It was our community medicine posting during the last leg of our internship in the year 1993 and we had managed to get leave from the hospital to take a trip to the Sikkim Himalayas (off course we couldn't have mentioned that in our leave application).
We made the customary trips to Gangtok, (the 15 rupees thali in Jain Dharmashala was unforgettable as we were also on a budget) and Tsangu lake (it was the first time some of us were touching the snows and a customary snowball game was in order between the four interns and one Geographer who worked for the National Atlas). The image of Tsangu lake you see above was clicked in 1993 by Basubandhu, the geographer and all the other images here below are taken by him in 1993.
Finally we decided that a trip to Sikkim would be incomplete without a trek.
Some of us had already done the Yuksom Zongri circuit earlier, plus it wouldn't suit our budget in terms of time (limited internship leave etc) and so on our way back to Siliguri, after our bus had crossed over from Sikkim to district Darjeeling, we got down from the bus at a place called “27 miles.”
The first thrill to the place, which looked like it was in the midst of nowhere, was the rickety ropeway we needed to ride (made out of a wooden precarious bench it was unlike any ropeway we rode before).
Once we rode the ropeway marvelling at the exotic birds flying over the jungle canopy below, we also crossed the river Teesta (branching into Relikhola) and once we deboarded the ropeway bench we took a dip in the pristine river just before we began the trek.
The place near the river was called “Samco farm” and the trek to Samtahar was steep and gruelling but enjoyable at the same time and when we finally appeared to reach our destination we were covered by a “white out” mist that didn't allow us to visualize any of the homes in that sleepy hamlet and all we had were some audio cues of barking dogs that told us that we had arrived into human habitation.
As we were interns on a budget we had already decided to try and find out if they would allow us to sleep in their “primary health center” PHC, which we were lucky to locate in the midst of the mist and were greeted there by a kind “sister in charge” who agreed to shelter these urban interns for the night in her PHC.
Image of the white out in Samtahar taken by Basubandhu in 1993
The next day morning is actually the real answer to the A2A here.
A young primi was brought to the health center with delayed labor and luckily one of us interns had finished his obstetrics posting and had delivered sufficient amount of babies to gain enough confidence to manage the situation and even when the sister in charge of the PHC appeared to panic and ask if they could refer, he stood resolute that they could get the baby out and it was a matter of time.
I'm sure that intern wouldn't have dreamt of taking that risk today but in 1993 his blood was younger with all the enthusiasm needed to drive his aspirations. At that moment his reflexes appeared to declare that he should just keep his hands over the baby's crown which had been trying to free the rest of it's body for quite some time.
And finally after what seemed like an eternity the rest of the baby's body obliged but there was no sound from the baby and it appeared listless but then a few mouth to mouths (through a gauge piece) later, there it was, the most pleasurable cry of a child that promises to live.
It was a girl and all the villagers in that matriarchal village (that strongly valued a girl child above a boy) rejoiced (contrast that with the desolate silence this intern had experienced in his own urban hospital when he announced, “its a girl”)
The villagers treated the interns to a sumptuous lunch perhaps as the interns had saved them from carrying the mother through much more gruelling treks through steep hills to an urban hospital in the plains where it may have become too late by the time they could have reached.
Image of Basu Bandhu playing with children in front of the PHC.
That intern who took the biggest risk of his life has become a Professor now and wonders if he he would be able to take the same risk now.
What was it that gave him the confidence to do that in internship? Was it the faith in the eyes of the villagers, the other difficult alternatives?
Is it because urban patients have more alternatives that they would not be able to put the same amount of trust in their doctors, trust that may have made their doctors more confident for the better (or unfortunately yes even for the worse)?
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