The impact of watching an autopsy

One afternoon after a Forensic Medicine lecture, the department asked us to meet at the mortuary. Little did I know that what I was about to see was going to leave an impact on me forever. We didn't know exactly what they were planning to show us there. In my head, I had the picture of dead bodies, kept near normal by preservatives, tucked away neatly into drawers. It was an image deeply inspired by the movie Race. While the thought of having to see this for real is rather dreadful to many, I was looking forward to it. A little spooky, yes, but quite exciting.

But what the department had planned for us was different; they were going to let us witness an autopsy! All of us students waited anxiously until they allowed us inside. I have to admit, I was a little scared. I hardly even knew what the procedure of an autopsy consisted of. We'd dissected a cadaver before, but the grave atmosphere of the mortuary added all the supernatural feel it took to frighten us.

Finally, we were allowed inside, and we all gathered around the table, trying to peek over each other's heads, fidgeting as much as possible, trying to get as close up to the table as we possibly could.

And then a body was carried in, by three men. Everything that happened after that was a blur; it happened so fast! The doctors and workers at the autopsy broke the skull open with a hammer, dug out the brain, took a good look at it and flung it into a vessel. Next, they made a longitudinal incision and removed each abdominal organ one by one and did the same, before they simply stuffed a the organs back into place and stitched the skin back together, in large, ugly sutures. To watch this was so impacting! I won't describe the details further, for they aren't for people with a weak stomach; all I'll say is, all the people who were nudging their way to the front began to edge away, and around forty percent of the class simply left half way through the autopsy.

Then we got to know that this was a case of a road accident; the man had been hit by a bus. We were awestruck. Around a half an hour ago, this man was just like any of us; talking, walking, eating, laughing; just living his life, like any of the millions of unknown faces that you come across in a day. But now he was a bleeding, smelly combination of flesh and organs, dismantled piece by piece and thrown back together.

The workers at the mortuary were so accustomed to this that they did it with the same ease that an electrician fixes a bulb, or a carpenter fixes a shelf. They probably had done this so often that none of these things even went through their mind when a new body was brought in; maybe sometimes their job even excited them, to be able to dismantle body parts just like parts of a machine. Watching this procedure impacted me so deeply; I can never look at the human body the same way again.

Lost in thought, I walked out of the mortuary once we were asked to leave. My phone was vibrating; it was my mother, calling to ask why I was late.

 "Mom, I saw an autopsy today!" I told her, expecting her to be wonder struck.

"Oh," my mother's voice had a tinge of resentment.

 "I'll switch on the geyser, bathe as soon as you get home," she said before she hung up.

Indian mothers will never change.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.