Remembered Vignettes: Recollections of the Life of a Medical Student on Ceylon of the Early 1960s. The last years of the 1960s saw an unparalleled exodus of physicians from the country, seeking if not greener pastures, at least a little tranquillity from the uncertainties released by the social(ist) revolution of 1956. Many medical students who graduated during this period, though somewhat insulated from the social engineering going on around them, departed the shores at the first opportunity that presented itself. Others of a more optimistic frame of mind stayed, until the roof began to show definite signs of falling in. The resilient ones who are the real heroes depicted in the pages in this book, stayed the course and completed careers of exemplary service to the country and its people. More than four decades later, the time spent in the Faculty of Medicine seems a period of great joy, now made even more appealing by the tendency of age to blunt the hard edges of reality. The stories in this book are a window into that period when there was a constant need to perform at a level just beyond one's comfortable reach. Not surprisingly, the atmosphere was often charged with a supreme sense of the absurd, which made the events of the day fun and from this distance in time, even funny. The Law-Medical cricket match, the Block Dance and the bizarre rites of passage (the rag) at College House were all part of this mosaic and somewhere along the way there were classes, ward rounds and even examinations.