KARACHI, June 27: Students of the Dow Medical College flocked to the bake sale organized by the Patients’ Welfare Association on Thursday on the premises of the Civil Hospital Karachi.

DMC students sold all manner of eatables to other students, haggling over prices merrily, as a mischievous character popped a balloon or two taped to many a jocund shoulder.

As this reporter went round the hall, encircled by a bright marquee, in an anticlockwise direction, guided by an amiable PWA volunteer, he witnessed stalls displaying multifarious items, ranging from handicrafts and mehndi to bedsheets and serviettes.

Surrounded by a bevy of girl students, a palmist scanned the hand of a girl who knitted her brow as the palmist, as candid as they come, pronounced that she would not get good marks in the medicine paper she had flunked.

Selling Dahi baray and Dahi phulkian, a girl, who otherwise did not look like a gourmet, informed this reporter about the delicate difference between the two dishes. She added that she had stayed awake the previous night to make the dishes.

Things perked up a little further when a group of boisterous students entered the marquee, guffawing at a joke. The PWA volunteer explained that the noisy students had come straight from their viva exam centre.

He said that the amount earned by the PWA through the annual bake sale had been in the increasing order. “Every year we earn more than we earned the previous year. I have been told that this year, too, we have broken our last year’s record.”

He added that students took a lot of interest in the bake sale. A large number of leading bakeries and eateries donated their foodstuff to the PWA which was sold by the students.

A DMC student said that selling goods to people was not an amusing job, for it required a lot of self-denial. “The reason why I am doing this is that I know that the proceeds will go towards charity.”

The PWA, a non-political non-governmental organization being run by the students of the Dow Medical College on the premises of the Civil Hospital Karachi, has been providing health-care services to deserving patients free of charge for the past 23 years.

The PWA was formed by three Dow Medical College students in 1979 with a single cabinet of medicines.