CHAPTER XXVI ADIEU RANCHI

Chapter XXVI

ADIEU RanchI

(To be added further in it, the story of  not giving me due promotion to E-7 in 2015 by the MECON Ldt. but giving promotion to only MBBS doctors in E-6 & 7 violating its own rules agaist which I went to Hon'ble HC; the matter is  in the Hon'ble SC  since  Nov.2018 and further story of my post-supperannuatin , since May 2015 ,becoming a medical faculty at SVIMS, Puducherry, CCMC,Durg, RMC, Rohilkhand and RMRI, Bareilly)

            “Progress is change”, professed H.H. Swami Chinmayananda. on 4th November 1989 at Ranchi while he was inaugurating his week-long Gita Gyan Yajna. Moving from Ranchi to Delhi was in my mind since early September but I was in a fix, in an emotion, difficult to overcome.

             By 1989, I had an association of nearly two decades with this city, though in between for 12 years I was in the gurukul at Darbhanga. Swamiji’s proclamation opened my eyes and I took a firm decision that I should not be an ‘Arjuna’ in the battle-field of life.

            I do not agree with the wisdom of Buddha of leaving his wife and child alone though it is a fact that without renunciation one can never have Bodhi.

            For me the time had been the best and the worse, if not the worst. I saw my dreams realised and I saw my dreams shattered at the same time.

            When I reviewed my life that day, I realised I had been successful and unsuccessful alike. Probably a balance between life’s aim, profession and family was lost and one encroached upon the other giving an ugly picture. Yet, it was not all purposeless, maybe for a great mission, but it did not undermine the rights of others who demanded some emotion or so from me.

            I knew I had been myself emotionally deprived of the affections of mother, brother and late in the list, the wife who owed me more than anybody else.

            At the beginning of the year1989, I had been planning to celebrate my birthday with gaiety but it was not ordained by Him.

            My way would have been narrower than I had but the city I was going to was bigger and wider. Getting bread even without butter was not the mere objective but abiding by the conscience, I could deduce that even for social work, I might be fitter in the Capital, if after some years, I could have found myself in a position to suitably manage my family life.

            It was evident that a prolonged absentee could not have a good practice and without the practice, I could not utilize my hard-earned knowledge. Probably it would have been easier there to work for fewer hours and save longer time for social work. Further half of India could be covered by overnight train journey for organizational meetings, especially on weak-ends.

            Long back, Dr. K.K. Sinha, had advised me to go to the bigger centers. I had come to Ranchi on his urgent letter and I was going out again with his letter. If change indeed is progress, Adieu Ranchi* __ my role here was over. (End of November, 1989).

Post-script

    At Delhi, my hosts were Mrs. and Mr. A. P. Rustagi, parents of a medico of the RMC, Ranchi, whom I had advised while he had an acute abdomen. Gyanbrahm Pathak, a former pracharak of the Sangh incidentally was in the same train and Inder Singh Namdhari, the then president of the BJP, Bihar** (and later the first speaker of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly) also were going to Delhi for attending the post-poll meeting of the party, after 1989 General Election. We had a lot of discussions and I was all along against supporting V.P. Singh.

    Pathakji told me go to Keshavkunj, Jhandewalan, though I was a bit hesitant to go to any Karyalaya since 1982, when I had to go on an indefinite fast, at Mumbai.  In fact, I was returning from the ABVP’s national conference at Hubli with Harinandan Rai and Ksh. Birendra of the Darbhanga Medical College and an Ayurvedic student worker of the ABVP, Darbhanga. We were first accommodated in the Karyalaya but at mid-night we were asked to leave the Karyalaya, as we had no introduction letter. We went to Ambarnath by the last local train to the quarters of my cousin.  Next morning, we returned to the same Karyalaya, near Naz talkies and asked to call any senior Sangh worker of the city. On getting no response, I went on an indefinite fast. My points were that the rules were all right but suppose there was a pick-pocket/theft of the luggage and in that hard circumstance of urgency one would not be helped!

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*And it happened so in March 2006  when I was transferred from Ranchi to Bangalore by the MECON Ltd. as if a punishment but was transferred back on 23.10.2007

**including Jharkhand

We all were Sangh Shiksha Varg (OTC) trained good workers and though the menial workers could recognize us, the Karyalaya Pramukh refused to recognize us despite Harinandan showing my picture sitting besides Dr. J. K. Jain of the DRI, Delhi (later an M. P. and famous for the Jain TV) during the first conference of the NMO at Patna in 1980.  In the evening Ma. Dr. Madhav S. Paralkar came who worked for Nana Palkar Smruti Samiti where mostly cancer patients were provided free shelter for he treatment and on his request I broke the fast.

