The mechanical ventilator breathes for you. It does not consult you about pace or rhythm or volume. It simply continues, indifferent to discomfort, indifferent to panic, indifferent to the hours accumulating around the bed. Khatija Arif-Jumkhawala has been on both sides of that machine \u2014 for decades, the person who managed the circuit; and then, after a road accident that nearly killed her, the patient who depended on it. She came back from that experience, as she had come back from many others, without drama and without complaint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Khatija was born in Nagpur into a family of building contractors. She attended St Ursula Girls’ School for her schooling \u2014 a convent education that gave her command over English and a certain precision in thought \u2014 and moved to Sindhu Mahavidyalaya, Nagpur, for her premedical year. The college was barely a year old when it sent eight students to Government Medical College, Nagpur, in 1973: Khatija, Dhanwanti Vanjani, Harish Motwani, Gagan Panjwani, Manohar Kanadia, Chandrashekhar Jambholkar, Murtaza Akhtar, and Dinesh Soni.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At GMC, she found herself drawn to the operating theatre. Anaesthesiology, she would later say, was “a branch I passionately loved.” The phrase is her own, and it is not an exaggeration. The operating room rewards precision, calm, and an intimate understanding of physiology in real time \u2014 qualities Khatija possessed. She completed her MD in Anaesthesiology from GMC Nagpur in 1981, her thesis comparing the efficacy of diazepam and pentazocine in faciomaxillary surgery, supervised by Dr. Bhattacharya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the early 1980s, the Gulf was a destination for Indian doctors who sought better pay and broader clinical exposure. Khatija followed the path many colleagues took, migrating to Abu Dhabi through the Ministry of Health to work as an anaesthesiologist at Al Mafraq Hospital. The hospital offered a case mix that Nagpur’s wards could not \u2014 volume, variety, and the particular discipline of working within a well-resourced but strictly regulated system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In December 1987, she married Zakiuddin Jumkhawala, a businessman. Within a few years, the couple decided to return to India. Khatija joined MGM Hospital, Mumbai, where she worked as an honorary anaesthesiologist from 1990 to 2012 \u2014 more than two decades of theatre lists, teaching rounds, and the slow accumulation of a reputation that her students would later carry to hospitals across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“All my life I enjoyed teaching,” she said, and recalled with something close to delight that her first MD student had gone on to become a consultant in cardiac anaesthesia at Mangalore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Khatija’s life contains one episode that her colleagues speak of with a particular kind of respect. A road accident \u2014 the details were not shared \u2014 left her fighting for her life on mechanical ventilators, managing multiple fractures, and enduring an extended hospital admission. She had supervised enough such cases to know exactly what her situation meant. She recovered. The word used by those who know her is grit<\/em>, and it is earned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She stepped away from MGM in 2012, choosing thereafter to practice on her own terms \u2014 selecting patients, controlling hours, maintaining the independence that a long career had made possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The emergency medicine department at MGM Medical College, Kamothe, is where she continues to contribute. The work is demanding and unpredictable. She is neither surprised by this nor deterred by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She attended the December 2013 batch reunion in Nagpur, and the warmth of the occasion moved her. “When I arrived in Nagpur, I found a car assigned specifically to me, a room at the VCA booked well in advance, and everything that I needed was always provided \u2014 quickly and efficiently.”<\/em> She recalled this not as a review of logistics, but as a remark on friendship \u2014 on what it means to be remembered and looked after by people who have known you for forty years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The girl who studied at St Ursula’s, who fell in love with anaesthesia at GMC, who survived a ventilator and came back to run theatre lists in New Mumbai, had not expected anything less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n\n\nThe Reunion<\/h3>\n\n\n