Dr Upendra Devkota who fought all his life to save others is fighting for his life, as we watch him helplessly 
 

I remember watching Tim Burton’s Big Fish time and again when I was in medical school. I would be inspired listening to “Everyday” by Buddy Holly when Edward Blood would stand amidst a yellow mustard field to propose the love of his life, Sandra. Edward was a small fish in a small pond, but at the time he was aspiring to become a big one. He had big dreams that he knew his small town could not offer him. 

Everyone walks the usual path to their fortune. I admired when Edward chose the forbidden one. Did he inspire me to choose a difficult path when I had to do it myself? Unfortunately all difficult paths do not end up in success. Life is remotely a fiction though at times it can get bigger.

When I came to work with Dr Upendra Devkota back in 2008 as a medical officer, I am sure that I managed to impress him with my neurosurgical enthusiasm and diligence which fostered relationship with him as my guru. In seven months I worked with him, I was not just getting neurosurgical training to open up a cranial vault with elegance and asepsis, but I was also growing up with the stories of his adventures that were no less than that of Edward Bloom. 
Dr Devkota was really a fictional big fish standing as a real hero in front of me.  

“If you put a gold fish in a small pond, it stays small and if you put it in a larger one, it grows larger,” goes a famous dialogue in Big Fish. 

Dr Devkota was fortunate to have his own mentor as reverent as Dr DN Gangol who guided a small fish in a Nepali town working in Bir hospital as a surgical medical officer to a pond as big as Glasgow where he received his lifetime nourishment. Obedient to Dr Gangol and fortunate for the country, Dr Devkota decided to serve his own countrymen. Yet he remained a big fish. A big fish in a small pond inspiring other small fishes with the adventures of his life. 

Dr Devkota, brought up in remote Gorkha, a rural village of Nepal, rose to academic excellence with his intelligence and diligence alike. A medical scholarship in India for MBBS, non-accredited general surgical training with Dr Gangol in Bir Hospital, accredited neurosurgical training at Glasgow, establishment of neurosurgical department at Bir Hospital, training junior neurosurgeons for the country, and finally leaving behind a huge neurosurgical legacy in the form of National Institute of Neurological and Allied Sciences, Bansbari, Nepal, Dr Devkota has done a lot for the country. 

For a man of such uncontested academic performance who grew up to become an unchallenged authority of neurosurgery in the region, his strong sense of amour-propre could have been easily misinterpreted as self-inflation by his contemporaries. I managed to learn from the reiterations of his medical adventures than be annoyed by it.  

If you have been an admirer of Dr Devkota, I am sure you are following his stories in “Mero Mato Mero Chandan.” I am glad that we have the opportunity to read about his adventures first hand while he is fighting with cancer so early in his life leaving us all desolate. 

Dr Devkota is a warrior. He fought all his life for others. While the cancer was trying to take over his patient’s body, he fought for them. If not always, he almost always managed to defeat them. Meantime he accepted a part of the negative energy transferred in the process. Now that he himself is fighting against it inside his own body, we are all helplessly watching him. The only gurudakshina I can offer him now is a pledge to continue the battle he fought his entire life until the enemy is vanquished. 

I remember the first day I met him in my selection interview at Bansbari Neuro Hospital. “If you have to reach a destination by sunset, do not spoil your day by picking the berries on the side,” he said. I have not reached the destination but I can have a glimpse of it through his eyes for which I am ready to walk this life and beyond. I am just a small fish, but with enough inspiration from him to become a big one. 

Twitter: @subash_lohani

 
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