Explained Books | An eminent cardiac surgeon’s account of his work, and of Kashmir | Explained News,The Indian Express
Upendra Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit, grew up in Delhi as his parents had moved to the capital in 1947, in the wake of the first India-Pakistan war. Through the Delhi school year, he looked forward to the summer holiday when the family would go back home to Kashmir.
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HomeExplainedExplained Books | An eminent cardiac surgeon's account of his work, and of Kashmir
Explained Books | An eminent cardiac surgeon’s account of his work, and of Kashmir
Upendra Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit, grew up in Delhi as his parents had moved to the capital in 1947, in the wake of the first India-Pakistan war. Through the Delhi school year, he looked forward to the summer holiday when the family would go back home to Kashmir.
Written by Nirupama Subramanian
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Chennai | Updated: September 3, 2022 9:35:28 am
Dr Upendra Kaul; his book 'When the Heart Speaks: Memoirs of a Cardiologist'.As a cardiac surgeon for nearly five decades, Upendra Kaul dedicated himself to his calling, and gave hundreds if not thousands of people their heart back. His own heart, however, has lain all these years in his beloved Kashmir, the longing an ache that he has lived with forever. These twin threads – his passion for his vocation, and for Kashmir — run through When the Heart Speaks, the memoirs of this celebrated doctor.
There isn’t a Kashmiri who does not know of “Dr U Koul”. Go to Hawal (or Halle ) in Pulwama, and you will be shown the old Kaul homestead.
Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit, grew up in Delhi as his parents had moved to the capital in 1947, in the wake of the first India-Pakistan war. He was born a year later. Through the Delhi school year, he looked forward to the summer holiday when the family would go back home to Kashmir, into the warm embrace of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. He recalls failing one year in school. The punishment his father meted out was for him akin to a death sentence: no summer holiday in Kashmir.
The nostalgia-filled recollections of the life of a medical student in Delhi in the 1970s are an engaging read. Kaul writes unpretentiously, unselfconsciously with an evident honesty. A distinguished career took him from PGI Chandigarh to AIIMS to Batra, Fortis and Sir Gangaram.
It was as an undergraduate at Maulana Azad Medical College that he learnt to speak Kashmiri properly, from two other Kashmiri, both Muslims from the Valley, in his class. They quickly became thick buddies. Following graduate studies at G B Pant hospital, he followed his heart to Kashmir to try and join SKIMS. His effort drew a blank after Sheikh Abdullah, whom he had approached with a representation to let him join the hospital, barely gave him the time of day.
Rating: 5