    The Delhi Karyalaya was congenial but some workers did not appreciate my view that a cabinet minister of Indira Gandhi could not be a good man and Ma. L. K. Advani should not have commented, “Our support is to V. P. Singh and not to the Janata Party.” My humble opinion was not taken in good perspective as we in Sangh are not supposed to criticize such seniors.

    Sangh workers of Kashavkunj did not encourage me to settle in Delhi as working for the NMO was of no importance for them since most of them had not even heard about the NMO but I was shocked when Ma. Bhauraoji Deoras grumbled about,  “Everyone comes to Delhi to settle.”  I had high regards for him but I did not tell him that he too had gone to Lucknow from Nagpur for propagating the RSS in north India and the same day I left for Rustagi’s palatial building in Vikaspuri.

    Rustagi family took me everywhere possible for my practice/job. I, for the first time attended a mid-night party in a chilly winter where a puppet-dance was arranged. One of his relative doctors said that I was too senior for any residency job and practice was the only alternative. Rustagi asked one of his close associates to show me his Seemapuri house where I might live and asked him not to ask for any rent till I was able to earn and pay myself.  I went there but could not gather confidence to live alone in that two-room house.

    At the Kalawati Sharan Hospital, Delhi I was not selected for an ICMR fellowship being over experienced one. In fact, I was pretty senior for any residency and had no capital to sustain myself as a consultant. The NMO had no unit in Delhi at that time and doctors related to the Sangh were high-ups in the IMA who did not show interest in the NMO.

    A Muslim doctor from Bikaner, settled at Rohini sector and running A. K. Nursing Home, was very encouraging knowing that my wife was also a doctor.  He told me that he had also come to Delhi with a bag only and hoped, very soon I would also be settled down similarly but I thought, my RSS connection in future might jeopardize the relations with him and finally I returned to Ranchi where the Central Office of the NMO was located. The progress of the NMO has been my life-time mission.  How could I afford to be indifferent to its cause?

    Hence, at Ranchi I again started practice at Ashok Pharmacy on the Main Road and Bawa Pharmacy at Dhurwa as well as at Ramgarh but was not very successful and being tormented by the marital conflict I was not at peace.

    Dr. Bipin Shah’s letter drifted me to Bombay where Cipla offered me a job immediately but when I met Dr. Anil Kumar, an alumnus of the Darbhanga Medical College at the J. J. Hospital, I became interested in Cardiac Cath.  Lab. and was soon assisting him in all sorts of high-tech work (e.g. angioplasty, pace-maker implantation, etc.).  At an interview of the ONGC, for the post of medics I did not produce my experience certificates as per the Kalawati Sharan’s happenings and thus was not selected in the first list. German Remedies and Fulford did not select me thinking me a novice for any pharmaceutical industry. A senior at the J. J. Hospital, Dr. Ashok Tulpude listening to my answer to any question during ward rounds offered me to work in a cardiac clinic at Goa.

    In mid-1990, I had to walk out from an interview at the Sanjeevani Hospital, Virar (inspired by the RSS ideology) saying that I had applied for the post of medical superintendent, not a resident house/ physician as they had presumed (which I was almost a decade back).  Only on the production of (my edited) Progress in Clinical Neurosciences (1985 and 1986 volumes) the interviewer (much junior to me but attached to that hospital on part-time basis) was dumbfounded to know that Bihari MDs too possess good knowledge of Medicine. 

    In the meantime, I received an interview letter for the post of lecturer in Medicine in the municipal medical colleges of Bombay but just after two days, there was an interview for the post of a senior specialist of Medicine at the MECON (I) Ltd., Ranchi.  To procure experience certificate from the CCL, Ranchi, I left Bombay without appearing at the interview for lectureship. It was a blunder of my life. I thought serving at Ranchi would settle my marital problem but that was not my destiny.

While the MECON’s offer letter at Ranchi was in the process, I restarted practice at Ranchi, Dhurwa and Ramgarh.  I got success at Ramgarh but those were the days of the frequent curfew on Ram-janmabhumi issue and I was irregular in attendance in all the four clinics – Ashok, Green and Bawa at Ranchi and Medicine Centre at Ramgarh.  Ramgarh’s successful venture was, for me, very short-lived, like that of the Ramgarh’s incomplete session of the Congress in 1940.

    The in-laws who initially had asked me to start practice at Ramgarh, lost interest in me on the tantrum of my wife.  Yet, I worked with utmost patience.  And, when I got an offer from the MECON, I did hesitate to join it as my practice had picked-up at Ramgarh but  I thought a settled life would settle my wife’s turbulent mind.

