CHAPTER XXVII _A

Epilogue (i)

OUR MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS:

MY EXPERIENCES

I call our medical institutions as ‘Dhanwantari temples’ and my visits to such 129 temples have been for a sacred mission of the National Medicos Organisation (NMO). Interestingly, the NMO was founded in the city of the holy temples i.e. Varanasi where the mythological physician of gods, Dhawantari was also born.

For me, the first such temple was the Darbhanga Medical College which I had seen for the first time during my school days when I used to go there for anti-rabies vaccine. Looking at boys and girls in aprons stimulated me to join a medical college. My Alma Mater it had been and incidentally the so named (the Temple Medical School, named after Sir Richard Temple, the Governor of the then Bengal, comprising of Bihar and Orissa) Medical School was shifted from Patna to Darbhanga as the Darbhanga Medical School in 1924 when Maharajadhiraja of Darbhanga, Rameshwar Singh, donated huge amount of money in lieu of it to start the then Prince of Wales Medical College at Patna which was later renamed as the Patna Medical College, throwing away the shackles of slavery.

But when I became a student of the Darbhanga Medical College, I started to call the DMC as ‘Dehati Medical College’, in any case for me, the word ‘Dehati’ (rural) was not in bad connotation. I feel our country lives in villages and our doctors should be like that of the products of the DMC – who can work in thigh-deep waters and in places which are devoid of electricity for hours, for nights, and even for days together.

When I came to Ranchi to study in my PUC classes, I used to visit the RMC in Ranchi where my maternal uncle was a student. It took me long to know that it was named as the Rajendra Medical College* not as the Ranchi Medical College as I thought initially.

* Again renamed as the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS)

on 15.8.2002.

Truly, the college when founded was called the Ranchi Medical College; just after a couple of years Deshratna Dr. Rajendra Prasad died i.e. in 1963 and the college was renamed after this great son of Bihar. But amazingly, still the post office there, is called Ranchi Medical College Post Office; the guest house of the medical college for external examiners, etc. is illegally occupied by police personnel and they have opened a police station there despite it being in the knowledge of everyone. None bothers even to celebrate the punyatithi of the great Deshratna, Dr. Rajendra Prasad.

Ranchi is famous for eastern India’s biggest lunatic asylum. Here, at Kanke, is situated the Central Institute of Psychiatry, (CIP); previously known as the European Mental Hospital, established in 1918. Strangely, its Director-Professor, Dr. S.S. Raju, committed suicide by shooting himself on 1.2.1998. Somebody has commented rightly in the centenary issue of the Medical Annual that some persons opting for the study of Psychiatry have some psychiatric traits!

When I went for my counselling for medical admission, I could see the Patna Medical College which was one among few oldest medical colleges of the country but to me it looked like situated in din and bustle of the city though it was situated on the banks of the peaceful holy Ganga. Later, for the NMO work, I saw and stayed in almost all hostels and even attended some classes of Dr. C. P. Thakur in its ‘Hathwa Ward’, probably donated by Hathwa Maharaja. Later, the TISCO and the Coal India had also donated for uplifting the hospital. These companies or their officers became our neo-maharajas!

No doubt, Patna Medical College is among the oldest but the premier medical institution of our country is at Calcutta named only and merely as the ‘Medical College’, in the famous College Street there. When founded in 1835 there was a ‘huge’ murmur and even protest- march by the Muslims of the city who wanted medical teaching to be continued only in madarsa. During the II NMO State Conferences, I had occasions to address galaxy of doctors of the college. Once, I spoke on the AIDS prevention and ridiculed the use of condoms instead of promotion of the ethical way of life, “Would you advise wearing a mask if the AIDS virus strain takes a mutation and starts transmission of infection even by kissing like that of the virus of infectious mononucleosis?”

My visit to the Deccan College of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad was an experience as if I was in an Arab country. The buildings are of the Persian architecture with 1416 Hijari (1995) inscribed on a plaque as its year of inauguration which naturally attracts mostly Muslim patients and barring a few, almost all students and teachers, I found, were Muslims. The A. P. High Court on 24.3.1998, in its welcome verdict had limited only 50 per cent of the seats exclusively to the minorities and that too on merits.

A broad-based similar judgment on various issues related to the minorities’ institutions came from the Hon’ble Supreme Court on 31.10.2002 that the state governments would have the power to decide — within a reasonable extent the percentage of minority students to be admitted into Govt.-aided minority educational institutions and the minority status would be determined on the basis of the demographic composition of states. It asked for admissions, on the basis of merit and to be conducted in a transparent manner.

No wonder, I saw the SIO’s (Organisation of Islamic Students) big posters there and also there was a notice board in which some verses of the Koran were displayed. Religion-wise segmentation of a secular science like Medicine will never be appreciated particularly if it is built with petro-dollars. Activities in the DRDL (Defence Research & Development Laboratory) could be watched from its upper floors and it was surprising how this medical college was granted permission to be built in that strategic location.

