We had a large family to start with and I was the second child of my parents. I had one elder brother and two younger brothers. From the childhood I was a good student and always disciplined. When I was in 11th standard, those days it was called PUC, I left my village Santa Bachahalli in Mandya district and went and started living with my brother in Mysore. Those days my elder brother was studying engineering at the National Institute of Engineering and it was on his insistence that I went and stayed with him.  He had taken the required permission from his warden and I was allowed to stay with him in his room. In his room were two more persons who were studying to be doctors. 

My daily routine involved me going to the college and then coming back and cooking rice and we would eat it with some curries bought from the local restaurants. 

One incident I remember during those days was when it was a holiday for me in the college and my brother and his friends left to study their respective courses. I happened to see a box left by my brother's friend who was studying medicine. It intrigued me and I opened the box to see what all contents were inside. I was holding the stethoscope and the thermometer when my brother's friend returned and observing that I was checking out the instruments, curtly told me not to do so ever. I promptly put everything back in the box. Later one day my brother asked whether I had opened his box. I answered in the affirmative then he told, if you wish to use such instruments one day, you need to become a doctor yourself. Though my brother always wanted me to become a doctor that was the first time I felt that it was a serious option going forth in my life. 

There is another incident which happened during those days which left an indelible on my life. While still in PUC one day I fell sick. I had fever and body aches. My brother suggested that I visit a local doctor. I went to the doctor and after examining me he said that he will give me an injection and told me to wait in the next room. After sometime the doctor came and asked me whether I had Rs 2.00 to give him as his fees. I did not know that I had to pay for the treatment. I said I do not. For which he said that "then I cannot treat you," and sent me away. I was deeply disturbed. I kept thinking whether this is how medical profession should be. That only who have the money can get treatment while the poor had to suffer. That day I decided that if ever I become a doctor I would treat the patient free of charge.

I got good grades in the junior college and then I got an easy entry to the Mysore Medical College.  Just few months earlier, my father had passed away. It was a difficult time for the family. Around that time my elder brother got a job in ICE College Mysore and the responsibility of supporting the entire family fell on his shoulders. His salary was then Rs. 275 salary. He worked there for one year. Next year he got an Assistant Engineer post at BEL with a salary of Rs 400. He shifted residence to Bangalore and brought my mother and three brother also to Bangalore and he used to send Rs 50 to me every month.

Rs 50 may look too less from today’s standards but I had always led a disciplined life and I could spend my days learning the ropes of medicine comfortably.  I was not interested in anything apart from studies. Neither movies, eating some expensive foods nor did I have any bad habits. With single minded dedication I studied medicine. During these days I spent almost 18 to 19 hours studying and practicing what was taught to us by our lecturers. As the saying goes, "the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war." 

After passing out I worked for some time in the Mysore Medical College and later in the Bowring Hospital in Bengaluru. According to the then Govt Regulations, all doctors had to work in the villages. I was posted in the small village Chevathy in North Kanara District of Karnataka. I worked in the place for two years.

That was the time when the local villagers had lost complete faith in the Govt health system. Because the doctors who were posted there would not turn up for duties. So initially there was a lot of distrust about me also. 

But one incident changed everything. One local zamindar had all the symptoms of a heart attack and his grandson rushed to the Govt clinic and asked me to go to their home. The only way was to walk. So we walked and reached the house of the patriarch. Looking at me all the ladies who were on one side and started discussing whether such a young man would be able to treat the headman of the house. I conducted my examination and came to the conclusion that the old man had had a heart attack, gave the required medicines and told him to rest. Later they went to one senior doctor in Sirsi, who eventually gave the same diagnosis. When they came back the word spread that the Govt doctor of Chevathy is a good doctor. Initially I would get some 5 to 6 patients a day and that later increased to 50 a day. So I could say that I played a little role in instilling the faith of the villagers in the Govt health system. After around 2 years I shifted from Chevathy. 

