“I am pleased to be here and to see you all. I have come to live among you, as rhizobium lives with legumes as a symbiont and not as a parasite”, with these words I started my job soon after my house job, as Medical Officer at the Faculty of Agriculture in Wadura Sopore, Kashmir. It was a happy coincidence that on that same day, the students were celebrating their fresher’s day and by addressing them thus, I was given the opportunity to share my emotions about the enormity of the task facing me. While acknowledging their applause, I was acutely aware of the lack of medical facilities at my disposal. For years the faculty had had no Medical Officer, and I could feel the weight of my responsibilities on my shoulders.
“Doc! You are most welcome”, said the tall, well-built senior pharmacist Mr. Bashir Ahmad Nanda, as he took me around the College’s medical unit, which is situated on one corner of the lush green campus of the College. I made a quick assessment of available medical facilities, and together we started compiling a list of essential missing medicines, instruments etc. which would be needed for the unit. The senior pharmacist who came from Baramulla had been living in the Wadura village for years together and would visit his home on weekends. The loud sounds of his old Yazidi motor bicycle every Monday morning would mark his arrival back at the faculty. He had very good experience of the clinical problems found in the village, as he would practice there after hours.
The faculty apartments were in the heart of a pear orchard. Although there was more staff housing available on that lush green campus, only two units were occupied, one by the late Dr. Nirmal Singh, the Dean, and another where I had started to live.
The Hurmukh range of mountains seem to safeguard the serenity of the campus. A small river called the Phoru flows calmly along the exterior boundaries of the campus and a population of a few thousand souls live happily on its banks.
I would often come to collect post from the administrative section of the college from Mr. Ghualm Mohamad dar, Qibla, as I would often call him, as that used to be the only way I remained connected in that internet-less era. One day I met the late Prof J.D. Safaya while collecting the post and he took me to his office. He lit a cigarette and in between puffs he went on talking to me “Doc! this is a transit in your medical career. As long as you are here you should try to contribute as much as you can, and remember what Alexander Pope said hundreds of years ago, “Honor and shame doth no condition arise, act well your part there all the honor lies”. I patiently listened his peerless advice like any disciple should, and my only negative thought was that his smoking habit was both worrying and annoying me a lot. I felt it was too premature to counsel him directly at that juncture but I made up my mind to do so, albeit indirectly; consequently, I undertook my first study on high-risk smokers and associated risk factors of atherosclerosis on the campus.
Continue reading Medico in green pastures in
Bumpy Roads (Glimpses in the meadows of memory).
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