No doubt, the Medical College of Calcutta was founded and grew but the so called progressive thinkers of the Muslim community felt it all right to have domes like that of a mosque in the medical institute of Aligarh, aptly named after Jawaharlal Nehru who very enthusiastically wrote, “By culture he is a Muslim, by thought an European and merely by the accident of birth he is a Hindu.” Not only this but also the Muslim teachers dress themselves like maulvis. Once, on the Republic Day also, National Tricolour Flag was dishonoured there. This event was protested by the nationalist forces vehemently. I told my accompanying NMO worker, Dr. Jagdish Prasad Goyal that the reply to kurta-pyjama is dhoti. Pakistan was conceived in the portals of the AMU and in the whole of India only at Aligarh railway station I came across the fare chart for the Pakistani destinations!

Yes, I have heard of a doctor in Ranchi, Shishir Kr. Basu, brother-in-law of the great Aurobindo who was wearing dhoti only and I was informed at Thrissur (Kerala) that there was an MRCP, Dr. T. A. Radhakrishnan, who used to see patients only in dhoti (called mundu in Malayalam) – no clothes are suited except dhoti in the tropics like ours, especially in long summers. Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy and Dr. Abaji Thatte, MBBS (Bombay, 1945) were always in dhoti.

I had also an occasion in the NMO, A.P. State Conference at Hyderabad being in dhoti (where in fact, I could not change my dress just after presiding over a Maithili meeting where the chief guest was the Hon’ble Chief Justice of A.P., P.S. Mishra, where almost all dignitaries were in dhotis and so I, the youngest among them had also decided to wear dhoti. While in tours, I saw at Imphal a marriage party was fully dressed in white dhotis.

The Govt. Medical College, Thrissur is a very small medical college with the hostels amidst thick shrubs and the hospital there is far off in the city, part of which collapsed in 1998.

But the Govt. Medical College, Kozhikode (Calicut) is having a big building and I was informed that during Ramzan almost all messes used to be closed in daytime – all Hindu boys of all messes took meals in only one mess but it did not happen so in any of the festivals of the Hindus. Remember, it was the area of Mophlahs and onslaughts of Tipu; Vasco-da-Gama had landed there first in India on 20.5.1498. In my fourth visit to the Medical College, Kozhikode, in the canteen, I saw on the menu chart ‘beef curry’ and in protest I refused to take anything.

The fellow medicos told me that even Hindus took beef in Malabar area. I told them it was not the matter of vegetarianism or economy but of the faith; however the economic factors are also against cow-slaughter and beef is also carcinogenic as was referred to by Prof. A. B. Khan of the Darbhanga Medical College, during his lecture at the V National Conference of the NMO at Bhagalpur.

I asked medicos to go in depth whether this unholy practice was adopted under the coercion of Tipu or was influenced by the non-Hindu communities of Kerala. An old fellow Mangalorian passenger in the same night exclaimed to know the beef story, which was news to him although he was living just north of the Malabar region.

Yet, I found a practicing doctor, an alumnus of that institute offering puja at the Guruvayoor temple, very early in the morning, and there, at Kozhikode, the NMO had organised a Sanskrit-speaking course for the medicos.

Here, it may be recalled that the Osmania Medical College, Hyderabad had Urdu as the medium of instruction in pre-Independence days(during1846-1884 for a 5-year diploma course of “Hakeem” when it was known as the Hyderabad Medical School

Fig. 37 __ The Hon’ble Governor, A. P., H. E. Dr. C. Rangrajan and R. J. Reddy, the Hon’ble Minister for Health & FW, A. P. during the inaugural session of the XII National Conference of the NMO, Bhagyanagar (Hyderabad) on 28.3.1998.

Fig. 38 __ During the XII National Conference of the NMO, Bhagyanagar (Hyderabad) on March 29.3.1998 (Standing L. to R.) Dr. T. K. N. Chary, Hyderabad, Dr. Dhanakar Thakur, Ranchi, Dr. Mrityunjoy Kumar, Patna, Dr. Vallabh B. Kathiria, M. P., Rajkot (who won by the highest margin of 3.54 Lakh votes in 1998 Lok Sabha polls), Dr. Sujit Dhar, Calcutta, Dr. Narendra Prasad, Patna, Dr. J. P. Goyal, Harigarh (Aligarh), Sitting -- young medicos of the NMO.

and again during 1926-1947 for the MBBS course though during 1885-1925 it was made English which was made again so since 1948). It is also a befitting reply to those who say that only English can be the medium of our instruction.

Interestingly I saw even in Nov. 2005 burqa-clad female medicos there which I had not seen anywhere, even in the Govt. Medical College, Srinagar one year back.

At the OMC campus, when I had first visited the Indian Institute of the History of Medicine in 1984, I had incidentally asked an elderly gentleman to send his article for the Aayurvigyan Pragati. When I asked for his address, he told me that he was Dr. B. N. Sinha, President, Medical Council of India, and knowing that I had already sent him a copy of the Aayurvigyan Pragati, he patted me with affection, “You are doing a good work. My friend, Dr. B. N. Das Gupta, is doing a great work in this regard.”

Next time I visited there on 7.11.2005 to procure a reference copy of the Charak Shapath when I could not get it in the NIMS (Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences. There I also visited the School of Diabetology run by Dr.P.V. Rao who referred me to meet Avadhanulu Remella working in the Computer Division there who also worked for the Veda Bharathi.

