One life
The “sabbatical” during pandemic has given me good time to look at the past and even be nostalgic at times. I got a chance to get back to my book collection and found one of my treasured collections, “One Life” : an autobiography of Dr. Christian Barnard
Dr. Christian Barnard is my inspiration and one of the reasons why I chose to be a “Doctor”. I have written about it earlier in this post “In Celebration of being alive”.
This lesson in my CBSE English textbook of Std IX had won over me. It had already confirmed my choice of Medicine over Engineering inspite of being a strong Mathematics and Physics student in Std XII. ( I had then, had admission to one of the best Engineering Schools in India, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT))
This blog is about two incidences in my life :
1) The fortunate meeting with my idol, Dr Christian Barnard on Sept 17, 1997 in Mumbai,
2) The story of finding a rarest of rare , out of print, autobiography of Dr Christian Barnard during a casual visit to a library in Amarillo, TX on a Saturday afternoon in 1999.
The Meeting
I had the fortune of meeting my idol, Dr. Christian Barnard on Sept 17, 1997 in Mumbai while I was working for WHO-South East Asia as a Medical Research Officer. I was to leave for Germany / US for higher studies ( Post-Doc) in next 1998 and this meeting by chance occurred at the famous Taj Hotel in Mumbai, during Dr. Barnard’s visit to India sponsored by BPL Mobile.
That was one of the most important days in my life. I had been longing to meet him and had even planned to visit South Africa earlier, that did not materialize. This meeting however occurred by chance and I came to know about his arrival to Mumbai and Pune just a day earlier on Sept 16,1997. Thanks to BPL mobile !
Here are some pictures of our meeting that lasted for over 3 hours. The joy and gratitude I felt is visible on my face and animated body language !
“One life” the book .. the autobiography
I had been trying to get a copy of the autobiography of Dr. Christian Barnard since 1986, since I read a lesson in my English text book. He has been an inspiration to many like myself, to chose Medicine over other faculties for professional studies and practice.
My search for the book “One life” had began in Pune in 1986. I was told that the book is out of print and the copyrights are with a company in Italy that has published it in 1970s. I had searched for this book in every library I could, including the “British Council Library” of Pune but in vain. In 1988, I had even paid an advanced sum of Rupees 200 to a book store to get the book for me from any where in the world! (A big amount in those days, I had saved from my NTS scholarship of Rupees 1200 per year) This amount was however returned back to me after an year by the bookstore, as the book was out of print and was not available anywhere (even in used book stores)!
My search for “One Life” was on all the time since 1986,and I had enquired at every book store I visited in India or abroad. During my meeting with Dr. Barnard, on Sept 17,1997, I had asked him about his autobiography. To which he had replied that even he doesn't have a copy of it himself and the publisher in Italy is neither ready to surrender or sell copyrights nor print further editions !
I went to US in 1998 for my post doc in Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacokinetics at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, School of Pharmacy at Amarillo, TX. I had almost forgotten about the book I was searching for years.
On a wonderful Saturday morning in Sept 1999, in Amarillo Texas, I visited the City Public Library in downtown Amarillo just casually to spend some time ! That proved to be one of the luckiest days of my life .. The library was having a garage sale of books that were “withdrawn” from library. All those books were priced at $ 1 each ! I found “One Life” there !
Serendipitous is the word for such discoveries ! I almost could not hold my happiness for next 2–3 months ! “One Life” had taken me from a small town in India to a small town of Big Texas ! The next year I moved to near by Little Rock, Arkansas at University for Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), Department of Head and Neck Surgery, with the treasure that I had gathered in Amarillo, TX !
