The day had come for the legendary Dr. George Matthew. At 66, he believed – rightfully so – that he was more energetic than most of the doctors a few decades younger than him working at the Kriplani Memorial Hospital (he didn’t even bother comparing himself with doctors above 50). But for the early signs of Parkinson’s that had started showing up a few months back and had begun to interfere with his ‘daily duties’, as he used to call them, there was nothing to stop him from continuing as the dean of KMH. The fact that no dean ever, in the history of KMH, had worked past the age of 63 was of course, beside the point. It was now decided by the management, in consultation with Dr. Matthew himself, that it was time for him to hang up his boots. Although he was hardly a person to either rest on his past laurels or to reminisce a bit too much about the past, Dr. Matthew found himself lost in a reverie that misty January morning…
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Some people believe that what they become has a lot to do with what they were born with. Mandeep Kaur belonged to the other lot – the people who believe in breaking free from their contextual inertia and pursuing their dreams. Growing up as an ambitious girl in semi-urban India had never been easy, even if liberalization was only a few years away. Mandeep was born to Gurbaksh Singh and his wife Renu in a village called Lalru, which is about thirty kilometers from the bustling city of Chandigarh. Ever since her birth, she had never been out of the state of Punjab (of which Chandigarh was the capital city) on more than two occasions – once to the grand old city of Delhi and once to Shimla, that quintessential holiday hangout for anyone living within 200 km to its south-west. Aged 14, and being right on top of her class in almost all the courses, she was gearing up for the ‘all-important’ matriculation exams that were a year and a half away. Her favorite subject, by far, was Science. She was fascinated by the curious coincidences that make life possible on earth, by the supremely efficient laboratory called the human body, the mathematically precise and graceful laws of physics, and to think that everything boiled down to those atoms and molecules that aren’t even visible to the naked eye…what a wonder!
However, being a bright student did not discharge her from her domestic obligations. Gurbaksh Singh had joined his father Inderpal at the tender age of 10 on the wheat farms on which he toiled day after day. Inderpal, when still wet behind the years, was already inducted into the practice of farming by his father Jatinder, and so it went all the way. For the Singhs, wheat farming was a way of life. Gurbaksh and his only brother Gurcharan had inherited a total of 80 hectares (about 200 acres) of farm-land from their father which they had split equally between them. Some of Gurbaksh’s relatives had not exactly been ecstatic when Gurbaksh’s first-born turned out to be a baby girl. Gurbaksh however, showed no such discrimination – he expected Mandeep to work just as hard on the farms as a boy of her age. To be fair, Gurbaksh and Renu had taken good care of Mandeep all these years. There were proud of her academic achievements, and felt truly blessed to have such a child. They didn’t even raise any objection when she had once announced that she intended to continue studying and join a college when the time came…
Punjab was among the states that benefitted greatly due to the advancements in technology related to agriculture. Located on the Indo-Gangetic plain, blessed with a naturally fertile soil and an invigorating climate, Punjab was among the leaders in the favorite Indian occupation of agriculture. However, for centuries, farmers were often at the mercy of Nature. Moreover, the farming practices were far from efficient – partly due to lack of awareness and partly due to unavailability of alternatives. Twentieth century science changed all that. From a point in time when drought was a serious national threat, India moved on to become one of the leading exporters of crops like wheat and rice. Mandeep had witnessed the changes brought about by advancements in Science literally in her own backyard. A task that would take hours to complete could now be done in a matter of a few tens of minutes. What used to be the output of a year would be less than the output of a couple of months now. The Singhs had now reached a point wherein they didn’t have to worry about their coffers being empty come a rainy day. Gurbaksh, despite not being ‘educated’ in the traditional sense, had a keen eye for innovative techniques related to farming and was always among the first to adopt the latest tools and equipment. The farm-size of the Singhs being fairly large, the use of machines was inevitable anyway.
One such machine was the thresher. A thresher does the job of separating grains from their husks. There was a time when this separation had to be done manually with flails, an exercise which was not only time consuming but also extremely laborious. The thresher, which ran on diesel or kerosene, does the job with remarkable speed and efficacy. Gurbaksh usually ran the thresher in the evenings before packing it in a jute bag to be taken to the Lalru grain market the next day for sale. However, one windy evening, Gurbaksh hadn’t returned even two hours later than his usual time. Seeing that it was getting dark, Renu asked Mandeep to do the threshing. Mandeep, only just returning from school, with a text book in one hand ran towards the thresher, with the winds blowing her long hair in all directions. After loading the thresher, she turned it on. The characteristic hum of the thresher was only too familiar to her, often symbolizing the continuum of their existence. She was about to turn away when the text book in her hand fell on the ground beside the thresher. As she bowed low to pick her book up, she found several of her hairs caught in the thresher and before even she could feel its pain, nearly a third of her facial skin and scalp were among the de-husked grains lying on the other side of the thresher, having been spat out of the machine that didn’t seem to particularly notice what had just happened. Gurbaksh had just arrived home when he and Renu heard the piercing shriek that came from the middle of field. The screaming did not stop even after Gurbaksh and Renu reached the thresher which was by now painted in the color of human blood. Their dear child Mandeep was lying next to the thresher with her face, or whatever was left of it, completely covered with blood.
