"Deta kiti gheshil..." ( When God gives... how much can you take!"

  Dr Santosh Kumar(SK) Mukherjee, MRCP, a very renowned physician of Indore was my teacher in medical college. He was considered a ‘God’ of medicine by all in and around Indore city. Any patient and his/her relatives were not satisfied unless Dr Mukherjee has seen the patient once. His was the last word in medicine during his tenure during 1930- 1990. He was very soft spoken, kind hearted, brilliant physician. Full of empathy and love for his patients, never bothered about the money. A true ‘Dhanvantari’. I feel honoured to be his favoured student, he was an excellent teacher, always emphasized the importance of understanding all the details about the patient in order to come to diagnosis.   Dr BB Ohri, FRCS, was 100% Surgeon, a great personality, handsome, authoritative, a perfect Surgeon. He believed in perfection, and followed it to the end. During my training period with him, he was a hard task master, but I was his favourite student/assistant. And I benefited a lot.   I

The almighty took away the unconditioned love from my mother… but He gave me abundant affectionate love in form of my grandmother (father’s mother) and aunt (father’s sister). These two angels showered unlimited love on all my siblings. My granny and aunt were not educated but were smart enough to realize that I was hungry for mother’s love and care… both these ladies took extra care of me and never let me be alone and sad. I felt, I received a special attention from them. In spite being in a large joint family, where everyone is equal, I was the favoured  child of my aunt as well as granny.   There was a special bond in all members of a joint family, every thing and everyone was shared. Mother was not only ‘Mummy’, she was also a Kaku, Vahini, Jiji, Mai… in relation with other members. Similarly, father was not only ‘dad’ or ‘papa’, but has also  a kaka, bhaiya, Bhau. Aajoba, Aaji, atya, Kaka, kaku all under one roof and very affectionate with each other. The system was unlike a squ

  “Mother is other name for Divinity”… God can not be present everywhere, therefore He created ‘Mother’… King of three worlds, but a beggar without ‘Mom’…. We have heard many such examples to describe ‘A Mother’. But we never experienced such unconditional love from our Mom, never did we see her sitting by our side in illness, or praying for her children’s well being. We did not have a doting or loving mother, who cared about our studies, education or our success. We did not know such mother exists. For some reasons, our mom was never a super loving, doting, person like “Shyam chi Aai” , the one who has all the good qualities in the world. She used to get irritated and annoyed with the smallest things and we kids used to get scared of her. Why did this happen to her? We never had means of Psychoanalysis. There were financial and social limitations. My mother lost her mother at an early age. Perhaps she was never been looked after by her stepmother. After her marriage to my father s

 My father was born in 1885. He lost his father at a tender age of seven. My grandfather, Shreedhar, was a headmaster of a School. My grandfather died due to Plague at a young age of 34-35. My grand mother along with her young children had no choice but to live with Nanaji kaka, at his good will. All the kids, specially my father, grew up in tremendous mental and financial constraints. ‘Don’t ask for anything, don’t expect anything… stitch your torn clothes… borough books…return them soon…’ this was the way my father grew up, very shy, coward, with no self-confidence. He had realised at a very young age that he has to study hard, get educated and start earning as soon he can. That was the only way he could earn a self-respect and overcome the curse of poverty for him and his family. He passed BA in 1917. Very few people graduated to college those days, since one could easily get a job after matriculation. There was no University in Indore, hence, he took his BA examination from All

  There are many families with ‘Bhoraskar’ surname in Indore and nearby areas. No one knew, where they came from? Now a days, younger generation avoid using their surnames. We hear Arun, Ruchi, Siddhi, Advait… no identity by surname. Why? Is it because surname represents the ‘caste’? In our times, it had to be ‘Shashank Govind Gokhale’… relating to father’s and family name. In UP, Delhi they are names ‘Mahendra kumar, Rakesh kumar…no Mathur or Saxena or Mishra. Every fourth person is Kumar Saheb.   My father and atya (aunt) used to tell that our ancestors were from Maharashtra, we were ‘Dharmadhikari’ then. We were from a village named ‘Chinchodi Patil’ in District Ahmednagar. And old army parson had shown a heap of stone building as ‘Dharmadhikari wada’, he tells that these Dharmadhikaris went up North.   My father used to tell us that we belonged to ‘Saswad’ near Pune, they still have Holkar wad in Saswad. Our ancestors were ‘Pujari Dharmadhikari’ who perhaps travelled along with

  This is not an ‘Autobiography’. I do not consider me so noble to write about self, nor am I able to do that. Late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had accepted in his autobiography that it is difficult to write about oneself, that too write all that is true. An exception is people like Mahatma Gandhi, who had the confidence to write all about his life. Gandhiji had the courage to face the ‘self-abuse’ and publicly own up his mistakes. Nehru says, ‘one can not write bad about one self…and if one writes only good about oneself, people can easily judge his hypocritical superficial writing’. Hence, it is strange that I decided to write about my life story…There are several reasons… I wanted to thank all those who helped me reach where I am today, those who kept me alive, those who touched my life at various stages of my journey, those who nurtured my childhood, those who stood by me in my struggle. I remain indebted in gratitude of all those who blessed me till their last breath. This is my humbl