Hyderabad, June 22 -- While most candidates who sat the NEET-UG re-examination on Sunday, June 21, were teenagers, one aspirant at a Hyderabad centre stood out for a different reason. Karunakar David is 67 years old, a retired government servant, and he has been chasing a medical degree for years, not for himself alone but to honour a promise made to his mother.

David, who spent part of his childhood in Yemen before returning to India, built a career in government service. But the aspiration to become a doctor never left him. His mother was a senior physician who wanted her son to follow her into medicine, and that wish stayed with him long after she was gone.

Sunday's re-examination was another attempt to make it real. For David, the t...