            On 12.11.1990, I joined the Ispat Hospital of the MECON, Ranchi and on 14.1.1991, I came to settle down in quarters, K-164* Shyamali, to reside for the first time in my life after two decades long hostel life. My grand-parent-in-law Chakra Pani Jha could know that  I had joined service before he took his last breath (disappointed by the failure of our marriage as I was his choice and search). My parents-in-laws paid several visits to my quarters, gave promises and solace but they could not send my wife to me in spite of several requests and my visits to Bachra where my father-in-law Mukti Nath Jha was working as a General Manager of the CCL, in an Indo-Australian project. A few of my close kinsmen also visited Bachra to persuade my father-in-law but to no purpose whatsoever.

            The service story in the MECON is not much different from the CCL though the people and staff are having less bureaucratic tantrums here. Physiotherapist Ashok has remained my trusted aide here.

 *Changed to D-5, Shyamali on 4.3.2004

            Though most qualified in the mecon’s Ispat Hospital, I could be promoted only after a record time of 6+years (usually it takes 3 to 4 years) despite my distinguished services. A CPI’s M. P.’s letter made the Director (Projects) of the MECON, S. K. Basu, rigid against me. Even the CPI’s Central Secretariat, New Delhi and its prominent leader Bhogendra Jha did not respond to this matter when I wrote to them about the false complaint of Bhubneshwar Prasad Mehta who later became an MLA in Jharkhand.

Fig. 36 _ Letter of Mr. Bhubneshwar Prasad Mehta, a CPI's M. P.,
alleging false complaints against the author.

            The MECON neither gave the four advance increments it had promised to me in the interview board nor any increment for my additional qualifications in Paediatrics saying that they had already two paediatricians (but in 2002 when one of them was about to retire, I was asked to take up the work whenever the other paediatrician was on leave which I refused referring to the injustice done to me all through); it irrationally equated me (E-3) with the medical officers (E-1) while allotting quarters; my speech in Hindi in the farewell ceremony of the then CMO, Dr. D. Mohan infuriated  the then CMD, Dr. S. K. Gupta and further when I refused to fill-up the self-appraisal forms in English (that it should be in the Official/National Language, Hindi), it was not taken in a good perspective.

            Though I was never absent without putting-in my application for leave, due to me or information to the CMO to the same effect, my tours to medical institutions and meetings for the social work and conferences, etc. have always been a red rag to the Management and I can feel, how difficult it had been to seek leave even for the meeting like Kargil Martyr’s welfare. Thanks to Lord Macaulay’s prodigal brain-children for this perversity!

            The leave matter was made a prestige issue by the then CMO I/C Dr. C. Sreenivasulu (who in fact was not having MD/MS, the requisite qualification for even the post of the Dy. CMO, advertised in the past and a linguistic nexus of the CMO/the then GM, M.H. Rao/ the then Director (projects), A. Venugopal ironically existed in the distant Jharkhand) took an unjust stand and asked me to join a health centre where no specialist was posted ever before. Keeping me in his mind the then CMO I/C also issued a circular to use Xerox machine only after his order (though I was using it off and on for social work on the reverse side of wasted papers, brought from the RDCIS of the SAIL)*. 

            I proceeded on a long leave and I was to bid good-bye to Ranchi when surprisingly this issue was resolved through the intervention of the then MECON Executive Association’s president, I. J. Gupta and others.

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*The new CMO I/C, Dr. Arun Kumar, also made it an issue as well as the use of computer in a letter to me on 6.3.2003, which was not liked by many top officials and I also protested against it. Again, when I was not sanctioned few days' leave, I had to give notice for an indefinite fast from 17.11.2003. On 6.12.2004,  he was also  removed  unceremoniously from that post.

Dated: 23.05.2K

From:   Dr. Dhanakar Thakur

            Med. Consultant (Medicine)

            Ispat Hospital, Mecon Ltd.

            Ranchi - 834002

To

            The Director (Projects)

            Mecon Ltd., Ranchi - 834002

Dear Sir,

            With due respect it is to inform you that CMO I/C Dr. S. Sulu and myself have reached the following understandings in the presence of the MEA on 16.05.2K.

1.         That there were some misunderstandings in the mind of CMO I/C regarding my leaves, which were clarified to CMO I/C.

2.         That there was also some misunderstanding in the mind of CMO I/C regarding the nature of the work of the National Medical Organization which was also clarified to the CMO I/C.

3.         I assured MEA also that I will continue to satisfy with my services to the best of my ability for the employees of the company.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,

(Dhanakar Thakur)

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Text of the Illegible comments of the Director (Project)

Please check up on this and confirm:

            Dr. Thakur should give a leave plan by 31.5.2000 for the year up to 31.3.2001. He should not avail any leave without prior sanction by competent authority except in ‘rarest’ of rare cases dictated by emergency. He shall not do any thing other than official work during office hours. Punctuality shall be maintained.

            A special report in this regard may be given by CMO I/C every month by the end of June/July and August for 3 months to verify compliance. This should be based on facts of patients treated, confidence developed, in-patients enlisted, leave taken and other parameters of relevance.