I studied the Master in Surgery at the Bowring Hospital then was posted to Victoria hospital. There initially I was put in the Causality. I then requested the Medical Superintendent that I was a surgery man so may posted to a surgical specialty. He then posted me to Plastic Surgery department. That was my first brush with the specialty of Plastic Surgery. After working in the department of Plastic Surgery I became interested in the field and then did my M.Ch in the Plastic Surgery and then joined the ESI hospital in the Plastic Surgery Department. I worked there for 2 years and was then joined the Bangalore Medical College as Assistant Professor in Plastic Surgery in 1982. In Bangalore Medical College we had a special 50 bedded Burns and General Plastic Surgery unit with 30 beds.

In December of 1983 I got the opportunity to work in the Saudi Arabia in King Fahad Hospital. It was a tertiary referral centre in the city of Gizan in the South of Saudi Arabia. I worked there for five years and then returned to India and was posted to various colleges like the Hubli Medical College, Mysore Medical College etc. From 1998 to 2005 I worked again at the Bangalore Medical College and with the experience I gained from working in the Saudi Arabia, strived to make the burns unit of the hospital the best  in the country. Implementing the strict protocols to control the infection and providing air conditioning our burns unit could match one anywhere in the world. During this period on the one hand I was treating patients and on the other also teaching M.Ch plastic surgery students.

In 2005 I was about to retire and just 6 months before retiring I got  one of the biggest projects of my life. I got a call from the Health Secretary of Karnataka and was informed that I was supposed to establish a medical college in Belgaum. Belgaum already had a Govt hospital but was did not have a medical college. I was there as a Principal of the Belgaum Medical College for a period of three and half years and in those three and half years a medical college came up. It was my good fortune to be able to provide to aspiring medical students a good platform where they could excel. 

After three years as the Principal of the college I shifted to the Bangalore again. By this time I was post-retirement. 

Call from Swami

I had heard about Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba a lot during my years as a surgeon, but never imagined that I would ever be able to work in His hospital. One of my seniors in the profession of Plastic Surgery one day called me and asked me whether I had in my mind a surgeon who also had administrative experience. " Could I come," I asked. "Of course", was the reply. 

So one day in 2014 I just landed at the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, Prasanthigram, Puttaparthi. I remember going to around the whole hospital. Being a career surgeon and administrator myself, in one look I can make out the standards of care. I was beside myself with surprise. Swami had created not only an architectural marvel but also a medical marvel. As I said, before coming to Puttaparthi, I had definitely heard about the wonders He had created, but this was my first experience of one of those wonders. 

In all my years of working as a surgeon had taught me one thing that to a human healthcare is as important as air, food or water. And here Swami was providing the advanced healthcare totally free of charge to all irrespective of caste, class, gender, religion, economic status or nationality. 

With just one visit I had made up my mind to shift permanently to Puttapathi and dedicate my life to the service of Swami's patients. 

I joined SSSIHMS, Puttaparthi in September 2014

One may call me a late entrant into Swami's fold. Be it, as it may. But I have had the greatest good fortune of having the experience of how Swami works keeping us as mere instruments. 

As mentioned earlier I have practiced as a plastic surgeon for decades, but when I started operating on the patients of Swami's hospital I realised that there was a marked difference. The difference is that Swami's Grace will be protecting, caring and comforting the patients here. In my career of almost 50 years with all the experience, I must say that it is only in Swami's hospital that I am getting the best results for the surgeries I am performing. 

In the Plastic Surgery department we get many extremely complex cases, which several other hospitals would refuse to touch, but when they come here, I just think of Swami and tell Him " Swami this is your patient. He or she requires a complex surgery, whatever skill you have given me, with that I am going to perform the surgery to the very best, rest is in your hands," and we go ahead with the surgery. It is my experience in the Swami's hospital that the patients respond to treatment much better and recover faster than I have ever seen elsewhere even from complex surgeries. I call this the X factor of Swami, which I have not seen in any other place. 