Though Osmania has no dress code, I found that in the M.G. Institute of Medical Sciences, Wardha medicos do wear khadi – being in the neighbourhood of Sewagram and Pawnar, which was no wonder. Contiguous is the SRTR (Swami Ram Tirth Rural) Medical College at Ambajogai – in fact, in a village; I saw a plaque, commemorating this fact.

The same village like feeling I had at the Tirunelveli Medical College in deep interiors of south in Tamil Nadu where a teacher had even founded an organisation for promoting family planning as his life mission. We used to get research articles from the undergraduate students of that medical college and hence, I had made it a point to visit that college, but the person matters not the institution. I went several times there but when that very teacher Dr. S. Ganapathy Sundaram was transferred, we could not get any more article of that nature.

Here, at Thirunelveli, a girl medico had initiated the Hindu Medicos Organisation. When I visited the college, first time in 1984, the boys took me to the Girls’ Hostel. She had gone to her home, however, I saw big posters inviting for mahapuja.

Students have lot of energy and can do a lot of research work. In early issues of our journal, a simple letter from a girl student, Shoba Philip, from the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College had aroused a hope in me that there I could get good workers and one decade later I found Narayanan organising a national conference of the NMO in so called ‘left bastion’ – just before the day of his university clinical examination and he romped also successfully.

Fig. 39 __ The Souvenir of the XI National Conference of the NMO, Thiruvanthapuram, February 8-9, 1997.

Kerala is green. Keralam means a ‘coconut’, a co-traveller passenger told me while passing through Shoranur- Palakkad rail route.

During my visit to the T. D. Medical College Alappuzha, on Oct. 1, 2002, the whole of the college was mourning the death of two medicos on the previous day in a motor-bike accident. Such accidents have become common which should he avoided by all. On 3.10.2002, I saw the principal of the MMC, Mysore, Dr. (Mrs.) Sheela G. Naik, instructing the masons to make the speed-breakers’ gradient smooth to avoid accidents.

In my first visit I could see only the hospital of the Alappuzha (Alleppey) Medical College after my well-received lecture on the AIDS in the Kottayam Medical College – arranged by Dr. P. Balachandran, grandson of the grade Mannath Padmanabhan, the founder of the NSS (Nair Service Society). 150 teachers attended. I was surprised to find gate checking by darwans. It was difficult for me to enter as the receiving persons had missed me at the railway station. Kottayam is the first fully literate district of the country and is the seat of the Christian culture. It is due to the high literacy rate that we adore ‘Kerala Model’ of health for the developing world.

When I talk of the Christianity, no doubt, they have rendered yeoman’s service in medical field but in no case I can appreciate their proselytizing the Hindus. Hence, it was difficult for me to accept the catholicity of the CMC, Vellore, which once upon a time was founded by Ida Sophia Sudder, a non-medico daughter of a missionary doctor – one lady patient was in labour pain and the daughter of the doctor could not do anything and the patient died. Ida went to the UK, studied Medicine and returned back, started a one-bed dispensary on the roadside, which gradually developed into the CMC. The same CMC, Vellore today has very high charges for different types of treatment. How a poor patient from that Arcot area or anywhere can afford the medical treatment there in Vellore?

Later on I was informed that the Amrita institute treated 40 per cent patients free and also, I’ve come to know that the Sri Satya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, Prasanthigram,Puttsparthy(A.P.) offers free service. Though I planned to go there it is said only when Saibaba calls, you can go there. Let me see if my turn comes at all?*

In my first visit, due to lack of time, I could not enter the St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore (though I had reached its gate) and also I could not go to the CMC, Ludhiana. But there too, I found charges in terms of money as prohibitive.

On October 1, 2002, I visited the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi (Cochin) which is a modern Institute having sophisticated instruments. There again an attendant complained of the high charges. Do all religion-based hospitals coalesce on charging higher fee?

Next time, when I visited the St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore, a Goanese medical student guided me through his college and departments with keen interest. Though run by the Catholic Church, the museum of the History of Medicine starts with Vedic medicines having a big portrait of Charak (which I had already obtained from the 500th issue of the Vigyan Pragati and only adding a Tilak, we had adopted it in the NMO), and Sushuruta, etc. However, there also an attendant in the hospital had told me that the charges were exorbitant for a common man; yet, I was impressed by the book-stall there which sold books on health issues. The students were satisfied with the classes and training being imparted over there.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Though I could go there and had a close darshan of Saibaba on 7.10.2007, I could see this hospital by road only . However, its branch at Whitefiled, Bangalore, I had visited on 24.6.2006 where really it had free treatment to all.

There are several medical institutions named after great persons or politicians but I could find that only the RG Kar MC, and the NRSMC of Calcutta, and the Dr. VM Medical College, Solapur are named after doctors. Dr. D. S. Kotnish was also from Solapur who served and died in China on a peace mission but the town is more famous for its Solapuri chadars (Solapur sheets).

