I went to the joo today to meet an old friend of mine who is leaving for another city. I always feel sad whenever any of my friends leave, even if I don’t see them very often. I think its because in the back of my mind I know I could see them when I wanted, if I went somewhere, but now, suddenly, I can't.

Anyway, while I was there, someone asked me what it was like to dissect a human body. After the longest time, I mumbled something lame, like “It was great,” and then I stopped because I had nothing to say.

How do I explain to someone that standing in front of a gutted corpse reeking of formaldehyde, my eyes and nose burning, was one of the single most wonderful experiences in my life?

Look. No one has to dissect anything in medical school. You must study anatomy, you must be able to identify structures and trace them, but you don't actually have to dissect.

I did because I wanted to. There were a few of us who did, and the four of us would get together and read up on it, and bunk classes to dissect specific parts of the body we were allotted.

The reason I liked it, apart from the academic satisfaction, was that, for me it was almost a mystical experience.

I feel vaguely foolish even as I write this. I am not a theist. Not from any philosophic sophistry, or anything, but just because I can’t make that leap of faith. I wish I could, actually. Or even that I could have the conviction that God does not exist.

I have neither. I exist in a limbo of uncertainty. I imagine having that kind of faith would be like warmth in my head, a feeling like you get when you screw your eyes closed and tilt your face up to the sun on a winter morning. Perhaps true faith needs a special arrangement of neurons or something: a faith organ. I wouldn’t know.

Your own winter sunshine in your temporal lobe. It must be nice.

But that is the only time in my life that I felt that I was something more than clay. That I was intricately made, beautifully designed; that I was special, not because I was smart, or talented or anything, but just because I existed, like I won a race just because I showed up. It was beautiful, a heady, wonderful feeling. It was magic.

All of this flashed through my mind when she asked me that question, and I couldn’t put any of it into words, and I felt so stupid.

That’s ok. It doesn’t matter. But I’m pretty sure that if, tomorrow, someone asked me the same thing again, I’d still be left winded, searching for elusive words, to frame unfamiliar feelings.