She drifted her hands upwards, as if climbing a ladder, sending waves of delight up his calves, the hard muscles in his thighs. Each touch of her hands was like magic, a sizzling ray that left marks of joy behind. Nothing in his life had ever felt this good.

She circled his cock, touching his legs, his belly, his waist, everywhere but the organ pulsing and wet with desire for her. His belly vibrated when her fingers crossed it.

She put her arms around him — around his midsection. Her hands were on his ass. For the first time he discovered just how many nerves that part of the body really has. He felt he was going to melt, so powerful were the feelings she evoked within.

"Oh my god, Manjula," he babbled. "Oh my god."

She rolled him onto his back and spread his legs wide. Her hands were on his thighs again, leaving his crotch to wriggle and squirm in anticipation. Then slowly, she traced her finger lightly, so lightly, up between his legs. She gently pried his legs apart to get a better angle in.

He felt his groin being fondled, like a guitar. But the feeling! It was a sheer physical pleasure of the kind he'd never felt in his life. His cock was dripping now, dripping onto its base, but Manjula's hands did not flinch.

She started to caress his balls. He moaned. Surely this was heaven, he had died and gone to heaven, nothing, nothing could feel this pleasurable. Did she see how strongly his cock was jutting in her direction, leaping, thrusting, trying desperately to find this princess, this goddess, that had given it such ecstasy?

She had but to place her palm on his cock before he burst, burst with the days of pent-up hunger he had for her, burst with the intimacy he felt for her, burst from the gentleness and affection with which she'd cared for him.

"Was that good?" she asked nervously.

"Manjula, Manjula... this is the greatest moment of my life," he panted.

"For me too," she said. She contemplated her fingers, white with cum. "It is not very much, is it? Just a spoonful." She brought her fingers to her face and sniffed them. She even put the tip of one finger in her mouth.

"Not so bad," she admitted. "Maybe for you, the best is yet to come."

Chapter 4

Manjula was so unaccountably cheerful at breakfast the next morning that Tony's mother looked at her suspiciously. Tony feared he would get questions he didn't want to answer, but Manjula smoothly diverted her by asking if she could take some Sri Lankan food back to campus. His mother considerately gave her coolers full of it.

Sitting on the bus home, Tony felt a deep sense of contentment. He had a loving, beautiful girlfriend. He had understanding, open-minded parents. His studies were going well. He was even learning Tamil, a dream he'd had for years.

"Manjula," he asked, "how do you feel?"

"Today I feel wonderful," she replied. "What we did last night was wonderful. But I am worried."

"About marriage?"

"Not about us. Something will be worked out. I am worried about school."

"Why?" Tony found it hard to believe Manjula's brilliant mind could be fazed by anything.

"I have biology tomorrow. I hate biology. It is just so fluid, and messy. I especially dislike the lab sessions."

"What other classes are you taking?"

"Chemistry, economics, maths, and English writing."

"What if you dropped biology, and took something else?"

"I need biology to be a doctor."

"What if you didn't need to be a doctor?" He grinned. "Hypothetically."

She looked at him archly. "Hypothetically, I could be a quantitative analyst like you said. Or an actuary."

"You can check, but it sounds like your other courses are compatible. Just drop biology and take another class instead."

"I wish I could do that," she sighed. "But I cannot."

"What if you stayed here?" Tony asked.

"In Canada? And marry you, no doubt?" She looked at him with mock outrage. "You would sacrifice my life plans for your cock?"

Tony did not rise to the bait. "Even if we had never met, there is a good case for you to remain here. You would be very wealthy by Sri Lankan standards."

"And leave behind my family? My friends?"

Tony contemplated this. Immigrants could sometimes bring their parents over, but Manjula could not bring her aunt and uncle, and certainly not her cousins, or friends.

"What is your aunt and uncle's income?"

"Twenty thousand rupees per month."

Tony took out his phone and consulted a few websites. "Okay, starting salary for a quant... after taxes... monthly... convert to rupees. That would be five hundred and thirty thousand rupees a month."

"What?"

"That doesn't mean you're rich, since your expenses will also be high. But you could send your aunt and uncle less than five percent of your income, and still double theirs. And your income could double in the first ten years. And in the U.S., quants make even more."

Manjula was speechless. She had been looking forward to earning a doctor's salary of sixty thousand rupees a month, which would make her one of the richest people in her village. A specialist could get eighty thousand. And that wasn't the starting pay, it was the rate after several years of service.

If she moved to Colombo and went into private practice, she could earn double or triple what she could in her village, but it would still barely be a quarter of what she could earn abroad, if Tony's figures were correct. And she'd have to deal with the high cost of living in the city.