Bharat-kokila Sarojini Naidu was remembered for Agra’s medical college but it was the NMO, which only could present a portrait of her

Fig. 40 __ Ma. K. Suryanarayan Rao presenting a portrait of Sarojini Naidu to Dr.Vijayalaxmi Lahiri, Principal, Sarojini Naidu Medical College, Agra during the NMO’s NEC Meeting on 13.7.1996 (Left to her, Dr. Narendra Prasad VP, NMO).

to Principal Vijayalaxmi Lahiri in 1996. The city, famous for the Taj, is even today, unaware of the fact that Mumtaz died during her fourteenth childbirth. The hostels and the college are encircled with petha sweet shops. Medicos of the NMO are providing blood to patients there.

Fig. 41 _ Dr. A. S. Asopa, ex-president, the ASI presenting a memento to Dr. Dhanakar Thakur on 13.7.1996 during the NMO’s NEC meeting at the SNMC, Agra.

A rickshaw-puller will take you to the SNMC, only if you tell him to take you to the ‘emergency’. He does not know that it is the medical college. No wonder, Agra is also famous for a big mental hospital!

The Lady Hardinge Medical College of Delhi has a good number of male teachers. I do not know why it is not renamed after the first lady doctor of India, Dr. Anandibai Joshi of Pune. Long back when the NMO was unknown in Delhi, finding Dr. Lal Chandra’s room locked,

Fig. 42 __ Ma. Lakshman Shrikrishna Bhide addressing the NEC meeting of the NMO at the Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi on 14.9.1997.

exhausted from the journey, I preferred to sleep with the patients near the gate of its hospital named after Smt. Sucheta Kriplani.

The Corporation Medical College of Nagpur has been named after Indira Gandhi where I had once celebrated my birthday with the opening of the NMO unit.

Shimla’s Snowdown has also the H.P. Medical College named after Indira Gandhi where I could go only on my second visit. In my first visit, I had to return only after seeing snow-filled chairs meant for the Republic Day function, near the Rajbhawan. The college is small but surprisingly patients were given all sorts of medicines when I visited it.

But let me give my salute to the people of Jhansi who remembered Maharani Lakshmi Bai and adored her name for their medical college. Finding the hostels there named after Dhanwantari and Sir C. V. Raman, I felt elated.

Fig. 43 __ Dr. Dhanakar Thakur at the gate of

Mahatma Gandhi's home at Porbandar.

The list of the great persons after whose names medical colleges are named are numerous and here too, the name of Mahatma Gandhi tops but no medical college in Gujarat is named after him, the son of the soil. Even the chowk of Porbandar where Gandhi was born is called Kirti Chowk and the raids on liquor shops are very common in this city though Gandhi was born there. The city has become famous for a lady ‘don’, on whom a film has also been released.

Apart from the MG Institute of Medical Sciences at Wardha, as I have narrated, there is the MGM Medical College at Jamshedpur in Jharkhand also where the NMO had invited Medicos from all over the country for the first time in 1986.

Message on the occasion of the IV National Conference of the NMO at Jamshedpur, Dec. 6-7, 1986:

Fig. 44 __ Ma. Bala Saheb Deoras

(11.12.1915 - 17.6.1996)

— The great organiser.

^^MkDVj ;g dsoy is'ksoj] /kU/kk djusokyk u cus] rks og vR;Ur vkReh;rk ls :X.kksa dks viuk ekudj mudks jksxeqDr djus dh bPNk djusokyk ,d vPNk] lTtu] lektlsoh cus] ;g fopkj eq[;r% lkeus vkuk pkfg;sA vkt ;g O;olk; cnuke gks jgk gSA dqN LokFkhZ yksxksa ds dkj.k&budks dSls cfg"d`r fd;k tk, vkSj ;g ,d Js"B noble dke gS] ;g Hkko tu-ekul ij vafdr gks] bldk fopkj gksuk pkfg;sA gj ,d çSfDVluj us de ls de 10% jksfx;ksa dks ¼xjhc rcds dss½ fu%'kqYd fpfdRlk djus dk ozr ysuk pkfg;sA iSlk dekuk ;gh ek= /;s; u gksA ,sls vusd fopkj vkt dh fLFkfr ns[kdj vk;s gSaA ;gk¡ vkusokyksa ds eu esa Hkh vkrs gksaxsA bl n`f"V ls fopkj gksA

lEesyu esa lfEefyr gksusokys lHkh Js"B egkuqHkkoksa dks lknj ç.kke &&& vU; lHkh cU/kqvksa dks lLusg ç.kkeA

eSa lEesyu esa ugha vk ldrk] bldk nq%[k gS &&& vkids ç;kl ;'kLoh gksa vkSj bl lEesyu }kjk ,d mn~cks/ku vkSj tkxj.k gksdj uoksfnr fpfdRldksa dks ,d n`f"V çkIr gks] ;gh bPNk gSA

Hkxoku /kUoUrfj vkidks lQyrk nsaA**

Its founder principal Dr. H. P. Sinha remarked that he had seen every brick of the college being laid in his presence but seeing the pathetic conditions of the institute, he had left coming to the Institute but through the NMO he would like to dedicate rest of his life to it. The hostel is good, situated below the Dalma Hill Range; the food in the mess is very good and the students of the college are receptive and cordial.