It took them an hour to reach Kriplani Memorial Hospital, by which time Mandeep was unconscious with pain. The hospital staff was horrified to see this macabre sight of a hapless father carrying his daughter on his shoulder with a mass of flesh in place of her face and the visibly distraught mother who was carrying the scalp and a part of her face in a plastic bag…
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Microsurgery, as the name suggests, is a surgical procedure that requires the use of a microscope, for it mainly involves operating at the tissue level. The reasons it has gained special attention over the last two decades are its ability to cut across different disciplines in medical science, as well as its near-magical ability to mend parts of the body that are mutilated to the point of being almost unrecognizable. What were ‘hopeless cases’ earlier could now be run-of-the-mill. However, because it was a new field, there weren’t many practitioners baring a handful. One such doctor who was fast rising to prominence in the medical fraternity was 44-year old Dr. George Matthew. Already being touted as the next big guy in KMH, he was singlehandedly responsible to build the Microsurgery department at KMH, starting from scratch some 5 years back. Most cases revolved around mending a damaged organ. However, Mandeep’s case was vastly different. Dr. Matthew had to ‘replant’ (a terminology that became common much later) her face – he had to build back her face with whatever fragments were available. It was going to be a complicated experiment without much certainty about its result. The Singhs had an option of not going ahead with the operation, if they wished so. While the chances of success were minimal (simply because such a thing had never been done in the annals of Indian medical history), the Singhs decided that the best shot that they had was to ask Dr. Matthew to carry on with what was an experiment – albeit a very special one!
Inside the operation theatre, Dr. Matthew couldn’t help notice, amidst Mandeep’s mangled face, that she would’ve been a pretty girl – her two ‘beauty spots’(one on the center of her chin and one just below the corner of her lip on the right side) bearing testimony to her erstwhile good looks. He hoped, knowing full well that it was a daunting task, that he could restore her face back to its original form.
Drawing from his vast reserves of knowledge and experience, and unending help from his assistant doctors, Dr. Matthews finally ungloved himself a full seven hours after Mandeep had been admitted into the operation theatre. The operation involved the ‘summing up’ of whatever he had learnt about microsurgery through his career and implementing it practically (which had been the trickiest aspect of the operation – the army of cutting-edge equipments not withstanding). However, the job was only half done. The next step was to watch out if the suturing had indeed been successful. Dr. Matthew was fairly confident that the facial skin and scalp were well integrated with the muscles; however, Mandeep’s face had to be wrapped for a period of 3 full days, only after which some judgment could be made regarding the success of the surgery. Gurbaksh and Renu nearly didn’t sleep for those three days. Dr. Matthew too, was very anxious about the result – not because his reputation was at stake, but because the success of this operation could open new doors for microsurgical procedures in the future.
After the 3-day ordeal was over, Dr. Matthew set about the task of uncovering the result of his meticulous experiment. There was a palpable nervous tension in the hospital ward, contributed not to a little extent by Renu’s continuous chanting, invoking the august members of the Pantheon for blessings. On opening up of the plaster, Renu and Gurbaksh couldn’t believe their eyes. Admittedly, her face wasn’t like the original – there were clearly some traces of the surgery, particularly on the fringes of the face. But the unmistakable glint in her eye and the dimples on her cheeks when she smiled and said “Don’t worry Mom, I’m alright”, convinced the Singhs, beyond doubt, that Dr. Matthew had been victorious. Gurbaksh did not waste any time in hugging Dr. Matthew, who had been standing right next to Mandeep, and expressing his immense gratitude towards him. Dr. Matthew explained that except for the inch-long scar on her left temple, all other scars would be gone in a matter of a few weeks by applying the prescribed medications. While Dr. Matthew’s demeanor suggested that it had been just another surgery, the fact was that he had created history, soon to be written about extensively in newspapers and medical journals.
“Alas”, thought Dr. Matthew, twenty two years later, “If I have been able to see so far, it’s only because I have been standing on the shoulder of giants”, recounting Issac Newton’s wise words. At that instant, a gentle knock on the door broke his reverie. He was expecting the new Head of the Microsurgery Department, an illustrious import from the Government hospital, to come and meet him as he was the outgoing H.o.D., Microsurgery. It is difficult to say what Dr. Matthew noticed first – the two tiny moles on the doctor’s chin, the dimples accompanying the wide grin on her face or an inch-long scar on her left temple….