"But what happens to my village?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"How can they manage without a doctor? Poor regions like ours have very few doctors of their own. The Government assigns recent graduates for duty in the rural areas. They do a two-year stint and then they leave. The people never get treated by experienced practitioners. And they cannot see a specialist without travelling many hours to the city."

"So you feel," said Tony slowly, "that it's your duty to go back and help them."

"Yes," she said fiercely. "Do you know what we called people like your parents who fled abroad during the war?"

"What?" said Tony, shamefacedly.

"Runaways. We called them runaways. It was your caste, the karaiyar caste, that started the war. It was your caste that had the good schools and wanted the university places and best jobs. And when the Army came, it was people from your caste who were the first to go abroad.

"The rebels did not have enough soldiers. So they wandered into villages, into schools. Child soldiers are the most obedient. They came into my school and demanded I go and fight for them. I was seven years old. Appa begged with them, he pleaded, let her finish her studies, she is too young. Finally, they let me go, but only if he went in my place. So he went to fight."

Tony felt, suddenly, deeply ashamed of himself.

"Two years later we got a letter. Appa was in hospital. He had lost his leg. Amma was desperate to bring him home. She heard that the Air Force had agreed to let the area around the hospital serve as a safe zone. The Army promised that unarmed civilians who left rebel territory would be allowed to go home. I wanted so much to go with her, to see him again. I missed him so much. Amma said no, it was too dangerous. She went off on foot. It would have taken her two days to get to the safe zone."

Everyone Tony knew had either gone abroad or was safe in Colombo during the terrible last days of the war. He had never felt more uselessly overprivileged.

"There were hardly any doctors at that hospital. There had not been many in the first place, and most had fled. The Government ordered the Red Cross to leave, they accused them of aiding and abetting terrorists. Appa just stayed there, I don't know if anyone treated him. All I know for sure is that Amma did make it there."

"What happened to your father and mother?"

"At least they were together. They... they..."

Manjula was not crying; she was stone-faced, with a look of grim determination.

"The Air Force bombed the hospital anyway, after they said they would not. They said there were terrorists in the hospital. Appa was a rebel soldier, so they would have counted him as a terrorist. But he never wanted to kill anyone. Everything he did, he did to protect me."

What can you say to a story like this? Tony thought of the sense of contentment he'd been enjoying just minutes before, now apparently gone forever.

"They cremated all the bodies, right there on the spot. The Government refused to admit Amma had been there. But other people have told me she was going there, they saw her nearby. There were many civilians in that hospital who died. The war ended a few weeks later. They were dancing in the streets in Colombo. I have nothing left of Amma and Appa. Not even their ashes."

Tony remembered that time — of how crowds of Tamils had protested the massacres, holding demonstrations in London, in Ottawa, in Washington. In Toronto, a gathering of angry Tamils had stormed onto the Gardiner Expressway and blocked it for hours. To this day, some still believed the dead rebel leader was alive and in hiding somewhere, and that the glorious struggle would one day start again. Many denounced the perfidious Sinhalese, but the steady flow of contributions from the West that had financed the rebels dried up after they were gone.

"I am so sorry about what happened to your parents," he said. It was a hopelessly anodyne thing to say, but he could think of nothing else.

She took his hand in his. "It is not your fault. And I cannot ask you to come back with me to Sri Lanka. I do love you, but I do not believe you could handle the standard of living we have there."

"I love you too, Manjula," said Tony robotically, but he felt completely unworthy of her. His dreams were of the acquisition of wealth and status. Hers were of taking care of her family and community.

Manjula had lost both her parents at the age of nine. She had known poverty, had known deprivation, had known cruelty and suffering to a degree he could barely imagine. He, on the other hand, had lived like an emperor, studied at well-furnished schools, driven smooth-running cars on neatly paved roads, never had to worry about bombings or invasions, and didn't give any more thought to life except to which high-paying job he could get — or whether he could get his girl to suck his cock. What a waste of space, he thought bitterly.

Manjula dozed off as the bus drove on, her head lolling onto his shoulder. Tony thought and thought. Finally, he made some decisions.

***

When he got home, he spent some time surfing the net, filled in some forms, and drafted a few emails.

He texted Manjula: Can't do Tamil lesson tomorrow; booked something else.

Her reply came in seconds: Why what is wrong?

Nothing just got somethn to do, he wrote back.

She took a bit longer to reply. Can you come over around 7?

***

"Why did you try to thaavi our lesson?" she asked, in Tamil, when he arrived the following evening.

"I um, I was volunteering at the student centre lab."

"Volunteering?"

"You know, guiding students who need computer help. You'd be surprised how many have spent their life on their phone but can't do squat with a desktop. Some of them don't even know how to type, or do a Google search, or even print a document."