After a stormy mental conflict whether I should join a ‘capitation-fee’ based medical college (thinking ultimately to be in any institution will help me in the NMO work), I appeared for the interview for the post of a lecturer in the MG Mission’s Medical College at Kalamboli, New Mumbai, but they preferred another candidate who did not ask for a residence.

There is also a medical college named after Gandhi in the city of Hyderabad (which we in the NMO prefer to call Bhagyanagar) where though my meeting was impressive, the NMO did not kick-start before 2000 AD.

The MGM Medical College of Indore has its hostels in a big barrack, once used for the horses of the British Residency. When I first visited the college in a December, the students were busy in a week-long carnival.

Fig. 45 __ Dr. Dhanakar Thakur giving a prize to Dr. Manohar Bhandari for his contribution in writing medical books in Hindi, as a part of the celebrations of Rajbhasha Saptah on 17.9.1999 by the NMO, Indore (in the middle --Dr. V. P. Goswami).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*In 2005, to strengthen the Mithila movement, I was inclined to join the Katihar Medical College (which added to my mental conflict as it was a Muslim minority college). In the interview, the Director could not offer me Professorship on the basis of my 20 years experience in medical editing as the MCI’s guidelines did not equate it with teaching (which I think should be given for promotion of science). I was offered Asst. Professorship which I declined as the salary was not even half of my existing pay. Similar had been the case when the lady Director had felt deep sorrow at the interview at Nagpur in 1999 for the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Swangi, Wardha where after seeing the same book (New Trends in Medicine) edited by me, she was very much willing to offer me the post.

The Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal, situated in the heart of the city, has a picturesque view of the big lake. Near the college are situated the biggest (Tajul) mosque and also the smallest (Dhai Seedhi _Two and a half steps) mosques, in India, facing each other. The Forensic Department of the GMC is updated and the MIC gas tragedy victims are being somehow taken care of by several special postings. The NMO after this biggest industrial holocaust, tragic as it was, had served its Hamidia Hospital when several doctors had left (on the day of chemical neutralization). Seeing the NMO workers, a correspondent of The Indian Express had remarked, “Given such doctors, India will never succumb.”

It seems Gandhi-Nehru legacy will have no end. Even the Medical College of Allahabad is named after Motilal Nehru as if the town of Triveni has any dearth of martyrs, philosophers or doctors. I saw very poor patients there in the hospital, again named after Sarla Nehru though Allahabad is the place of the martyrdom of Chandrashekhar Azad. I stayed for two nights in the hostel of the MLNMC while the script of this book was corrected by Dr. Jay Kant Mishra, retired professor and HOD, English, Allahabad University.

I do not know why Sanjay Gandhi’s name was given to the PG Institute of Lucknow where during my visits; I found that it was a budding centre of medicine in a backward area.

Lately, Medical College of Bhagalpur was also renamed after Jawaharlal Nehru. However, to be christened after the renowned Vikramshila would have been better and proper. My scores of visits to that medical institute forged a bond with its hostels and the college building, which is named as Naulakaha Palace.

Pondicherry’s medical institution, alas, was not named after Yogi Aurobindo but again after Jawaharlal who had no relevance to this hitherto a French colony. The hostels named after Osler, Listor, Aschoff, Harvey, Curie, Blackwell, and Nightingale like medical luminaries, however, enthuse medicos to do something and though a central institute, non-Tamilians too learn Tamil – where is the language hatred?

Raipur’s medical college is again named after Jawaharlal, which in terms of patients is satisfactory. Its pre-clinical classes were running in the Medical College during the period of 1966-7

Rajasthanis were also duped by the name of Jawaharlal in Ajmer, which, in fact, is the Shrine City where Swami Dayananda also died. Here, the NMO was started by a girl Kanchan Anand, who led an anti-smoking rally of hundreds of apron-clad medicos in the city on 8.10.1988, concluding an anti-smoking week (October 3-8, 1988). She was also running a Gita Study Circle in the name of Palmistry classes and when she wished to talk to me something in private, I desisted, as I was a bachelor at that time. I was full of joy to know that she wanted my talks on the Gita.

When I went to the Sun City, Jodhpur, I found the medical college there named after a political leader, Dr. Sampurnanand. There, a senior teacher Dr. L.S. Dashora told me that he had not heard about the NMO (then in 1988). I told him that the NMO had survived 11 years and would continue to survive. A few years later he came to see me at Jaipur.

But I remember, Jodhpur medicos do not use glasses to drink water either in the hostel or in the canteen; they use only mugs.

In the deserts of Bikaner (which I prefer to call the Sand City) has medical college named after Sardar Patel, and its administrative building has beautiful pictures of the legendary Ayurvedic physicians and surgeons. Here, the NMO workers had developed a garden in the memory of the revolutionary Pratap Singh Barhat (1893-1918). No gift can be better than a garden in a desert!

But the Pink City Jaipur’s SMS Medical College’s hostels, I’ll remember life long, for the peacocks taking shelter in bathroom flushes.

