“you are paid for this, doctor”

“you are paid for this, doctor”

I knew I won’t be able to work my whole life in okhaldhunga. That was the reason I thought I should inspire other young doctors (GP residents who used to come to Okhaldhunga for 5 months for their rural postings) so that may be they will decide to work in rural regions at least for certain time in their career. I thought I was inspiring people, the way some people have inspired me in my early career………….

Inspiration has no limit. We might get inspired from any thing, from anyone and at anytime of our lives. This sounds funny, but I was once inspired by a character played by Shaharukh Khan (popular Bollywood actor) in a movie called ‘Swadesh’. It was definitely not the most successful movie he has acted but the character of a scientist working in NASA gets moved so much while he witnesses the plight of the villagers living in his abandoned country India, that he decides to return to India and work in the place where he has grown up (needless to mention, his new-found love in India also plays a role to hold him back to India). This sophisticated young aspiring scientist gets a jolt of his life when he has to leave his equipped wagon and has to travel in a passenger boat in the heat of the sun in a rural India. I suppose he gets to see ‘hungry’ people for the first time in his life and may be he understand the real meaning of hunger at that time when the poor farmer, exhibiting his bare body with just skin and ribs, requests him not to take the food out of his children’s tummy by asking to pay the debts.

I happened to read the book called ‘microsoft dekhi bahun danda samma’ (a nepali translation of Leaving Microsoft to change the world). It is really heart warming to know that people when gets determined can really change the world. It is actually very diffcult to bring any change in people’s life. In fact, I really don’t know how much change ‘Room to Read’ (organization formed by John Wood) brought in the lives of children in Nepal but it was definitely a good thought. The fact that an Aussie working in US has come to our country with loads of books just because our school in Bahun danda was lacking books in the library is, for me, a matter of shame to us. This book has really dared to capture an important moment in Wood’s life that really changed the whole course of many lives and he has well expressed the thoughts boiling in his heart. I wish I had written that book.

I had the similar feeling when I read another book called ‘Hospital at the end of the world’ written by a male nurse Joe who was volunteering at Tansen Hospital when I worked there. I was convinced that whatever little things we do in our lives if brings a better changes in other people’s lives we should go ahead with it.

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I failed to be another John Wood and I apologized Okhlahdunga for that.
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But one day…… in okhaldhunga hospital, some politically motivated bigwigs from okhaldhunga gathered to solve an issue in the hospital. We were trying our best to make them understand that we are also working there in a difficult situation and detrimental remark about the hospital actually lowers our moral. But a self-acclaimed ‘i-know-it-all’ type of teacher from Rumjatar School told us not to glorify what we were doing in the hospital. He further added all the things I did in Okhaldhunga is just because I was paid to do that…….

I thought I was inspiring people, I thought I was trying to make a small change towards a brighter future of my country. But the incident made me realize that I was actually paid to do whatever I was doing. And I should not do more than what I was asked to do. I failed to be another John Wood and I apologized Okhlahdunga for that. That day I told my wife that we should look for another places where they pay us more……..And there were plenty of them.