FORMER Durban man Kiran Mani is making waves in Cape Town, snapping up, among other awards, first prize for the best final-year results in internal medicine at UCT.

As the violent student protests last year took their toll at various campuses, Mani, 24, simply kept his head down, continuing to study.
“I anticipated that the #FeesMustFall protest would continue. To overcome this, I knew I would have to work hard and I made every day count from day one, studying for 14 hours straight every day,” he said. For his efforts he recently walked away with the Wilfrid Exner Bauman Memorial prize. His perseverance paid off as he also received the HS Ebrahim Memorial medal for best results in haematology across third, fourth and sixth year exams, the Faculty of Health sciences prize for the student showing the greatest promise in surgery and the SA Society of Psychiatrists award for best results.

Mani was also named the most distinguished final-year student in psychiatry. “I’ve always done decently and in every exam my goal was not to see if I could pass, but how well I could do.” He said he felt most driven in his fifth year of studies, when he had started engaging with patients. “I think it hit me that in the next two years, I would be responsible for treating sick patients on my own. I then decided to go back to my books and learn everything.” The ex Crawford College pupil said this meant almost bunking at the library on occasions. Mani, whose mother is a senior nurse and father a medical officer, said every time he encountered a difficult patient, he always asked himself what his dad would do.

His father, he said, is renowned at his workplace for being able to calm down aggressive patients in a dignified manner.
And every time he feels stressed, he thinks of his mother, who always encourages him with pep talks, while preparing him delicious meals which always lighten his mood.

Apart from assisting in surgical procedures, Mani has spent his little spare time exploring restaurants in the Mother City and this has developed into a hobby of cooking. He shares his newly invented dishes on his Instagram account, kiri_mani. “Another old hobby of mine is chess, in which I represented KZN for many years prior to moving to Cape town,” he said. After he completes his internship in Bloemfontein over the next three years, Mani plans to explore the fields of hepatobiliary (liver and gall bladder) medicine and interventional cardiology.

“I wouldn’t be so naive as to commit to these so early in my career and I wish to gain more experience over the following years, as often what we are exposed to as students is much different to what we encounter in real-life practice,” he said. Due to the #FeesMustFall protest, the UCT graduation, which was to have been held in December, was postponed to June this year.
But Mani said he had already received his graduation certificate via e-mail.

Article courtesy, The Post