Order in Chaos: Reading Agatha Christie When I Was Failing
On failure, secret reading, and the comfort of solvable mysteries.
A Sunday Morning I Was Supposed to Be Studying
It was about 9 am when I sat down to study that Sunday. I usually woke up at 7 am every morning and prepared to study after having my breakfast.
I had puri with mutton bheja that day. It was one of my favourite breakfasts. We always had non-vegetarian food on Sundays. I had always been a die-hard non-vegetarian lover all my life.
When I was having a bath that day, I wondered if I would ever clear the three papers I still had to give to pass my final year of MBBS and finish medicine. I clutched the tap tightly while closing it.
I had put on about 26 kilos since I was diagnosed with hypothyroid just a year ago, but I didn’t care, at least not then. I was too distracted by the chaos of my life to bother about my weight.
I laid my mat out on the floor in my usual place beside the bed and sat on it. My obstetrics textbook was half-closed, and I had a pen placed on the page I had been reading from the previous day.
I placed my water bottle and lip balm on the side of my mat so I could reach them easily when I needed them. I placed the huge textbook on my lap.
I furtively looked towards the kitchen, where my mother was cooking lunch, chicken biryani, another one of my favourites.
I slid my phone gently into the book and onto the page that I had opened. I opened the Moon+ Reader Pro app from the app list and clicked on Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie.
I turned towards the bed so my mother could not have a direct view of what I was doing from the kitchen. My sister had already left for college, so there was nobody in the bedroom.
I thought to myself that there was one less person to look out for today.
I could hear my mother’s silver anklets tinkling as she walked from the kitchen to the hall and back. The smell of biryani was slowly spreading through the house, and I took a conscious deep breath to inhale it.
I started reading the murder mystery on my phone, and my breathing slowed.
I forgot all about my upcoming exams and immersed myself in the world of mystery and Hercule Poirot.
Why Murder Mysteries?
Through the strict medical entrance exam preparation of my Intermediate years and then the no friends and “I hate medicine” period of my MBBS, I had forgotten the one thing that always felt like home—books.
Somehow, I found my way back to them when I needed them most.
I revived my love for reading and started with Agatha Christie. I had already read two of her novels when I was in high school and loved them. She is rightly called the queen of mystery, and I gorged on the remaining novels and short story collections one after the other.
The situations I had in my life then, being overweight and failing my final year MBBS exams, were things I saw as impossible to overcome. Something that I could never work out. At least it felt like that then.
But murder mysteries were something that I could solve, work through, and test my intelligence with. I knew I could find answers to those questions.
Also, when I came back home to Hyderabad from my college in Vijayawada, I had decided that I would never marry and just focus on getting my life in order.
Miss Marple, one of the protagonists in Agatha Christie novels, is an intelligent, elderly lady who never married. There were also stories in those novels about women who lived alone peacefully because some of them never married, and some had lost husbands.
Their stories inspired me and gave me hope that I could spend the rest of my life single and content with myself.
When Medicine Felt Impossible
Throughout my MBBS, I had felt like an imposter. Though I had secured a seat in a government college purely based on merit, I still felt like an outsider.
I would see students from different years burning the lamp in the library all day and all night, especially during exams, and I felt inadequate because I never felt the interest or motivation to study medicine like that.
By the time I was in the second year, I knew I was stuck in the wrong place with the wrong course. But I had already come too far to go back.
And in the final year, it became unbearable.
I had given up all hope. I thought there was no way I would clear those exams. I even contemplated dropping out of medicine and taking admission in Hyderabad for a bachelor’s degree in English literature.
I had lost all interest in medicine and just could not take it anymore. The day before the exams was the worst.
For someone who had been an overachiever all her life, failing exams completely took away the already shrinking confidence that I had.
I felt worthless, not capable of anything. I had always been proud of what a good student I was, and when MBBS blew up in my face, I did not know what to do with my life anymore.
Reading in Secret
I hear my mother’s footsteps and feel her form coming towards my bedroom.
My heart races.
I am alerted immediately.
I press the button to lock my phone’s screen and expertly move my leg so that the phone slides down the textbook and lands at the spot just beside my mat.
I look at my textbook and pretend to study. I even turn a page.
My mother asks me if I want to have my lunch yet. I reply no. I was not hungry yet.
My mother started folding the clothes on the chair in the bedroom.
I knew I could not return to my reading just yet. I had to be patient.
I looked down at the textbook and started reading the page about the concept of types of lie in obstetrics. I felt my heart sink looking at the diagrams in the book that are apparently supposed to make the concept easy to understand.
I remember again why I am not so fond of medical textbooks that much.
I look at my mother. She is about to leave the room. I sense her going out of the bedroom and into the hall.
I release the breath I did not know I had been holding.
I switch on the phone screen and start reading the novel exactly where I had left off.
They Did Not Fix My Life
Agatha Christie’s books did not make me love medicine. I believe nothing could.
They reminded me how much I loved reading, how much I yearned to just shut out the world and drown in the marvellous prose.
They did not fix my life at all, but gave me an escape when my life felt too much and too hard to deal with.
They did not instantly restore confidence. But it made my life bearable.
They showed me they were there for me when nothing seemed to go right. They gave me a reason to wake up every morning with hope and excitement.
In fact, during that period, they were the only reason I even wanted to get out of bed.
Those books certainly did not transform me, but they definitely gave me mental structure. They reduced the feeling of constant panic that I otherwise felt those days.
They helped me endure the most difficult time of my life.
Now that I think back, I don’t know how I would have survived that phase without Agatha Christie.
Years later, I would experience that same feeling again when a different book pushed me to begin writing, something I wrote about in When a Book Gave Me Permission to Begin.
What Those Pages Mean to Me Now
I ended up reading all the books written by Agatha Christie during that time.
I eventually cleared all my exams and now work as a medical officer in Hyderabad.
Today, when I think about how I love my job and am enthusiastic about going to the clinic every day to work and see patients, I am stunned by the realisation of how far I have come.
Now I understand why that younger version of me needed those pages.
They were my coping mechanism. My tools for survival.
All she needed was relief and warmth, and she found it in books, her estranged friends.
When I am walking in a bookstore and spot an Agatha Christie, I immediately feel a wave of warmth washing over me.
A wooden study table has replaced the floor mat now. The study lamp glows on my desk on some evenings.
But now, the books beneath it don’t need to be hidden.
And that younger version of me who looked to Miss Marple for reassurance that a different life was possible and within reach would be glad to know that we made it.
Just like the elderly ladies in Christie’s world who lived their lives peacefully on their own terms, I too have found happiness in a single, independent and content life.
If this resonated, you might enjoy Letters From a Slow Writer, my occasional newsletter on autonomy, solitude, and living deliberately.
Aishwarya is a government doctor in Hyderabad and a personal essayist. She writes about solitude, money, books, and the quiet work of building a life on her own terms.