Let me salute the people of Rajasthan, for naming the Lake City, Udaipur’s medical college after Rabindranath Tagore. Even

W. Bengal people could not remember Rabi Thakur in this way.

I had warned the NMO workers of Udaipur that till they invited the medicos from all over the country to visit Chittorgarh by organising a national conference of the NMO at Udaipur, I would not visit the glorious Vijay-Stambh. Dr. Vijay Singh Rajput and later on Hari Om Garg could sense my Chanakya/Pratap Pratigyan.

After few years when the NMO’s national conference was held at Udaipur, I made it a point to visit Kota first — the home of Hemant, Amit and their sister, Prajnya all three brothers and sister from one family who were the NMO workers, studying in the RNTMC, Udaipur.

Again, I could only see the Vijay Stambh from the Chittorgarh railway station while catching the immediate train for Kota where in their home; I could know that she was their cousin, till now from the same family it is probably a record for the studentship in the same medical college and definitely as workers for the NMO so far. My formal visit to the Govt. Medical College, Kota on that holiday only assured me that one day, it will come up to the expectations of this industrial city of Rajasthan.

I was worried that there had been no medical college named after Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, however, the Govt. Medical College, Jabalpur has recently been renamed after him. In a small village of Orissa, Burla, has a medical college named after Veer Surendra Sain – a great hero of 1857, who was also born on the 23rd January like that of Subhash born later in the same Orissa (at Oriya Bazar, Cuttack where the Subhash Seva Sadan, a hospital is running). Situated near the famous Hirakudh dam, the VSSMC, Burla (near Sambalpur named after the Goddess Sambleshwari__the Varahi incarnation of the Bhagawati) has also a Gita-Bhawan, where the students pray in the evening.

How I could forget Faridkot – our frontier, where there is a medical college named after the great Guru Govind Singh, where the NMO took shape after Bihar* and Orissa.

Kanpur has remembered a freedom fighter, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi naming its medical college after him. The food in its mess, I always liked much but was astonished to know the common men still call its hospital as the Hallet (as it was named after the British Governor).

The Meerut people remembered Punjab-Keshari Lala Lajpat Rai by naming its medical college after him. I had a good meeting with the medicos for the NMO under its founder principal Dr. G. K. Tyagi.

Gautam Buddha and Dr. Rajendra Prasad were born near Gorakhpur after whose names hostels are named in the Baba Raghav Das (a freedom fighter) Medical College in Gorakhpur.This medical college became a headliner when Japanese encephalitis took a heavy toll in 2005.

I reached there in a cold mid-night after a strenuous bus journey from Kanpur.

*Including Jharkhand

Owing to the increased number of admissions, there single-seated rooms were converted into double-seated one’s. I could not visit the Gita Press but I visited the city-deity Baba Gorakhnath (an incarnation of Lord Shiva) with Dr. Dharmanand Jha. I could see, Dr. Jha after 12 years. His concern for workers’ financial self-sufficiency for continuing social work seemed genuine.

Lucknowites were protesting till late against changing the name of the King George’s Medical College to Kasturba Gandhi, for small donations from the U.K. The Mayawati Govt. upgraded and renamed it as the Chhatrapati Sahuji Maharaj Medical University. Though outside people may confuse it with Chhatrapati Shivaji, Chhatrapati Sahuji (1874- 1972) was a ruler of distant Kolhapur in Maharashtra who appreciated Ambedkar’s views but choosing his name had a Dalit bias, which was not liked by many. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Govt. (2003) reverted back the old name of King George to this University.

This college has old traditions and hostels are trans- and cis-Gomati. One of the abodes of mine (whenever I used to visit there), S. P. Hall had a picture of Sardar Patel and a library named after him was donated by the NMO workers.

Biharis have also tried to remember its local leaders. But not to confuse, it is on Srikrishna Singh’s (not Lord Krishna) after whom in his caste-dominated area of Muzaffarpur, the medical college was named there, forgetting that Khudiram Bose was executed in that very city. Likewise, Anugrah Narayan Singh’s name was added on the same grounds in one of the holiest city, Gaya’s medical college that was initially named after the historical kingdom of Magadh. The ANM Medical College, I think will be read as ‘Auxiliary Nurse Midwife Medical College’ by other provinces’ medicos, if only long abbreviation is used.

The Nalanda Medical College is not in Nalanda but in Patna and strangely the Patliputra Medical College is situated 334 km south of Patliputra (Patna) in the coalfields of Dhanbad.

However, the hostels of Dhanbad and Muzaffarpur are similar architecturally.

I do not know how and what Maulana Azad had contributed for the premier medical college named after him in Delhi but surely the institution caters to the needs of the millions of Delhites who cannot find place in overcrowded AIIMS (which is simply called as ‘Medical’ by common public and in fact, most of the products of the AIIMS are brain-drained to the benefit of the West at the cost of the nation’s wealth).

Likewise the Safdarjung Hospital where the Vardhaman Mahavir Medical College has been opened in 2002, being just opposite to the AIIMS pulls a large number of patients.

Adjacent to the AIIMS are the ICMR and the National Board of Examinations and the National Medical Library.

