I write regularly on psychiatric issues aimed towards a common readership in the leading Urdu newspapers of Hyderabad, India. There is no dearth of information in today’s world, and in fact we have all been inundated left, right and centre with an information deluge, thanks to the Internet. However, there is a distinct lack of quality information in simple language, aimed at the common man. Most of the information originates in the west, and has little resonance with problems in an Indian context. What I have been trying in Urdu is to write articles using live examples from my clinical practice and explain the finer aspects of various mental disorders in an “easy to digest and remember” manner. Some of my colleagues have asked me to do the same in Plain English.
As this is my first column for this blog, I thought it may be prudent to give the readers a bit of my background. I shall not be too pretentious and call it remarkable in the real sense, but indeed for my own self, what I have achieved is due to a combination of good luck, hard work and a desire to succeed along with an unflinching support from my family.
Growing up in the old city of Hyderabad had its own advantages. When you dress up smartly in your starched school uniform, neck tie and all, and walk towards the railway station early morning to catch a train to school in Secunderabad, people begin to take notice of you. I was the only one, not only from that station, but a few stations earlier and a few later, to have had the good fortune of attending St Patrick’s High School, an excellent school managed by Catholic priests, called the Society of Jesuits. My neighbours started enquiring as to what I would like to do when I grew up. I always used to blurt out, “I want to be a doctor”. Even if some people may have laughed at the idea, they had the decency (thanks to my family’s reputation and the respect we received in the area) never to do it in front of me. Some people actually started believing in my dreams by calling me “Doctor saab” when I was only 12 or 13! During my first visit home after becoming a doctor, one of those people came up to me and said that he had been waiting for this moment to recount his ills and thus became one of my first patients! He always had a great confidence in me and refused to see a specialist until I left the country for higher education (read greener pastures).
The disadvantage of course was the look some people in my school used to give me when I gave them my address. More than three quarters of them did not even know where Yakutpura was! The few people who knew it would say, as if almost accusingly, “What, you mean you actually live there?” As if I was talking about the planet Mars! Sometimes I used to joke that I owned the whole area and that my father was the local Nawab there. My brother once suggested that in future I should proclaim living in “Yakut Hills”, to rhyme with posh residential areas of Hyderabad – Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills! Despite these difficulties, I did well in school and was always encouraged by the then Principal Father Devasia and the Vice-Principal Father Phillips. They used to lend me books from their personal library, thus inculcating in me a lifetime love of reading and writing. I was made the Vice-Captain of the school, which sowed the seeds of leadership skills.
When I was in the second year of medical school at Gulbarga (Mahadevappa Rampure Medical College) I started studying psychiatry as a subject. Although I had seen psychiatric patients (not only on the streets) but also at the private hospital run by my maternal uncle Dr M A Majeed Khan, the leading Psychiatrist, this was my first brush with the subject. My uncle was a kind of a role model for me and I always had this desire to be “like him”. But within a few days of starting to study it, I made up my mind to become a psychiatrist. Of course the path from the squeaky chairs around that comments-etched, old and greasy table in the smoke filled college canteen in Gulbarga to 17 Belgrave Square, London (the National Headquarters of Royal College of Psychiatrists) was not a smooth one. In fact it was so difficult that to describe the journey in its full narrative might take up a couple of articles, and I seriously want to spare you the pain of reading it.
Suffice it to say, when I held my membership certificate (declaring I was a fully qualified Psychiatrist) in my hand for the first time, I got lost in the wee lanes of Yakutpura and Secunderabad, and I thought of that bright day in the smoky canteen of my college when I had first dreamt I would become a Psychiatrist.
Well, that was the beginning. I am now working as a General Adult and Rehabilitation Psychiatrist in Royal Edinburgh Hospital/St John’s Hospital, located in the beautiful part of the world called Scotland, in UK. I have my family here with me, my wife who is a Community Paediatrician and three lovely daughters. Modern technology, advanced gadgetry and Information and Communication technology are my latest chums (much to my wife’s chagrin). I have always taken a keen interest in educating patients about their illnesses. Combining these two interests have resulted in a very basic and amateurish website on common Psychiatric conditions called www.indianpsychiatry.com . I also chair the Mental Health Informatics Special Interest Group at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, London, UK.
In the future, I will endeavour to comment on various topics of psychiatric, social, cultural and family interests, with less of the usual psycho-babble and definitely not in a sombre mood. This section of my blog will also host articles of a personal nature, my travelogues, my interests etc.
Happy Reading,
Zen
