Medical personnel of the Army play a stellar role in providing much-needed medical aid to inhabitants of remote, even inaccessible frontiers of India. The contribution of our battalion’s medical staff in this regard was no less. Our doctor rendered timely medical aid, with his ready wit and sense of repartee intact, to residents of nondescript villages of Kashmir where our battalion’s border outposts were located.
Enduring the mountain chill, through rain, snow or sunshine, our medical staff would sit from the wee hours under a tin shed outside our outpost, attending to an incessant stream of patients. Some elderly people squatted on the stone-cum-wooden settees with a grimace. But, while departing with their prescribed medicines, happiness would be writ large on their faces.
Nooran Begum, a widowed octogenarian suffering from a number of ailments — ranging from swollen eyes suffocated with soot from her day-long ordeal at the fireplace to aches in the knees and rattling bones — would arrive with her son in tow and an odd grandchild clutching on. She trusted our doctor immensely, and so did the others from poverty-ridden hamlets, for whom the young doctor had become a guardian angel. They listened without rancour to the doctor’s sermons on health issues. Human bonds formed during adversity are seldom broken and most sufferers had formed intangible perennial bonds with the doctor.
A day preceding his posting out, the doctor suddenly blurted out in response to a patient’s query that he would be gone the next day. The distressing news heralded a day of mourning in the clusters of houses. Nooran Begum arrived with a sprint, having forgotten her aches. She wept, realising that the doctor would never return. All that she could offer as a parting gift was food cooked with her own hands, which the doctor accepted gracefully. Her gesture revealed that remembering one’s benefactors with gratitude is a trait of virtuous people.
The motley crowd that gathered for the doctor’s send-off delightfully shouted ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’. Obviously, our doctor had left an indelible impression on the minds of the locals, similar to several other doctors of the Army serving in challenging areas.
We had perhaps succeeded in our endeavours to wean the people away from anti-national elements who thrive amid simple, gullible folks.