Due to a bundh called by the BSP, I had to return from Rajghat, while I was on way to the UCMS for the first time, where young NMO workers were waiting for me in September 1997. I appreciate the Supreme Court’s verdict of banning the bundhs.

The RG Kar Medical College named after Dr. R. G. Kar in Calcutta was previously known as Carmichael Medical College and when I visited its hostel, the boys were thrilled as if I was someone very important.

I went to salute the Calcutta National Medical College where Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar (founder of the RSS) had studied Medicine .At the college entrance, in the overhead name-board’s insignia it is written that the college was established in 1335 Bangla Year (no Gregorian i.e., English Calendar Year was given deliberately) and the college is named the Calcutta Jatiya Aayurvigyan Vidyamandir – Jatiya is not meant for any caste like that in Hindi but means national and also Vidyamandir sounds more than merely a college.

I do not know when Dr. Hedgewar’s legacy will come to the lore of this great medical institution, which at present is infested with red flags, obstructing the democratic entrance of the NMO in the college. The walls of the office were also defaced by the posters of the SFI.

The NMO never allowed its workers to paste posters in such shabby manner, that too, not more than 5-6 on college hospital notice-boards and one each in every hostel and canteen, etc. The NMO workers have a challenge to clean the atmosphere with this stinking red, already mummifying in place of its origin in Russia, China, etc. Some day Bengal will revive the legacy of Raja Rammohun Roy, Dr. Mahendra Lal Sarkar, Aurobindo, Rabindranath Thakur and probably the inheritors of Dr. Hedgewar (genealogically a Telugu, brought up in Marathi Vidarbha and initiated to revolutionary national work at this Sonar Bangla’s medical college) will do it predictably in the years to come.

Here, in this medical college is located the Central Finger Prints Bureau and the Central Examiner of Questioned Documents of the Bureau of Police Research and Development.

However, the unforgettable scene of Calcutta is man-pulled rickshaws on which Dominique’s novel The City of Joy is based. The old tram and neo-metro-rail are other new features of Calcutta – on Rabindra Sadan Station you will find Gurudev’s writings in original which he had corrected and edited himself as beautiful paintings related to the themes of writings on erasable portions of the original writings.

When I went to meet a girl medico in the NRS Medical College girls’ hostel, I was astonished that it was still carrying Lady Elliot’s name though there was also a ward of the hospital named after Dr. U.N. Brahmchari, who found urea stibamin for kala-azar and had organised the first blood donation camp in India and had worked there.

The Bankura Sammilini Medical College is called Monday to Friday College since most of the teachers leave Bankura for Calcutta on week-ends. I was amazed to find that the attendants were called and informed about patients on loudspeakers in Bangla in its Gynae. & Obst. Ward.

The Burdwan Medical College is in the locality of rich paddy-field area where incidentally the CPM is dominating but my guide, a Sangh worker, working in the college office told me that on Raksha Bandhan day, he tied rakhi on everybody’s wrist.

When I visited the North Bengal Medical College near Siliguri, I was amused to note that it was the nearest medical college from my birth-place and home-town, Forbesganj. How the boundaries of the artificial states do make a joke with the geography! And, on the way I found the small village Naxal notorious for the Naxalbari Movement.

People of the north-east are most dear to me and even before my marriage; I had association with Birendra of Imphal and had gone to Nagaland for medical camps.

Fig. 46 __ Dr. Dhanakar Thakur examining a patient at the Health Camp in Tenning (Nagaland). __ A long queue of patients waiting even in late night (30.12.1987) .

I visited the Silchar Medical College (which is called ‘small’ medical college) and went to the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, Imphal, where the principal, Dr. E. Kuldhwaj Singh, an alumnus of the Darbhanga Medical College, came and sat on the floor for the NMO’s meeting.

The Guwahati Medical College is situated on a hill-top and there one of the NMO workers was having irreversible pulmonary hypertension (his ASD was not diagnosed by the treating doctor in childhood). I found there, another worker of the NMO, Dr. G.C. Jain, a surgeon (in the rank of professor) who told me that he had been on duty for the previous 36 hours without any break.

The Assam Medical College, Dibrugarh is situated around the tea gardens. This premier medical college of the north-eastern India had my wife as a student, hence, several memories come crowded in my mind but more so, it was she who initiated there a unit of the NMO, and also went for organising a medical camp, in distant Dumduma near Arunachal border.

Gods have been remembered in only few medical colleges like Tirupati’s for Sri Venkateshwar. Tirupati Devasthanam had provided the college its campus and building. When I visited it for the second time in 1997, the medical college authorities were busy there for the MCI’s inspection for increasing the seats in the NRI’s quota. Many temporary transfers of the teachers were made to dupe the inspectors. I feel sorry to mention that commercialization of medical education is being done like institutions offering the MBA course which ultimately will turn our medical institutions to produce money- minded doctors rather than service-oriented healers.

There I also saw a beautiful Hindi poem displayed on the notice board written by a Telugu medico narrating the formation of a river from melting of ice like in the Himalayas, probably keeping the Holy Ganga in mind. A few years earlier in an IMA family meet of doctors at Aluva (Alwaye) in Kerala, I had listened to a Malayalam song devoted to mother Ganga sung by a senior doctor. The languages may differ but the theme is the same all over the country depicting the unity in diversity of Hindu civilization and culture.