            If all the above are accepted by Dr. Thakur and CMO I/C recommends reconsideration, the case may be put up to me based on these new facts.

            Otherwise, the present position will continue. The recommendation rests entirely with CMO I/C, who had informed of the problem earlier.

           The MECON Employees’ Union and the Association of the Steel Executives of the SAIL also indirectly came in my support. The same bodies had turned Nelson’s eye when doctors on previous occasions had been dragged in controversies but I had to stage a come-back after a gap of 21 day’s leave.

            I could use few days out of it for familial work, some contacts for the NMO and the Maithili work, including an important Maithili meeting (where I was the chief guest) attended by the V.C. and over one hundred teachers and intellectuals. Yet, it was a great mental trauma to me apart from the loss of my ‘encashable’ leave. Further, it was the waste of a doctor’s time by the blind management. The management, which had objections on, my leave, granted me uncalled for leaves! The same director himself went on two months’ long leave just after this episode while the company was running under severe financial crisis.

            On his premature (age roll-back 58 from 60) ‘superannuation’ in February 2002 that Director came to my chamber hesitatingly and without any malice, I wished him a happier life. In the new regime in May 2002 that CMO I/C was also unceremoniously stripped off the post and then I went to meet him.

            Though I was close to the new director, A. Kumar (an uncle of Dr. Anil Kumar, Mumbai), I stopped visiting his house, as it would be misunderstood.

            Later I knew from Dr. C. Sreenivasulu that the then CMD,

Dr. L. K. Singhal (who used to talk to me appreciating my knowledge of Ayurveda) was more against me than the D (P) believing in false complaints made against me by someone from the hospital and for that I alone was not promoted, from the list of 10 doctors in 2001, though Dr. C. Sreenivasulu had tried his best for my case.

            My experience in PSUs (CCL and MECON) suggests that for doctors these are blind alleys; they deteriorate professionally and are treated as ‘second class citizens’. Hence, doctors should not join PSUs.

            I work for the welfare of humanity exhausting my leave due to me and at my own expenditure. Even social work needs money and the MECON provides it to me as my salary for which I am thankful. I am also able to support my family and serve my old parents; and also arrange money for my sister’s marriage (which has now become difficult on account of changed Maithil psyche to a pseudo-westernised and materialistic outlook).

           

            I am still unremarried (Alwin Toffler’s coinage in his bestseller Future Shock: p.232) and I do not have a wife or a child of my own though the families of medicos and Maithils have become my grand family and even being at Ranchi again I do not feel that I am not in the centre of my social work. In an infinite cosmos, every point may be taken as the centre and for an infinite personality wherever he/she stands, is the centre. If one works honestly and sincerely, there hardly remains any difference between him/her and his/her work because it is not his/her work but it is the work of Him/Her (God/Goddess).

            Subsequently, my relations with Dr. C. Sreenivasulu became normal as my behaviour is of an Ajatshatru (whose enemy is not born). Soon the GM ‘in-charge’ and the Director of the hospital were changed. They issued an order to the doctors to attend OPD from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. apart from daily calls and ward rounds on holidays also. Though the doctors grumbled about, their miniscule number could hardly fight united.

            My youngest brother, Suman, suffering from the ESRD (end-stage-renal-disease) is on dialysis since July 2000 at Mumbai. Scattered family needs centralisation and after the marriage of my youngest sister, Bindu, who is a teacher at Ranchi*, I plan to opt for the VRS (Voluntary Retirement Scheme) and start practice at Delhi (for better NMO and Maithili work though serving the poor  free in  a remote village is my earnest desire as I had expressed at the NMO’s conference at Rajkot on 24.2.2002) or any place where I am remarried or anyone of my family member is settled(earlier I thought  so that old parents could be better looked after - father hypertensive and mother Parkinsonian with the claw hands post-Hansen deformities who expired on 24.12.2005 at Ranchi while I was far away at a village Hulas in Supaul district of Mithila delivering a convocation address to 31 trainees of a Maithili Workers' Training Camp, probably the best Maithili function of my life till then).

            Maybe it ends into Adieu Ranchi* ...in fact or again a compromised status-quo work-cycle in Ranchi, which is now the capital of Jharkhand State, devoid of  jhar (forest or greenery).

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*And it happened so in March 2006 when I was transferred from Ranchi to Bangalore by the MECON Ltd. as if a punishment for my outspokenness on hospital problems and was transferred back on request to care of old ailing father on .6.11.2007 also because there was no proper utilization of me at Bangalore though I utilized my time for literary(including writing Maithiligita)  and organisational activities well.

* Settled with Vivekanand Jha on the Janmashtami (4.9.2007);); solemnized on 21.11.2007 at Ranchi.