Beginning of an experience

Beginning of an experience…

This was my second time in Okhaldhunga as a doctor. I was quite sure from the very beginning that my stay in Okhaldhunga this time will be as adventurous as a movie or at least it will be more interesting than the never-ending boring Hindi tele-serials. Hospitals have always been a site where we can witness the human emotions at its closest. And as a doctor, we always come across situations where we feel overwhelmed with joy and at the same time depressed with sorrow.

I am writing this book based on my experience in Okhaldhunga Community Hospital, a hospital situated in a remote hilly region of eastern Nepal. This hospital, from my point of view, is an ideal place for a doctor like me to gain the experience of a lifetime, to see death from a point-blank range, to overcome the challenge on your own, to perceive the pain felt by the poor underprivileged people of my own country, to fill yourself with satisfaction when you save a life and at the same time, to tipple over the obstacles set by none other than your own people. I will always cherish the precious moments I had in this place. It has definitely helped me grow not only as a doctor but as a human. I feel grown up every time I come to Okhaldhunga. I am dead sure that everybody should have an experience felt by me once in their lifetime. And I feel everybody who come to a place like this to serve or thinking of going to place like this in their life, should read this book once and ……….feel the difference.

I don’t know what made me write. Honestly, I am not a writer. Nor can I narrate any story interestingly. Maybe I am writing this because I think when I grow old, I would love to look back on my life in Okhaldhunga through these writings. Maybe I can tell my son (who was one year old when I took him to Okhaldhunga) that when he stumbled while trying to take first few steps of his life, his father was also crawling in the initial years of his professional life. One thing is sure that I am writing this thing for myself and for noone else.

As I had expected, the adventure began right from the airport in Kathmandu. My flight to Rumjatar got cancelled for three times, adding to the agony of Dr. Erik, a Norwegian doctor waiting to depart from Okahaldhunga after my arrival there. I waited in the airport seeing flights taking place regularly to Pokhara and Lukla – the famous tourist destinations for the foreigners (private airlines earn dollars from the foreigners charging them double the fare than the Nepalese, making them more interested to fly to tourist destinations only – an unethical but commercially profitable move for the private airlines). For the first time in my life I was disadvantaged because of the colour of my skin. Little did I know that there were lots of other incidents waiting for me in Okhaldhunga when I will be let down because of the colour of my skin. My fellow colleague, another Norwegian Doctor, was preferred by the local people when we both used to stay in the Out Patient’s Department. I was amazed to see how people examined by me used to stay outside this white doctors room to get rechecked. So colour is good in every aspect except in the case of skin. I don’t blame the poor innocent people who preferred the white doctors. They were grown up being treated by the white doctors for last ‘astonishing’ forty years. These expatriate doctors were healing the pain of the Okhaldhunga people since that time when none of the Nepali doctors even thought of coming to this place. Still now, recruiting and retaining a Nepali doctor is a near impossible issue in this place. It’s a shame to the medical fraternity of Nepal that a ‘bideshi’ doctor is filling up the vaccum created by none other than our own Nepali doctors. We seek facilities, money and opportunities before coming to work in a place like this. Whereas on the other hand, these expatriate doctors sacrifice everything offered by their economically sound and politically safe country to work in the so-called third world country like ours. I salute these doctors no matter whatever the reason they have come here for……….