Being confused between vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes at Aluva, I preferred not to eat anything (in 1984, in the house of a medico at Madurai, I had taken a spoonful of non-vegetarian soup thinking it was a vegetarian preparation). After returning to nearby Angamally, my friend Dr. Gisy had to cook for me late in the night recalling her father’s view that not having food in a party was like refusing prasad in a temple. In fact, she had gone amidst ladies and her husband among other group. I could have asked any other doctor but I had preferred not to take anything for having a light meal in Gisy’s house cooked by her affectionate hands, which she was not able to comprehend and usually it is difficult for me to make myself communicable to the ladies!

Except at Silchar and Burla, the NMO conferences have been vegetarian and it was the first such conference and a hot news in Amritsar. Of course, the NMO conferences are dry and non-smoking affair. The doctors do preach but hardly follow their own teachings, except I witnessed in one conference of the Neurological Society of India at Delhi, where ‘no banquet in the future’ was adopted as a resolution.

Once a medico told me that at Ranchi, Father Camil Bulke, the renowned author of the Ramkatha had Dr. Rammanohar Lohia as his guest who had told the Father that he could boil potatoes with meat, and though a vegetarian, he would happily take those potatoes. Sorry, I failed to see those great men though there were opportunities for me (at Forbesganj, Lohia was a frequent visitor and at Ranchi, Father Bulke lived long). Though, I think being a vegetarian may be good from the health point of view, but as I hail from a non-vegetarian Maithil Brahmin community being exceptionally vegetarian is probably not practical and yet, can I accept Lohia’s module of flexibility?

But in the medical conferences, drinking and smoking need to be prohibited as these give wrong signals to the community at large and also the five-star culture, extravagance in the medical conferences and meetings need to be curtailed which would only make conferences independent of the pharmaceutical industries’ undue advertisements and selling pressures, including that of gifts and physicians’ samples which in my experience mostly expire, and rarely reach the poor patients or the research work, etc. This fund may be diverted to the R&D activities and the publication of the medical journals.

This I say on the basis of my participation in the various medical conferences since 1981, viz. the API, Nagpur (1981), N. Delhi (1982), Hyderabad (1984 and 2004), Udaipur (1986), Madurai (1987), Bangalore (1985 and 1998), Madras (1995), Varanasi (2003), where I also presented on 14.1.2003 a paper, My Suggested Model of Medical Education (given as Epilogoue-ii: Pages 246-248 and in brief on page 342 in this book); the ASI, Patna (1980), Madras (1984); the NSI, Varanasi (1984), Patna (1985), Delhi (1986); the International AIDS Conference, Delhi (1992); the Medicine International, Ranchi (1991,1999 and 2003); the A. I. Steel Medical Conference, Vishakhapatnam (1993), Ranchi (1995), Rourkela (1998) where I delivered for the first time a pure technical talk on Diabetes Control and Complication Trial (DCCT); the A. I. Coal Medical Officers’ Conference, Ranchi (1996); the Zonal Pediatric Conference Ranchi (1997); Zonal Neuro Conference Ranchi (1997 and 2001); the IMA, Bihar*, Conference, Muzaffarpur (1981); B*APICON, Ranchi (1999); JAPICON, Ranchi (2003); VII Post-Graduate Course in Diabetology organised by the Research Society of the Grant Medical College and the National Diabetic Association of India at the Lilawati Hospital, Mumbai(1997) and the annual conference of the Research Society for the Study of Diabetes in India (RSSDI) at Chennai (1997), etc.

Our medical conferences should promote knowledge, be cost-effective, and ideal for which the NMO has already put up a model.

*Including Jharkhand

The Siddartha Medical College of Vijayawada is named after Lord Buddha. Under the impression of its being a capitation-fee medical college, I was postponing my visit to it for several years but when I visited it finally in 1997, I was informed that capitation-fee was charged only for a few initial years. I saw that the Govt. of Andhra Pradesh ran it and also it was the seat of the University of Health Sciences, Andhra Pradesh, being geographically the central place of the State. Though the Health University, which had only some rooms for its officers who ordinarily remained busy in conducting examinations, etc., did not impress me yet, it was a good beginning.

To me the concept of a Health University is like a dream of neo-Nalanda, neo-Taxila, etc. where on entering you are thrilled to know the arts and science of Medicine and more so the concept of ‘positive’ and full health. It should be a training centre for the trainers (teachers) of health science, where continuously such teaching programmes, etc. are being carried out.

Yet, it was worth noting that Vijaywada’s medical students were studious. A reading room was opened round the clock though there I found only three students around 8.45 p.m. I counted 38 more heads in the adjoining library, which remained open till 9 p.m.; 60 per cent medicos were girls in the institute. I found half-built super-specialty medical block, the funds for which once allotted by N. T. Rama Rao, were later withheld for long by his successors though they subscribed to the same Telugu pride. Politicians please, do not make Medicine controversial, as it is the most universal thing.