"You got a job?"

"No. I volunteered. I did it for free."

"Why would you do that? Do you know these students?"

Tony was puzzled by her attitude.

"Well no, I just... I know that I'm very good at computers, and a lot of them aren't. I can sometimes figure out in a few minutes what would take them an hour. If I can help them get their work done, it takes away their stress, and I felt better after I went."

"Were you feeling bad?"

"Of course I was feeling bad!" Tony snapped. "After what you said about runaways, I felt awful. I just thought... maybe you were right, maybe my life should have some kind of meaning."

"So you decided this just yesterday? After we said good night?"

"That's right."

Manjula laughed. "Do you want to know what I was doing last night?"

"What?"

She put her finger in front of her crotch and made a wiggling motion. "You are a very good teacher, you know," she said playfully. "I wanted it so badly I did it twice more after you left back at your parents' house. Last night I did it another three times. I cannot seem to get enough."

Tony would normally have been quite aroused by this, but he found himself getting more upset. He'd been doing deep soul-searching, and she'd just been pleasuring herself?

"But — I was even — I emailed some non-profits, asking if they'd take me on an unpaid internship next summer."

"What? I thought you said you could probably get an internship with a big famous tech firm, and you needed one to get a permanent job later."

"I guess I decided some things are more important than money."

It was now Manjula's turn to get angry. "Are you throwing your career away just to be noble?"

"Why not? Isn't that what you're doing?" Tony shouted back.

There was a silence.

"Why are you angry with me?" asked Manjula in a small voice.

Tony sat down on the chair. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not angry with you, I'm angry with myself."

"Why, what have you done wrong?"

"The question is what have I done right? And after what you said yesterday, I couldn't think of anything."

Manjula squatted down before him and took his hand. "Tony, the past week since I met you has been the happiest of my life. That is what you have done right."

"I just thought... you were going to devote your life to taking care of your village, and I—"

"I am sorry, I should not have ranted like that," she said. "The reason I got so heated was because you made me realize the flaw in my plan."

"What flaw?"

"I hate biology. I can learn it if I have to, but I do not think I will ever love it the way I love maths."

"But you said your village needed a doctor—"

"Yes, but you are right too. How can I be a good doctor if I hate biology? I was thinking about that...um...in between." She blushed. "I just miss Amma and Appa so much, I wanted to do something to make their deaths worthwhile."

He looked down at her. "Their deaths were not worthwhile. It's their lives that were worthwhile. Because they produced you."

She smiled. "I am glad you are helping in the lab. Maybe I can do something for maths students in difficulty."

"I already know what you can do for Tamil students in difficulty."

She chuckled. "This was our first fight!" she said, in Tamil. "Did you like it?"

He found himself relaxing. "In a way, I did. I think... I think I needed a jolt like that. It really is a cruel and unjust world out there, and we have to do our part to make it better. Not just drift through life."

"You can decide on your internship later. I actually asked you over here for a different kind of jolt."

He looked at her, taking in again just how pretty she was. Her knees were angled before his, her lovely brown skin glowing at him. The little red dress she had on brought out the bright red of her innocent-looking lips. She had clearly just taken a shower, he could smell a trace of scented soap. And he couldn't help noticing that, even though she could have sat in the chair beside him, she was squatting below him, in a submissive position.

"And what would that be?" he asked.

"Rachel is in class from seven to nine. That is why I said to come at seven." She said that in Tamil, so it took Tony a moment to process it.

She stood up, and just as she had before, she slipped out of the dress. There it was again, that feast for the eyes, that slender brown wonder he had the honour to call girlfriend. She had on a frilly red one-piece mesh, loosely hanging off straps around her shoulders, through which he could see most of her breasts. Little flaps ran along the bottom, looking like the only covering for her pussy.

Swaying her body, she slid the straps down her arms. The outfit slowly slid down to the floor. And this was not late at night in a darkened room. This was in broad daylight, with the bright rays of the setting sun coming in through the window.

Manjula, nude. Looking a little scared, true, but her pose firm and steady, her gaze very direct. She wanted this. She wanted him to stare at her unclad body, to take pleasure just from the sight of her, to send that familiar hunger coursing through his loins. He could not have been more enthralled if it were the Mona Lisa herself. Her breasts were as round as melons, full and rich, a lusty challenge to his eyes. She twirled around, and he could see that pert posterior, curvy and perfect.

But her pussy!

It is not for nothing that the vagina has been called the holiest of holies. It is the canal that gives life itself. It is the desired, cherished target of millions of men throughout history. There has always been something mystical, something precious, even sacred about this organ, this fount of pleasure, this place of so many dreams and so many hopes.