Fighting Darkness
The story began one night three weeks ago when we noticed an old couple asking for water on the pavement outside our office. They appeared to be pitifully poor; the old man was blind, trudging along with one hand on his wife’s shoulder. We asked them where they were headed to, and they told us they’d come from their village in Raigad to get their cataract-afflicted eyes operated. But they were in a spot: the stranger who’d brought them to Mumbai with a promise of treatment at the municipal hospital where she worked was untraceable. Unlettered, without money and lost in a big city, they didn’t know where to go.
To cut a long story short, we arranged for their shelter for the night and the next day headed for JJ Hospital, whose ophthalmology head Dr T P Lahane has helped countless poor patients in his three-decade career. It was a bank holiday, and the public hospital wasn’t bustling with people; at the ophthalmology out-patient department, however, Dr Lahane and his assistants were busy, as always, with surgeries. For those not in the know, the surgeon, who was born in a poor farmer’s family in Latur and worked his way up, has a world record of 100,000 cataract operations.
Dr Lahane examined his new patients in a jiffy, pronounced judgment (“I can help the woman, the man has lost his vision, but we’ll operate to relieve him of the pain the nerve pressure must be causing him’’) and got them admitted. He then insisted we have a cup of tea with him and his bubbly assistant Dr Ragini Parekh, and regaled us with stories of his ‘goonda’ days as a student union leader, and his arch views on private medical education. “I constantly pick up beggars from the streets myself and bring them to hospital. In fact, when a beggar asks me for money, I first examine his eyes, and then willy-nilly take him with me,’’ he smiled.
Post-script to the story: The old couple stayed in JJ for a week and came out with new sight (even the old man claimed he could see a little) and fresh hope. The prospect of an impoverished existence still loomed ahead, but they were visibly happier and healthier. Thank you, Dr Lahane.