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| My travel to Berhampur |
19 Nov 2010 Memorable Trip to Kolkata
My Memorable Trip to Berhampore, West Bengal
My trip to Berhampore started with God disposing off my proposal to leave on the 18th. Starting with my missing the flight due to traffic, to the breakdown of my car on the way back to Kolkata from Berhampore, my trip was a bitter-sweet experience. I feel that sometimes we are put through “tests” in our daily life and if we maintain our calm and “pass out” of the test without stress, life is indeed sweet.
Let me narrate how I missed my flight but instead attended the wedding of a dear person. After the rotary trust meeting on 18th November, I left for the airport at 6.05 PM, via Dharavi. We changed our route and tried going through LBS marg. But at 7-20 we were still in Kurla and Vinod Mehta had already boarded. We still wanted to make it. We reached Kalina flyover at 7.55 but by then the counter had closed.
We took a quick decision to attend Jaideep’s wedding reception at Kohinoor, Catering college, Prabhadevi. I also changed my ticket for friday morning 6.35 am. On 19th, my day started at 4 am and I landed at Kolkata at 9.15 am.
It was nice to have Dr.Sukanya Mitra pick me up with Sultan (driver) in Tata Sumo. But I was feverish and could not do without a crocin from Sukanya. We had a good chat during our journey. She had many questions about my achievements, my experience in Sankara Nethralaya, incidents in my life, etc and I was more than happy to narrate it to her.
I recalled several of my personal tragedies, my hardships in Sankara Nethralaya and why I was the blue eyed boy of Dr.SSB, even today. Like many others, she was keen to know how I managed to do my daily routine and still find time for various office bearing responsibilities and how I deal with mental stress. My tales seemed impressive and inspiring to her and she insisted that I must write a book like Bob Asher from AAO.
After having stopped for tea at Krishna Nagar we reached Berhampore at 2.30. I realized that I was still not feeling well and with a live surgery scheduled after lunch, I reached for a combiflam.
I performed a live surgery using Constellation, an eye post cat with IOL done previous day with Hyphaema, sub conj haem, vit haem with rheg rd. I performed 23 g vit with pfcl with fge with endo laser with pfcl air exchange, then C 3 F 8 gas exchange.
My surgeries were highly appreciated and it gave me a great sense of satisfaction to have helped the patients and medical fraternity there.
It was also satisfying to see my own fellows managing VR dept in Susrut Kolkatta (Aniruddha Maiti) and Berhampore Susrut (Anshuman Mukherjee).
Later that day, I met my alumni Soumen mandal, Debapriya Chatterjee Dr. Ashis Bhattacharya, Swati, Bhunia, Tushar Sinha, Partha Biswas and others over dinner. It was a long day for me and I ended it in a memorable way by wishing my son on his 22nd birthday at 12 am. This time, I had special gifts for him, with a magic mug, T shirts with his photo & a beautiful card with photos of his life through the years. When I called him he had received the gifts & I was happy. I went to sleep after wishing him, looking forward to a birthday dinner with him on 20th.
The next day, 20th November, again started early for me since I had to leave Berhampore at 7 am. I left with Vinod Mehta in Tata sumo to catch the 2 pm flight from Kolkata. This time we had spiritual conversations. He wanted to know how I could face the everyday stress and still do things perfectly. I showed my “YOU can do it” presentation in lap top and wanted a copy too.
Our fairly uninterrupted drive was suddenly brought to a halt with the breakdown of our Tata Sumo in a small village at 10.15 am. We had no choice but to off load ourselves and our luggage into a three wheel cycle rickshaw with no top. Vinod wanted to know why I did not reveal my status and identity when we had to move to the cycle rickshaw. The answer is that sometimes, you may be forced to be a “nobody” and therefore it is important to leave the “pride” and “headweight” behind at all times. I like to enjoy moment to moment.
After a short three km ride, the cycle chain slipped but we managed to reach Ranaghat from where we hired Maruti Omni. The whole journey was beautiful and I managed to capture the picturesque countryside in my lens. Our reached the airport safely at 1 PM, in time for the flight. And I used my time in the flight to record my experience on my laptop.
The turmoils and travails in life are small when you look at the bigger picture. Life is beautiful if you are not shaken by the unpleasant events. For me, my commitment to teaching ophthalmology was far greater than my 2-day hectic schedule full of unexpected turn of events. But there is always a silver lining and that was the time I spent with wonderful people, the wonderful place and of course the appreciation for the surgery for which I went.
So don’t question ‘why should we do this? What will I get out of it?’ Many times you cannot fathom the wonderful gifts of God.
Dr. S.Natarajan
Chairman & Managing Director
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