Beyond Nostalgia: 40 years on….and counting!
By Prof. Murad M. Khan,  Department of Psychiatry, Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi.

 

“You do not come to Dow Medical College to learn medicine. You come to Dow Medical College to learn about life…” (Sarfaraz Ahmed, Class of ’74)

“This must be the most unusual batch I have come across in my 25 years of teaching. No two faces are the same in this class” (Prof. ‘Baba’ Rizvi, Surgeon)

“And where are you from young man?” “Loralai, Madam”. “I don’t care whether you are from Loralai or any other lie- I want you to pay attention in the class!” (Prof. Razia Ansari, ObGyn)

“And why are you late, mister?” “Sir, I live in Kemari and the Kemari bridge fell down this morning”. (Class of 77er in response to Prof. Jaffery, Biochemistry)

“While the policies of America, Russia and UK are made in Washington, Moscow and London, the policies of Pakistan are made in the canteen to Dow Medical College”! (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto)

“I went to the graveyard to bury my grandfather. One of the graves there had collapsed and I asked the caretaker if I could have the skeleton? He agreed and gave it to me. I took it with me to England” (A class of 77er)

Secrets, admissions, confessions, life lessons, politics, half-truths, untruths and lies! Forty years later they were being recalled with as much clarity as with alacrity! Shorn of the control and inhibition that prevents us from revealing too much about ourselves, classmates were sharing anecdotes and happenings that were met with peals of laughter.

Forty years.

That is how long it takes….

How strange, surreal, bizarre and fantastic could this be? Was this the same anatomy lecture hall where we came together for the first time on the first day of the long and at times arduous journey, all those years ago?

Where Prof. Waheed drew those amazing anatomy figures and recited those incredible Urdu verses at the end of his lectures?

Where Prof. Afaq repeated his physiology lectures that had never been updated despite passage of half a century?!

The same lecture hall where Prof. Jaffery held his biochemistry class, which none of us ever understood (except perhaps Amin Karim!)?

The same lecture hall where we would sneak in and out of the back door (except Qutub who would come in boldly through the front door when the lecture was almost over)?

Was it the same lecture hall where we discussed Mohammed Ali’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ victory over George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire, the horrors of the Vietnam war, the tragic breakaway of East Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s dubious ascension to power and the many, many times the Pakistan cricket team conjured to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Nostalgia would not describe the feelings as we sat on the same seats we occupied four decades earlier. No- the feeling was beyond nostalgia, beyond reminiscence, beyond recall. If you could describe what it is like to reach into the deepest crevices of your mind to where you have saved some of your most cherished memories, then perhaps you would understand what it was like in that hall the other day.

“We not only live our own lives but whether we know it or not, we also live the life of our times” Laurens van der Post

What was it about those times in the 70s? What was it about Karachi and Dow Medical College and Civil Hospital Karachi of that time? Was it our teachers, our professors or the patients? Was it the ‘winds of change’ that was sweeping through the world, including Pakistan at the time? Did we imbibe all that was happening around us and ‘lived the life of our times’?

Whatever it was it must have been something very, very special that that affected us so profoundly that it not only held us together but also brought us back to this remarkable reunion. And brought us back to the very cradle of our birth.

And what a remarkable coming together it was. There were professors and high ranking military officers, CEOs of hospitals and non-governmental organisations. There were principals and deans of medical schools and those who had their own hospitals. Researchers, academicians and teachers. And specialists of almost every branch of medicine. And generalists and family physicians. From all over the world. All had rendered service to others and contributed to the health systems of their country of origin or those of their adopted ones, in some form or other. And continue to do so.

“Life is a journey, not a destination”. Ralph Waldo Emerson

As we sat in the lecture hall on that cool and bright December morning in Karachi, I am sure many of us must have reflected: did we ever realize the kind of journey we were embarking on? Could we have ever imagined we would make it this far? The almost hundred of us who had gathered in the lecture hall validated, that, in this journey of life, we had, indeed, made it this far.

And as we walked through the courtyards of the Civil Hospital Karachi, we could not help but notice the scores of patients and their families standing, sitting and lying around the grounds. Desperate people, looking for solace, desperately. Just as they did forty years ago. It reminded us that some things never change in our country. Like the suffering, like the impoverished, like the marginalized of this country. No- not even after almost half a century.

“Don’t just live in the moment – make sure that whatever you do will leave an indelible mark on future generations – that will be your legacy and your duty to the world“ Sebastian Coe

Forty years ago, no one taught us about compassion and caring, ethics or leadership or the core values of the medical profession. No one told us that this was no ordinary profession but a “calling”. A calling of the highest order. Or that how we conduct ourselves in this profession’s journey would determine our legacy for the next generation of physicians.

But we were fortunate to have some teachers who carried these values and we saw these values being practiced even in the murky, difficult and chaotic OPDs, wards and operation theatres of Civil Hospital Karachi. Teachers like Prof. Fazle Elahi, Prof. Mushtaq Hasan, Prof. Najeeb Khan, Prof. ‘Baba’ Rizvi, Prof. Razia Ansari, Prof. Khawaja Moin and many others. Many of us must have absorbed these qualities by simply sharing the space with them. Forty years later their legacy lives on. Hopefully.

Come gather around people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You’ll be drenched to the bone

And if your breath to you is worth saving

Then you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changing. Bob Dylan

The world we lived in forty years ago has undergone “a-changing”. Some parts have changed beyond recognition. But others have remained unchanged, and grown stronger with time. The camaraderie of ‘77ers is one. It has withstood the ultimate test of time.

“Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.” Arthur Schopenhauer

So as we part, even at the risk of getting ‘a foretaste of death’, plans are already afoot for an annual ‘hint of resurrection’. And why not? For the remarkable spirit of the ‘77ers lives on in each one of us.