Dear Friends,
It was the best of times; it was not the worst of times. My Berkeley stint is fast approaching an end. On May 24, I will touch Sevagram! A year at Berkeley – educating, entertaining, exciting and at times exasperating- would come to an end!
Last fall, I came to the University of California at Berkeley, a town barely 20 miles from San Francisco. I was in my mid-forties and was struggling with mid-career blues. Conscious of my weaknesses in statistics, epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, I chose to tap the Berkeley portals to fill in those huge gaps in my knowledge. Berkeley accepted me with open arms. By nature, I am shy, a bit inhibited, at times introverted and get nervous and tongue tied when I see unknown people. Moreover, I had never been away for so long from my family. The fear of the foreign land and the very thought of surviving independently for a year, without any cooking skills, weighed heavily on my mind.
But survive, I did. Berkeley has always been warm, compassionate, open, tolerant and ever conscious of cultural diversity and plurality. It is a small town: of the 102,000 people who populate this place, close to half are students. I began to understand American accents, and they started absorbing my desi English. I understood their culture and they went out of way to understand what rural India was all about. I started getting comfortable with first name social relationships. Within a few days, I started walking comfortably in the university campus with a laptop and lunchbox in my backpack.
Berkeley took me to my under-graduate days. I was back to class rooms, home assignments, unit tests, mid terms, doing projects, preparing for seminars, writing a thesis and taking the intensive classroom finals. All my life I had been maths challenged (the sole reason why I became a doctor) and to begin with, I had a tough time figuring out exponentials, logs and coefficients. I can never forget my friends and professors who helped me cope with the complexities of re-discovering the truth. I acquired some outstanding friends as I was travelling hopefully, and I value their friendship in more ways than one. My professors were courteous and understanding and took pains to make me feel comfortable. My teething troubles over, I began to settle. Days rolled by and I began to roll perfect round rotis- my great achievement! I also learnt how to thrive without asking for help. Americans abhor dependency!
What did I learn in Berkeley? I learnt how to count, how to measure, and how to associate A with B. I discovered the rows and columns that make a table and the bars, pies, dots and lines that make a graph. I leant how to read, write, analyse and interpret. I was ashamed that three-quarters of the medical articles that I used to read in Sevagram would never make any sense to me. Berkeley helped me understand the stuff that a research paper is made of and what it takes to publish in JAMA. It taught me that medical research is a serious science and more than developed countries, India needs it badly- to address its own problems. Indeed, I learnt that to seek a solution, you must know how to ask the right question.
I wonโt fall into the familiar trap of comparing the US with India. Berkeley has filled my heart with a sense of achievement and fulfilment. It opened its huge canvas for me and my amazement at discovering its colourful kaleidoscope never ceased. I loved Berkeley, and my eyes might tear when I say her goodbye.
And yet, as the spring is replacing the fall, I am getting enveloped by homesickness. I missed Sevagram, and my dreams in the last couple of days are woven around my family, friends, colleagues and patients! My countdown has begun- I am very excited to return home, exactly two weeks later!
Words fail me to thank all those who coaxed, cajoled and literally pushed me into accepting the Berkeley fellowship. I value their support and help. I wonโt name them. Because I can never repay the debt that I owe them. I would always be conscious of the love and affection that these friends and the MGIMS family have showered on me.
So, back from San Francisco to Sevagram. Good bye, Berkeley. I love you. I will miss you.
SP