Year: 2018

Presentation before the Vice-President

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“Move fast. Don’t waste your time. I already know the background of your institute,” Mr. M. Venkaiah Naidu, the Vice-President, seemed to be impetuously impatient and in a haste, as I was about to make my PowerPoint presentation. Mr. Naidu had come to Sevagram this Sunday to inaugurate the operating theatre of our hospital. My … Read more

Anaesthesiology

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Unbelievable, but true. Robert Liston, a Scottish surgeon (1784-1847) practised orthopaedic surgery all over Britain. He obtained specialisation in amputations, practising in an era when anaesthesia was in infancy. Cutting and sawing on a conscious, screaming patient took strong nerves and a strong stomach. The shorter the operation, Liston thought, the lesser the pain the … Read more

More is not always better

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Atul Gawande, the surgeon-researcher-public health activist in his recent essay describes the current medical practice so succinctly : “Millions of people are receiving drugs that aren’t helping them, operations that aren’t going to make them better, and scans and tests that do nothing beneficial for them, and often cause harm.” Once a  test or a … Read more

Bevan Congdon

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Bevan Congdon died today. I remember his two towering sixes in the 1969 Nagpur test (India vs. New Zealand) – incidentally, the first cricket match that I saw live at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Ground, Nagpur. A connoisseur’s dream, he scored match-winning sixty-plus in the first inning and had no problems reading the variations in … Read more

Vidarbha wins Ranji trophy

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Vidarbha did it! What a victory! This day reminds me of Kapil Dev lifting the 1983 World cup in England: the Vidarbha team was as much an underdog as the Indian team was in 1983. Thirty-five years ago, a bunch of Indian players took over the mighty West Indian team and made history by defeating … Read more