Finally on the third day, I was flown to Rumjatar. In these three days, I spent almost the same amount of money in taxi as the plane fare, to reach the airport. It was a scary bumpy ride in the air (pilots later blamed it on the eagles flying over a dead animal thrown at the river near the airport). Last time, when I was here, it was a time of declared emergency in my country. I never felt the difference of living in emergency period while I was in Kathmandu or in Tansen. I sensed it was a time of emergency by the tone of the army people who were safeguarding the Rumjatar airport. They spoke crudely to all and their glance was suspicious. A bottle of water on the outer packet of my bag was missing. But I didn’t dare to ask the armies about the bottle. Their look told me ‘don’t mess with me’. This time I started second inning of my Okhaldhunga stay right after the success of the janandolan – 2. So this time I did not feel the same arrogance in the faces of the security personnels in Rumjatar. They seemed relaxed and cool. Otherwise, I knew exactly how the mental status of the armies was at the time of war. I had the rare feat of spending a night in the army barrack when a gun-battle was going on the nearby village, when I was here last time. It was a cold evening of March 2005, some forty soldiers from the barrack, which was about one hour walk from the hospital, came to the hospital to fetch the doctors for reasons better known to them. They told one of their soldiers was sick and they said they were in no condition to bring the sick one to the hospital. We sensed pretty well there was something fishy and we knew there must have been some other grave reasons for their demand, which they had rarely made in the past. We never refused when they asked for a doctor in the daytime and we always attended all the emergency cases from the army barrack with utmost preference. This time they wanted us in the night time. We expressed our inability to go to the barrack citing the problem that there were other 30 patients admitted in the hospital at that moment who needed our constant care. The government doctor who was actually responsible to attend the calls in the barrack was enjoying his holidays in Kathmandu. Maybe that was the reason why they were in no mood to hear ‘no’ and at last forced us to go to their place at gunpoint. When I spent the night there in the barrack, for the first time in my life, I feared for my life. They feasted us with the best available food studded with best pieces of goat meat but in fact, that was the worst meal of my life. I know very little about the war but I knew perfectly well that night I was treated in an inhuman way. The other time when we felt death looming over our heads was when a Maoist leader came to our hospital and entered the operation theatre with hand grenade in his hand asking for money which they termed ‘tax’ for their government. I was lucky to have my hands gloved and soaked with blood in the middle of the operation. My fellow colleague Dr. Kishor who was standing nearby and observing the operation was grabbed on his collar and dragged outside. After one hour of their speech which we term as a ‘total threat’ we decided to give them a day of our salary as ‘tax’. That day we paid for our security, we paid for the air we were breathing and saved our lives. At the same time, we saved the hospital for millions of people who were going to get saved in the hospital.

___________________________
We are now more tolerant. We are now more patience. We now realize life is too short to repent.
___________________________

Thinking retrospectively, I feel no grunge towards both the incidents. That was the little price I had to pay for the instability in my country. I was working in Tansen when it got a massive attack by the Maoists armies. Me and my wife spent the sleepless night covering our one year old son in between us so that even if our house is bombed he will have the least injuries. Some of these incidents actually had positive impacts on me and my family. We are now more tolerant. We are now more patience. We now realize life is too short to repent. We now accept how important politics is in our lives. In every bad situation, we now say ‘this is not the worst scenario we had ever been. Nothing can be as bad as praying for our lives. These incidents definitely elevated our pain threshold.

I thought my second visit to Okhaldhunga will be safe as the peace process was going on and the Maoists were in the verge of entering the mainstream politics. But I was wrong. I was more unsafe this time. I was stopped on the way to the nearby ‘bazaar’ and was forced to attend their political rally. The hospital was nearly vandalized only because one of the hospital staff asked to deposit money to some ‘politically aware’ people while I was looking after their critically ill patient. Similar political people bypassed the line to out patient department because they were busy in making a ‘new Nepal’ and had no time to waste waiting for the doctors. Every death in the hospital was scrutinized by the political parties and many times I had to explain the political leaders that the death was inevitable. Every week we used to receive letters demanding financial support to organize some political gatherings. Doctors were expected to guarantee life of every patient who entered the hospital premises. Every inevitable complication during treatment was coined as ‘carelessness’ of the doctors. Market prices were hiked to two-three folds in the span of one year, whereas voices demanding free treatment even in non-govermental, non-profit making organization were raised. My explanation ‘free treatment means no treatment’ was overshadowed by theories of Marx and Lenin. My grudge about all this with the local people there was made even bitter when I was answered ‘that’s why you are paid for!’ Slowly and this time more concretely, I got my answer to this million dollar question ‘Why doctors don’t come to place like Okhaldhunga???’

So staying in Okhaldhunga as a doctor was an ‘adventure’ for me……. where every moment, I was stared at, by my own life.