Two examples I wish to narrate here now. The first one I had mentioned in Sanatana Sarathi also sometime ago. There was a little girl from Tamil Nadu who had a huge facial tumour. Wherever she went the surgeons refused to operate. And then somebody mentioned our hospital’s name. Being a plastic surgeon myself, I saw her in the OPD and keeping our faith in Swami we operated upon her. The tumour was removed and she recovered perfectly. When we spoke to her, she said, “The doctors in this hospital are Gods.” “We smiled and pointing to Swami’s photo in the ward told her, we are simply humans, He is God and in this hospital, he works through us.” Then we noticed that both her parents who were standing on either side of her bed had tears in their eyes. It was then we realized how much the little girl would have suffered due to her looks, how many taunts and how much mocking in her life. And unable to see her suffering how much more the parents would have suffered. But here Swami finished her suffering once and for all. 

As I write this article just a few days ago, she had returned with her father for a review.  She is doing perfectly fine. Not only that she has got a job with the State Government and she is getting married in January 2023. When we hear such things, we are surprised how great are Swami's Leelas. 

Second one was of a mason from Hyderabad. He had developed a non-healing ulcer on his right thigh, knee and leg. He went to various places in Hyderabad some hospitals demanded a lot of money and some said that he would not survive. His wife who worked in a pharma company was told by her HR manager to bring him to us. When he arrived at our hospital he was in a bad state. We took him up for surgery and performed a complex surgery, in which we grafted skin from his healthy left leg to the right leg. He spent almost 1 to 2 months in the hospital recovering. And at the end of it he was able to walk on his two legs, something which he had felt he would never be able to do.

“This life I have got is a gift from Swami to me. We were in dire straits, we did not know whether I would get better, much later after I have recovered my wife told me that some doctors were not sure whether I would even survive. In such a situation Swami entered our lives and saved me,” he said.  

One more aspect of the same x factor is the fact that Swami has got together a team of dedicated individuals who work as an efficient patient care, with love and compassion. Generally in the outside world, attrition rate is of a great concern. For the uninitiated, attrition rate is a rate at which employees leave an organisation. In Swami's hospital even today we have surgeons and nurses who joined in 1993. Till recently we had some employees who had joined in 1991 also, but then they retired. Here if somebody has spent around 9 years like me, he would still be called young in the organisation! Our staff here work with single minded dedication and devotion to make sure that whoever walks into the portals of Swami's hospital goes back home smiling. 

I have mentioned this on several occasions, but it needs to be mentioned again. When I go for ward rounds and talk to patients and tell them that you are fit for discharge, many of the patients tell me whether they could be allowed to stay for some more time. Any other place patients would be waiting to go home, but with Swami's hospital it is the opposite. 

Also one aspect which needs to be mentioned here is the fact that when an aspiring doctor joins a medical school, he or she has only one thing in mind and that is to serve the society. It is with this pure feeling that students enroll into a medical school, but these days paying a huge fee for an education and many other factors later, when they leave the school they are not able to do justice to the initial feeling they joined with. But Swami's hospital is one place all such doctors are able to realise their dream of serving the society to the fullest.

In Swami's hospital whatever the doctors and the surgeons need, to provide patient care, is made readily available. So whatever surgeries we wish to perform, we can perform freely without bothering about the equipment or cost. Unlike many other hospitals where profit is at the core of the philosophy, in Swami's hospital it is the patient care that is at the core of the philosophy.  

In fact constant upgradation of the hospital equipment is a part of Swami's hospital's philosophy. To give you an example just a few days ago our hospital inaugurated a Rs. 60 lakh ($75,000) worth a state-of-the-art Optical Tomography Machine for the Ophthalmology department. 

In our hospital we have a postgraduate course in medicine called the Diplomate of National Board. In this course the trainees gain unmatched experience at our hospital. As mentioned in the earlier edition of this newsletter two trainees from our hospital secured All India Gold Medals one from the Urology and another from Cardio Thoracic Vascular Surgery streams. This is a three year course and this, according to Swami's philosophy, is taught totally free of charge to the trainees. I am yet to find one more hospital, which does the same. 

Many devotees I keep lamenting the fact that they have come into the Swami's fold much after His Mahasamadhi and they yearn to experience the love of Swami. To such people I say look at me. I am myself a late entrant, but trust me that is nothing to be worried about. In my opinion it does not matter how sooner or later Swami calls you. But what matters is whether you are able to dedicate yourself to the path that Swami has shown. If you are able to do that then Swami will shower you with his Grace. 

JAI SAI RAM